What does it mean to be a member of a tribal government in the United States? This dissertation answers that question with an analysis of Cherokee citizenship, both as a concept and as a legal condition. Previous work on the Cherokee has been historical, anthropological, or sociological in nature. Political scientists have not yet produced a study of Cherokee citizenship. I fill in this gap in the literature by approaching Cherokee citizenship from three different angles-from the perspective of the Cherokee, of United States officials, and from the descendants of freedmen who live in the Cherokee Nation. I argue that the prevailing explanations for the state of Cherokee citizenship, racial prejudice and acquisitiveness, do not paint a complete picture. Instead, these explanations need to be supplemented with an understanding of the ideological incongruence between Cherokee and American political thought. My ideological incongruence thesis posits that inherent differences between the Cherokee and the United States over how to understand and practice politics has led to struggles over Cherokee citizenship and has subsequently driven the development of Cherokee law. A holistic view of Cherokee citizenship admits three major factors at play" racial prejudice, material acquisitiveness, and ideological tension. This holistic view can help scholars parse through difficult dimensions of indigenous-US relations and lend clarity to debates over the status of tribal governments and their people.
We must all hang together," Benjamin Franklin jibed after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, "or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." Franklin's sentiments capture the essence of Eric Cheng's Hanging Together, which muses over how to perpetuate liberal democracies in a modern world rife with what the author calls difference and disagreement. "Difference" here represents descriptive diversity (age, sex, race, etc.); "disagreement" means ideological competition (partisanship, religious belief, and so on). Liberal democratic theory promises to hold diverse, competing peoples together, but the threat of division and strife constantly looms over efforts at democratic unity. Cheng proposes a solution to this problem-the problem of difference and disagreement-called role-based constitutional fellowship. The goal of this fellowship is to create and sustain a "culture of trust" wherein citizens trust that their fellow citizens are committed to perpetuating liberal democratic political institutions, despite their disagreements (94).Motivated by the rise of far-right political movements the world over, Hanging Together argues that we need to rethink how liberal democrats perpetuate their political systems. While theoretically not restricted to America, Cheng nonetheless focuses most of his analysis on the situation in the United States, post-January 6th, 2021 Capitol insurrection. Cheng's intention is to create a framework for "how citizens who have differences and disagreements ought to relate to one another in a liberal democracy" to sustain their systems and remedy injustices (1). By "liberal democracy" (the correctness of which Cheng assumes a priori), Cheng means a political regime that takes seriously the rule of law, individual liberties, freedom of the press, fair elections, an independent judiciary, and "the legitimacy of political disagreement" (1).Cheng's framework first involves understanding the different roles citizens play in society before figuring out how to create a culture of trust between them. There are two main spheres in modern liberal democracies, one
Citizenship, a fundamental political idea, exists in many forms in the United States. In this study, I apply the analytical strategies of American political development to examine the evolution of Cherokee constitutional citizenship law since 1827. The lack of political development studies on Cherokee governance presents a unique opportunity to identify foundational and second-story ideas underpinning Cherokee political thought. I contribute to the ongoing discussion of indigenous political development by creating a new theoretical framework for interpreting and analyzing durable shifts in Cherokee citizenship law. As America expands and diversifies, alternate, nonliberal views of citizenship increase in political relevance. Understanding why certain laws exist and where they came from is crucial for cultivating political engagement, engaging in productive discourse, and creating humanizing policies.
El presente caso es uno de los más importantes del periodo moderno de la Corte Suprema de los Estados Unidos que, definiendo la competencia penal, establece políticas indígenas. La sentencia de la Corte Suprema en McGirt vs. Oklahoma establece el principio que los estados y el gobierno federal deben acatar los tratados de larga data con las naciones indígenas, reforzando al mismo tiempo -y tangencialmente-los títulos colectivos indígenas a la tierra. Si la reserva de tierra indígena va a ser suprimida, debe hacerse explícitamente por una ley del Congreso, no por la voluntad
One of the most important modern United States' Supreme Court cases involving indigenous politics centers on the problem of defining criminal jurisdiction. The Supreme Court's decision in McGirt v Oklahoma advanced the principle that both U.S. state and federal governments must abide by longstanding treaty agreements with tribal nations, strengthening -tangentially-the collective titles to Indian lands. If an Indian reservation is to be suppressed, it must come via an explicit act of Congress, not the will of state or local governments. The immediate consequences of this decision
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