Native Nation Resistance to the Machinations of Settler Colonial Democracy

This Essay's publication coincides with the centennial commemoration of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, which offers an opportunity to revisit the historical and contemporary ways the concept of citizenship has been used to both increase Indigenous legibility and refute the project of empire. Through a review of the history of territorial incorporation, statehood, federal recognition, and citizenship, I examine the machinations of settler colonialism that seek to eliminate, contain, and assimilate Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples into the federal polity. Seeking to concretize this examination-and to respond to calls to broaden the scope of Indigeneity and the field of Indigenous Peoples Law in the United States-I focus on historical and contemporary examples of Indigenous resistance to these machinations in the Alaskan, Hawaiian, American Samoan, and Guahan contexts. Despite the machinations of settler colonialism proffering doctrinal differences via the "law of the territories" and "federal Indian law," Indigenous resistance in these contexts illuminates more similarities than differences and elucidates a desire for full sovereignty and self-determination, a sovereignty that is anything but sui generis.