vague-humanoid:

This week everyone is talking about the sovereignty of nations. Everyone is standing with Ukraine and horrified by Putin, because Ukraine is a sovereign independent nation and the Russian army invaded for no reason.

There have been a lot of jokes that Putin’s justifications of the invasion are the same as if Mexico invaded the United States because it used to control Texas. These jokes highlight how ridiculous Putin’s claims are. They point out that you cannot invade another country because the land used to be part of your country.

These arguments have a point, and obviously Putin’s invasion violates all kinds of international law, but we seem to be missing that sovereignty isn’t the magic bullet to protect a society in the way the jokes seem to assume.

Tribal sovereignty is currently under attack in this country with multiple Supreme Court cases considering arguments that would legally weaken the sovereignty and self-determination of Native Americans. This week the court agreed to hear a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) in Brackeen v. Haaland. These attacks aren’t military but they seek to weaken sovereignty.

The conservative challenge to ICWA uses the Equal Protection Clause to argue that any different treatment of Native Americans by the government is unconstitutional. Native Americans define themselves as a political identity, not a racial one, so the Equal Protection Clause shouldn’t apply.

However, if this challenge is successful, which it has been so far, it would likely have far-reaching implications beyond the Indian Child Welfare Act. Tribes have sovereignty as political entities, not as racial ones, so if the Equal Protection Clause supports striking down ICWA, tribal sovereignty as a whole is in danger.

Rebecca Nagle, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, explained to me, “Anything that feeds this argument that Native identity is based on racial biology, rather than a political status as citizens of tribes, feeds this far-right attack on our tribes.”

Tribes are separate sovereign nations, not a racial identity.

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