Article XX - Statement of Sovereignty
A fundamental aspect of the Constitutional Cherokee is the recognition of our sovereignty.
It is most significant to recognize that our sovereignty is not dependent on any action by the federal government. Instead, it is derived from the inherent power of the Constitutional Cherokee people that existed because the Cherokee People were an independent nation occupying much of the Southeastern portion of what is now known as North American territory when the Europeans arrived here.
We do declare that we are a sovereign nation and we reserve the supremacy of authority exercised by our selves upon ourselves as by a self-governing people group. We further declare that we reserve the power of a people to govern our selves and to exercise self determination.
SOVEREIGNTY DEFINITIONS:
Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided. A sovereign nation is a supreme lawmaking authority.
An important factor of sovereignty is its degree of absoluteness. A sovereign power has absolute sovereignty if it has the unlimited right to control everything and every kind of activity in its territory. This means that it is not restricted by any external law, government or external constitution, nor is it restricted by the laws of its predecessors, or by any custom other than its own, and no areas of law or behavior are reserved as being outside its control.
Tribal sovereignty in the United States refers to the inherent authority of indigenous tribes to govern themselves within the borders of the United States of America.
The federal government recognizes tribal nations as "domestic dependent nations" and has established a number of laws attempting to clarify the relationship between the federal, state, and tribal governments. The Constitution and later federal laws grant to tribal nations more sovereignty than is granted to states or other local jurisdictions, yet do not grant full sovereignty equivalent to foreign nations, hence the term "domestic dependent nations". WE DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS VIEW of ourselves as "Domestic dependent Nations". We assert that we are fully sovereign within our historic homeland- as stated in the Constitution of 1827: "No power of suspending the laws of this nation Shall be excercised [exercised] unless by the Legislature or its authority"
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