Indigenous sovereignty is the inherent right of Indigenous peoples to self-determination and governance over their lands, waters, and communities. It is not a right granted by settler states through treaties or legislation. It precedes colonization and persists regardless of whether settler governments recognize it.
This distinguishes Indigenous sovereignty from state sovereignty, which is defined by territorial monopoly on violence and international recognition. Indigenous sovereignty derives from ongoing relationships with land, from governance traditions that predate the settler state, and from the continuity of peoples who never consented to the authority claimed over them. Treaties between Indigenous nations and colonial powers are, on Indigenous terms, nation-to-nation agreements — not concessions from a superior to a subordinate power.
Settler-colonial states systematically undermine Indigenous sovereignty through legal doctrines (the Doctrine of Discovery, plenary power, blood quantum), through forced removal and allotment, and through administrative absorption of Indigenous governance into state bureaucracy. The Land Back movement reasserts sovereignty not as a symbolic gesture but as the material return of land and jurisdictional authority to Indigenous nations.
Indigenous sovereignty also encompasses governance over knowledge systems, languages, and cultural practices — dimensions that Western sovereignty frameworks routinely ignore.