What shapes Indigenous American politics? Despite the central role Indigenous Americans have in US history, research on Indigenous politics remain limited. Most scholarship focuses on Indigenous participation in federal election participation or intergovernmental relations and overlooks Indigenous political life beyond these venues.

Indigenous Americans occupy a unique space in American politics in belonging to two political arenas. They can and do participate in traditional mainstream American contests like other citizens, but they also engage in autonomous sovereign political systems within their own Nations. Indigenous political institutions and self-governance are not peripheral. Instead, they are central to Indigenous political identity and merit greater scholarly attention. 

My  dissertation examines both aspects of the Indigenous American political experience. It seeks to understand what drives politics within sovereign Indigenous Nations and how those dynamics compare to participation in mainstream American Politics. In particular, my research is motivated by the following questions:

• Does the unique institutional environment of Indigenous Nations generate different ideological debates or patterns in political behavior?

• How do social cleavages, especially those unique to Indigenous Nations such as differences in heritage, cultural identity, lifeways, and urban-reservation divides, interact with broader pressures to preserve Indigenous identity amid external influences to assimilate?

• Is Indigenous politics defined by national party debates or localized policy concerns unique to each Nation?

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Similar to other sovereign states, Indigenous Nations contain internal divisions and competing priorities. Yet, these cleavages are often compounded by cultural and historical legacies of colonization and assimilation. Understanding the distinctive ideological and institutional landscapes within Indigenous Nations is crucial to explaining how individuals navigate and make political choices within two fundamentally different political systems. 

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My dissertation contributes to our understanding of Indigenous political behavior by investigating how institutional context shapes Indigenous political debates, behavior, and participation across sovereign and settler-state political systems.