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tribal law; tribal sovereignty

Call for Public Mellon Fellows: Sovereignty and Democracy in Indian Country

ABOUT THE PROJECT

The Oklahoma Center for the Humanities, with support from a three-year grant from the Mellon Foundation, will pursue a three-year project on Sovereignty and Democracy in Indian Country. This initiative will bring together TU faculty and students with dedicated national and community experts to explore the history, philosophy, and future of concepts like citizenship, identity, and belonging. We welcome applications for two public research fellows not directly affiliated with the university and encourage inquiries from anyone interested in these issues, including artists, writers, journalists, historians, legal experts, cultural practitioners, and more.

In the four years since the Supreme Court’s landmark McGirt ruling, Oklahoma has become a unique cultural laboratory where scholars, activists, political leaders, artists, and citizens are now exploring tense yet urgent questions about self-determination, the rights of Indigenous peoples, and the nature of sovereignty itself, while opening up a new and unexpected space for rethinking the history and future of American democracy. Far from abstruse, such issues directly shape the day-to-day lives of all citizens because they intersect with fundamental issues of identity, the basis of law, the power of the state, the rights of individuals, and the interwoven histories of race, ethnicity, and citizenship. Among the most pressing questions we now face:

  • What does it mean to live on land where sovereignty is shared and multiple rather than unitary and absolute?
  • Who has the power to define citizenship and how does it continue to intersect with the regimes of race and racism that have shadowed the United States since contact?
  • How have Indigenous cultures influenced American democracy, from the Iroquois Confederacy (a model for the U.S. Constitution), through the re-establishment of tribal nations at the end of the Trail of Tears, to the creation of novel democratic institutions in the now sovereign lands of eastern Oklahoma?
  • What social, political, and artistic futurisms have taken shape in the Oklahoma from the creation of Indian Territory to the restoration of tribal sovereignty?
  • How might we think of Oklahoma and its tribal nations less as spaces of exception than as the vanguard of a larger effort to create resilient cultures of democracy?

 

ABOUT THE FELLOWSHIP

In his award-winning book, The Rediscovery of America (2023), Ned Blackhawk urges scholars “to put down the interpretive tools of the previous century and take up new ones” in order to develop a more complex history of culture and politics in the Americas.  Throughout the 2025-26 academic year, we will take up this challenge by asking not how European settlers “brought” democracy to the continent, but rather how American ideals grew out of an entangled history of contact, exchange, negotiation, and treaty-making.

We are now accepting applications from anyone beyond the University of Tulsa who might be interested in exploring these challenging questions in a broadly interdisciplinary setting.  Applicants need not be experts in Indigenous studies but should be eager to explore new and changing histories and theories of democracy, citizenship, belonging, and identity. Fellows will meet in a weekly seminar throughout the fall semester, then periodically throughout the spring when they will help design an array of public programs, including lectures, performances, exhibitions, and a national summit.

Public fellows will receive stipends of $5,000 paid in three installments over the year to provide research support and assist with travel, childcare, and other needs.  As part of the fellowship, fellows will work collaboratively to help design ambitious public programs including an exhibition at 101 Archer and an international summit on sovereignty and democracy.

 

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS

Applications for participation in the seminar should include the following.

  • A current CV or resume, including contact information.
  • Full responses to the three application questions listed below.

 

Applications should be sent by electronic attachment to humanities@utulsa.edu.

Application Deadline: August 20, 2025

Application Questions (no more than 1,500 words total):

  1. How might your own work intersect this year’s key themes including the history of democracy, Indigenous studies, and changing concepts of sovereignty, citizenship, and identity? What are the questions that you would like to see addressed in the seminar?
  2. How will participation in the seminar contribute to your professional, creative, and/or other work?  What kinds of projects do you envisage arising out of your participation in the seminar?
  3. Provide a short list of works (books, images, performances, films, articles, etc.) that you have found important or provocative in relation to the seminar’s focus.

To learn more about the grant and the larger set of projects it supports, please visit the OCH website.  If you have questions about the seminar and the application process, please contact Sean Latham (sean-latham@utulsa.edu // x  2857).

 

 

Changing the Narrative in Federal Indian Law

Aila Hoss, 2020-21 Courage research fellow and Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Tulsa, talks about the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision McGirt v. Oklahoma and discusses how it takes courage to confront the racist legacies embedded in our laws.

As a 2020-21 fellow with the Oklahoma Center for Humanities, I’ve explored the idea of courage alongside faculty, staff, students, and other members of the TU community. Our discussion has often turned to the idea of challenging existing narratives – in science, philosophy, and law – as an exercise of courage. One pervasive narrative in federal Indian law is the idea that Tribal authority is a threat to state or local governments and their non-Tribal citizens.  

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma was a victory stewarded by the Muscogee Creek Nation and celebrated by all of Indian country. The decision reaffirmed the Tribe’s treaty reservation boundaries, boundaries longed infringed upon by state and local governments. 

Oklahoma’s Attorney General, in response to well-founded criticisms of proposed legislation to limit the impact of the McGirt decision, called critics “sovereignty hobbyists,” deeming concerns about infringement of sovereignty theoretical. In its brief in the McGirt decision, Oklahoma argued that the state, not the Tribe, that had the “ultimate responsibility for seeking justice for Indian crime victims.” Sadly, such challenges to Tribal sovereignty are not new. 

Courts have long relied on overt racism and white supremacy to justify infringement on Tribal sovereignty and Indigenous rights. Attorney and scholar Walter Echo-Hawk describes the ten worst Indian law cases in his book, In the Courts of the Conqueror, which explores the impact of these cases on a variety of areas including property rights, political status, and culture.  

I offer an excerpt from just one case, although there are countless others, to demonstrate how pervasive racism is in our case law. In US v. Sandavol, the Supreme Court stated that “[t]he people of the pueblos . . . adher[e] to primitive modes of life, largely influenced by superstition and fetichism, and chiefly governed according to the crude customs inherited from their ancestors, they are essentially a simple, uninformed, and inferior people.” Modern day manifestations of these sentiments in mascots and media have been described as the “last acceptable racism.” 

In our courtrooms today, racism against American Indians and Alaska Natives is packaged under legal arguments challenging Tribal sovereignty. Under the guise of federal Indian law, individuals, corporations, and governments regularly argue that Tribes do not and should not have the legal authority that is both inherent to them as sovereign nations and long recognized under the law. These arguments are bolstered by thinly-veiled, racist stereotypes that Tribes do not have the ability or interest to govern themselves. When the law embraces these stereotypes, Tribes lose legal authority essential to protecting their communities, lands, and cultures. Wallace Coffey and Rebecca Tsosie discuss the inextricable relationship between legal sovereignty and cultural sovereignty in, “Rethinking the Tribal Sovereignty Doctrine: Cultural Sovereignty and the Collective Future of Indian Nations.”  

Many people and entities benefit financially, politically, and socially from undermining Tribal sovereignty and use this as an argument to challenge Tribal jurisdiction legally. This practice needs to stop. Financial, political, and social inconvenience should not be sufficient grounds to challenge the inherent rights of Tribal nations. Yet, such litigation is not only commonplace but also endorsed by courts that are persuaded by these arguments.

It takes courage to first confront and then change this racist legacy embedded in our laws, particularly from entities that historically challenge Tribal jurisdiction.  It will require us to replace existing narratives with a new one that acknowledges the benefit of sovereignty to both Tribes and their neighbors. As a non-Native resident in of the Muscogee Creek Nation and citizen of Oklahoma, I hope the state of Oklahoma has the courage to support Tribal jurisdiction instead of challenge it.  

Sources:

Image – Map of Oklahoma Indian Lands (Library of Congress – public access): https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4021e.ct000224/ 

Image – Supreme Court (Library of Congress – public access): https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2019/05/celebrate-law-day-with-new-research-guides-from-the-law-library/