I find that living in the midst of sovereignty is confining and hopeless. Pick a definition of sovereignty from any "expert" in Indian country and they are ALL lies. Sovereignty is singing the songs that YOU dance to from your soul, your being, your essence without words, translation, or definition. Create a constitution, a set of by-laws, a bill of rights, a definition of tribal membership and you have no sovereignty, no tribe, no culture, no reality. What you have is an institution, a government, a legal entity.

Tonight, I was lied to by my wife, told to mind my own business, asked for a BETTER solution over or concerning legal, institutional sovereignty. All I said was that goons are goons and not following the constitution is the issue for a tribe that has become a legal institutional government and not a group dancing to their own songs that they could sing. I am hurt and saddened by the reality that has been created over the past 25 years by my own relatives (by marriage) and others in Native America by believing our own myths and stories about tribe and culture.

I don't believe that TV, hip-hop, books written by "real injuns", laws, blood quantum, enrollment, BIA, NIGC, casinos, trust land, language, feathers, ceremonies, pipes, sweat lodges, long houses, totems, resolutions, constitutions, lineages, family trees, descendency, litmus tests, or anything else but soul, land, prayer, and spirit make you an aboriginal, native, Indian, indigenous or person of the land. Oh how nice it would be if all one had to do was go to the tribal office and get a card to be an enrolled member of the tribe. OOOPS thats ALL one has to do. Sorry I was confused for a minute that being aboriginal, native, Indian, indigenous or person of the land meant something more than a card to carry in my car that plays hip-hop on my way to the party.

Help me to understand what being Dakota means in the first decade of the 21st century. I guess being in power through force and entitlement is part of the answer... Being in relationship to each other and land is not being Dakota, even if we allude to it as a nice ideal but not what we do.

I love living on the DakotaRez..... don't you?