Description
This paper develops our understanding of sovereignty through an engagement with Indigenous political thought and practice. In doing so it furthers present conceptualizations of “relational sovereignty” as a way of articulating how Indigenous nations exercise decision-making power collectively. It does so through a historic case study of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The Confederacy is made up of 5 Indigenous nations that inhabit the Dawnland, today known as the Maritime peninsula of Canada and the United States of America (USA).
The Confederacy has its roots in inter-Indigenous contests over territory, but was most fully realized in diplomatic relationships with the English and French empires that arrived in, and sought control over, Dawnland in the 17th and 18th centuries. During this time, Wabanaki nations exercised relational sovereignty while collectively developing treaty relations with the European empires, most notably the Peace and Friendship treaties that the nations see as continuing to guide relations with Canada and the USA today. Relationality, then, offers an alternative expressions of sovereignty as seen through the analysis of the Confederacy’s intra-diplomatic practices, and treaty-making with the British and French.
