by Ari Van Schilfgaarde
STAFF WRITER
This week produced back-to-back lectures on the United States’ role in dealing with sovereign nations. Winona LaDuke and the comedy duo Scott Blakeman and Dean Obeidallah operated under the assumption that US involvement in the Middle East Peace process could alter the last 59 years of conflict and lead to an independent, two-state solution.
Winona LaDuke’s perspective is that the US involvement in the affairs of the various Indian tribes has left them in a weakened position. It is only with the arrival of gaming revenues that LaDuke believes that the Indian tribes have been able to gain a seat at the table of power.
The irony here is that both groups claim to hold the moral high ground while agitating for the United States to change its policy in dealing with foreign governments. The Standup for Peace group argue that the Palestinians and that Israelis “will have to live together… there are too many for one side to drive the other into the sea.” In this case, an activist policy of intervening in Israel’s internal affairs is cast in terms of human rights and pragmatism. The argument is that the moral imperative to defend human rights trumps the individual sovereignty of the government.
Winona LaDuke’s argument is the opposite –– one of self-determination. She argues that the individual Indian tribes, as domestic dependent sovereign nations, are owed the right to self-determination and that any intervention by US Federal policy is an abrogation of their rights as independent entities. The trust relationship that the US Federal government has established with the Tribes leads the treatment of people as chattel, evidenced by the fact the Bureau of Indian Affairs is under the same department as the Bureau of Land Management.
So how is it that two entities, so similar in definition –– both as sovereign nations, with a shared history, language, culture and physical boundary –– can engender the opposite response from supposedly progressive social organizers?
The answer is that a truly progressive social organization is one in which a government acknowledges the right of another to free expression. The logical conclusion is that in the case of the Indian tribes the US Federal government begins treating the Indian tribes less as wards and more as sovereign governments.
This means removing some of the limits to Indian rights –– for example the right to try felonies in Tribal courts, or negotiating natural resource contracts on behalf of the Tribal government. It also implies, though, that those benefits awarded by the Federal government (and this is largely limited to social services guarantees) are also abridged.
In the case of the Middle East Peace process, such an acknowledgement of sovereignty would largely remove the moral imperative for United States involvement. Any United States involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict would have to be justified in the context of a pressing strategic interest.
The conclusion of the sovereignty argument presented here is one that is unlikely to gain much traction, either from Tribal advocates or the Middle East Peace lobby. But its lack of political expediency doesn’t change the conclusion. A progressive policy of encouraging independence in our allies and neighbors leaves too many people unhappy. In the interim, even with the new Congress and rhetoric the status quo will stand with regard to substantive changes in dealing with other sovereign governments.
