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NAU Professor Examines What Sovereignty Means To Native Nations

Dr. Michael Lerma is an Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Northern Arizona University. He’s just released his first book, “Indigenous Sovereignty in the 21st Century: Knowledge for the Indigenous Spring.” It examines what sovereignty means to indigenous nations. Arizona Public Radio’s Aaron Granillo recently sat down with Dr. Lerma to discuss the book.

Aaron Granillo: So Dr. Lerma, how do you define indigenous sovereignty?

Dr. Michael Lerma: It’s a big, broad question and even the book itself doesn’t get into all of the details of it. But, this book is attempting to correct some of the inconsistencies and I think the mistake of some other powerful actors around the world in making indigenous sovereignty seem more of like an affirmative action program for people of color and that’s really not what it is.

So, from the Native American perspective, what is sovereignty?

Even that is not well-defined. Even the tribal leadership – I’m not sure they get it right all the time. You’ve got to get more into the details of a sacred relationship that a leader would have with their people, with mother earth, with father sky. And so sovereignty can be something that I see it as the way a medicine woman would have a relationship with water. She doesn’t see it as something that you urinate into. She doesn’t see it as something that you waste. It’s actually a medicine. So, that to me could be one definition of a sovereign reach from an indigenous point of view. I’m not giving you my water to go and build pools and make golf courses. This is actually a medicine and you can’t have it. It’s sacred. You know, you could say it like that. Nobody really talks that way, but I wish we would again.

What are some of the issues, specifically, related to sovereignty that Native American people are facing. Are there certain examples that are more prevalent than others?

Some of the listeners may know about the notion of aboriginal title. How native nations were appropriated by colonial actors like the United States. And the mechanism they used was aboriginal title, and they said, ‘Well we’ve discovered you and because we are a Christian nation and you don’t have Christianity, you don’t actually own your traditional homeland. You occupy it.’ And that’s sort of it. And I see water rights settlements as the contemporary aboriginal title. You have powerful actors that have… I guess they’ve discovered the water. I don’t know. But they’ve used it. And so the practice in the Southwest is if you’re using it, then I guess it’s yours, as I understand it. So that’s what I would say is the contemporary question.

What about sacred sites? How do they fit into sovereignty?

The paint with a broad brush approach would be is if a native nation has named a place like the San Francisco Peaks. If they have ceremonies related to the San Francisco Peaks. If they have a sacred history about how the San Francisco Peaks actually got there, it’s probably sacred. And you probably shouldn’t be just blowing reclaimed water on it. And that’s the issue. So, what was once a sort of amorphous, ‘Oh, and Indians think that everything is sacred so you can’t work with them.’ I’d like it to be a much more concrete definition such as what I’ve explained. And again, it’s a failure to really fully understand, want to learn about why this is a problem.

So how do you change that perception of sovereignty?

It’s the policy makers. They’re in my classroom. They’ll be in my classroom on Monday. And if one of the graduates goes on to work for a mining company, I hope they’ll think of the conversations we’ve had. You know, the probability theory tells me that somebody is going to go on and be a state legislator. That’s how I hope the conversation will happen. There’s no instant gratification in my work unfortunately but we try.   

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