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- Article No. 09

# A Postscript: Sovereignty is Still the Issue

            Adam DJ Brett; Betty Hill (Lyons); Nethanial Belmont

               April 16, 2026

                 |  doi.org/10.17613/jeswg-90007

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## Table of Contents

This postscript reflects on two special issues that interrogate religious and legal justifications of domination and argues that questions of sovereignty remain constitutive for the field of Indigenous studies today. In contrast to proliferating carve‑outs such as food, energy, gaming, or cannabis sovereignty, the authors contend that such adjectival sovereignties concede excessive ground to settler colonial frameworks premised on tribal recognition, regulation, and permission. They assert that Indigenous nations are sovereign nations rather than administratively defined “tribes,” and that sovereignty must be conceptualized as a lived, ongoing practice rather than a delegated or derivative status. Accordingly, the postscript calls for an understanding of Indigenous sovereignty as grounded in land, language, traditional governance, and the territorial integrity of Mother Earth. Moving beyond a sole focus on dismantling the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, it advances a vision of healing grounded in a return to precolonial lifeways, the revitalization of intergenerational knowledge, and the fulfillment of Indigenous responsibilities to all living beings. Reconnection to community and homelands is framed not as a source of shame for those separated by boarding schools and regimes of domination, but as a generative process of individual and collective healing.

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          Keywords:

            doctrine-of-christian-discovery

            johnson-v-mintosh

            indigenous-sovereignty

            white-supremacy

            decolonization

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