SOVEREIGNTY THROUGH ASSIMILATION: THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION OF THE CHEROKEE NATION

Abstract

This dissertation examines federal Indian law of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries as constitutive rhetoric. Focusing specifically on the Cherokee Nation, I argue that the word "tribe," as used in three federal acts, ascribed three different meanings to the people described by the term. With the passage of each act, Cherokee identity was federally manipulated, as the United States government integrated members of the Cherokee Nation into the American economy. First, the Curtis Act, imposed with little input from tribes themselves, dissolved Indigenous national governments in Indian Territory - now the state of Oklahoma - and defined the citizens of those nations as individual landowners, identities significantly different from the collective tribalism that had previously dominated in Indian Territory. Almost four decades later, the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act imposed yet another identity on Indigenous Oklahomans, as they were allowed to reorganize, but only under entrepreneurial identities. Finally, in 1970, the Principal Chiefs Act allowed Oklahoma's tribal collectives to engage in tribal elections, allowing a democratic citizen identity, but only under the auspices of the federal government. I conclude with implications for the modern Cherokee Nation's tribal sovereignty, and for the continued use of imposed constitutive rhetoric by the United States government in its relations with tribal peoples worldwide.