TRIBAL GOVERNMENT SERIES — PART THREE

TRUTH IN FOCUS

By Steven Bullcoming Haworth

When people talk about the Northern Cheyenne Nation today, the conversation often starts with the Tribal Council, elections, the reservation, or the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But that starts the story far too late. The Northern Cheyenne Nation did not begin in 1935, when its present constitutional form of government was adopted. It did not begin when Montana became a state, when reservation boundaries were created, or when the federal government established the systems it now uses to deal with tribal nations. The people were already here. The Nation was already here. Government was already here.

Long before the modern constitutional system, the Cheyenne people had leadership, law, ceremony, political institutions, systems of responsibility, chiefs, societies, and their own ways of maintaining order and resolving disputes. Traditional Cheyenne government included the Council of Forty-Four chiefs and organized societies that carried important responsibilities involving protection, policing, military affairs, and carrying out decisions. These institutions were not copied from Washington. They were Cheyenne institutions created within Cheyenne society itself.

That history matters because sovereignty is sometimes discussed as though the United States created it and then handed some portion of it to Native nations. That gets the history backward. The Nation existed first. The United States came later. Montana came later. The Bureau of Indian Affairs came later. The reservation system came later. The present Northern Cheyenne constitutional government came later. The modern government is lawful, real, and important, but it is only one chapter in a much longer history of Cheyenne government.

That leads to a harder question than simply asking whether the Northern Cheyenne Nation is sovereign. Of course it is. The harder question is how that sovereignty should be exercised within the Nation. Today, substantial formal authority rests within the modern constitutional system, particularly the Tribal Council. Elections matter, voting matters, and representative government matters, but elections are not the only way a people can organize political authority. A government can also become too distant from the people it represents, even when its leaders are elected.

That is why it is worth asking whether more authority should be brought directly back to the people. Should tribal members have stronger referendum rights? Should traditional chiefs have a more meaningful role in modern government? Should the societies have a recognized voice? Could traditional institutions and the present constitutional government work together? Could some major decisions require broader participation from the people instead of remaining primarily within the council system? Those are legitimate questions for Northern Cheyenne citizens to debate.

There is also a difference between honoring tradition and allowing tradition to participate in living government. A Nation can honor chiefs at ceremonies while giving chiefs little or no formal role in major decisions. It can teach young people about the societies while leaving those societies outside the modern political structure. It can celebrate sovereignty while never asking whether too much authority has become concentrated inside a twentieth-century governmental system. That does not mean the modern government should simply be discarded. Tribal government today must handle healthcare, education, courts, budgets, infrastructure, economic development, federal programs, public safety, natural resources, technology, and relationships with other governments. Traditional institutions would also raise difficult questions about representation, accountability, leadership selection, individual rights, women, younger generations, and how authority would be divided.

But difficult questions are not a reason to avoid the conversation. The Cheyenne people understood leadership, law, diplomacy, responsibility, and government long before the present constitutional system existed. Western government did not invent Cheyenne government. The real question may therefore be less about choosing between traditional government and modern government and more about deciding how the two can work together in a way that reflects the Nation’s own values.

Perhaps the future of Northern Cheyenne government should focus on bringing authority closer to the people. That could involve stronger referendums, greater transparency, more district participation, traditional chiefs, societies, or some combination created by Northern Cheyenne citizens themselves. Self-determination does not mean copying Washington, Helena, or the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It means the Nation deciding for itself how it wishes to be governed.

The Northern Cheyenne Nation existed before the present Tribal Council. It existed before the present Constitution. It existed before Montana statehood and before the reservation system. The chiefs existed. The societies existed. The people existed. The Nation existed. That changes how sovereignty should be understood. Sovereignty is more than authority exercised inside a government building or around a council table. It is the continuing political existence of a people who have governed themselves across generations.

So the questions going forward should be simple but serious: What should remain? What should change? What should be restored? What should be strengthened? What role should traditional chiefs have? What role should the societies have? And what authority should belong more directly to the people? Those questions cannot be answered honestly if we pretend Northern Cheyenne political history began in 1935. It did not. The Nation came first, and its future ultimately belongs to the Northern Cheyenne people to debate, shape, and decide.

Truth in Focus
Look at the record. Follow the facts. Ask the questions.

Sources reviewed: Northern Cheyenne Constitution and Bylaws; National Indian Law Library / Native American Rights Fund; Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian — Native Knowledge 360°.

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