An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

2. You know how Indigenous Nations in North America could assert
their sovereignty and right to self-determination? They can make new
agreements, arrangements, treaties—whatever you want to call it—
with Black people and other people of color. They can reimagine
sovereignty. Begin finding ways to incorporate Black folks into their
spaces and cultures. I’m not sure how this would look nation to nation,
but we can look at the very small example of how the Standing Rock
Sioux engaged with NBA basketball star Kyrie Irving (and his sister)
by formally reconnecting them. For those who might be skeptical, ask
yourselves this question: what do we have to lose? I think it has the
potential to end antiblackness in Native communities and end
Indigenous erasure in Black communities. Given the nature of
patriarchy, it might be best that Indigenous and Black femmes, nongender-conforming
people, or more precisely, Black/Indigenous
femmes and non-gender-conforming people, meet and negotiate how
this might work. 36
3. If tribal nations recreate new relationships, even political
arrangements with Black folks, they might also consider further
rethinking the nature of treaties within the context of US liberal
democracy. If liberal democracy is an ongoing project that continues
to fail (can we really redeem the soul of this nation or is it like
Lucifer, the fallen angel?), then the treaties need to take on a new
meaning, and we need to imagine how treaties will look in the
aftermath of colonialism. Treaties are important, even sacrosanct to
many tribal nations. They are a product of the sustained US genocide
against Indigenous nations. Tribal nations might consider them sacred,
but the US government sure doesn’t, and the majority were created
with a power imbalance in mind. The treaties have to be honored by
both groups, and since the US government has violated every single
one, are they, in fact, sacred anymore? From the get-go, the US
Constitution has more authority than a treaty, as that is considered the
supreme law of the land. 37 Treaties are entangled with US liberal
democracy. The US government has shown it can’t be trusted.
Indigenous scholars such as Glen Coulthard (Yellowknives Dené) and
Audra Simpson (Mohawk) have helped us further think about how we
might reject colonial land and political arrangements, so maybe we
need to rethink our relationship to treaties, or at least how they relate