Riding the sovereignty train, or how Ozzy Osbourne shaped my metaphorical views on being sovereign

Tribal sovereignty will continue to ride alongside the U.S. in a train headed toward a familiar and uncomfortable tunnel.

What comes when the light returns is unknown. 

What we don’t know we cannot report.

That ignites the discomfort that burns from the familiar track that will be another Donald Trump presidency.

Sovereignty is not a word Trump mentioned during his campaign. He did not speak to the government’s responsibility to provide health care, education, self-governance and protections of culture to millions of tribal and U.S. citizens.

He did not speak to Native people about a specific legacy of harms caused by the United States and its policymakers in Washington D.C., nor about the degradation of life willowed for genocide survivors, many who are part of tribal governments now responsible for charting a path toward growing the sovereignty their relatives took to stop war. A demand that now has them in place to make difficult choices on how to continue existence with the colonizing government.

Sovereignty is a lane toward freedom. It’s all actually very populist, if you think about it. And for a man who ran on the message of the most exceptional American freedom ever evangelized, energized by his desire to remain free from a federal corrections program, I think it fits into his soul.

At least that is what the Native people who have the Trump administration’s ear want. 

Again, what that will actually be, we don’t know. And before we get too far off the rails on the crazy train, like Ozzy sang in his first solo break from Black Sabbath, let’s view what we can on how one person could be conditioned to rule and control.

Start with North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a Republican and Trump’s nominee to helm the Department of Interior, the massive federal agency that is typically the first stop for any tribal government to start any work exerting its sovereignty with the U.S.

Before Burgum seeks approval from Congress in 2025 to lead Interior, he is moving Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” policies under the newly formed National Energy Council. Trump also tasked Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright to steer the group into an approach that will seek to eliminate “red tape” across all government agencies that they view as limitations to domestic energy plans.

After the Burgum pick, Mark N. Fox, chairman for the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, used similar language to praise the North Dakota governor he’s worked with since 2019.

“He understands and supports tribal sovereignty, and his outstanding business background is key to his ability to cut through red tape to find solutions that will stand to benefit tribal nations and the country as a whole,” Fox said in an interview last week.

Fox leads the MHA Nation and its government services for more than 17,000 citizens. This includes a very busy energy division responsible for overseeing nearly one-third of annual oil and gas production in North Dakota, which trails only Texas and New Mexico in crude oil and gas production nationally.

MHA’s oil activity registered 196,207 barrels a day in October, according to the North Dakota Oil and Gas Division. MHA Nation has 2,951 active wells, the vast majority on federal trust lands.

The Interior Department will still be responsible for crafting budgets for agencies such as Indian Health Services and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. And Interior still has a full report and a list of recommendations for how to address grotesque wrongdoings at federally run boarding schools. 

We do not know how the department will handle that in the next administration. What is clear with Burgum is that energy tribes — tribal governments invested in business with oil, gas and all the above — have a role in whatever shakes out. And tribes with land-based ceremonies, some even with energy portfolios, will have to prepare to use their sovereignty to protect environment tied to their way of being.

For me, this embodies the train at its craziest: Weighing financial decisions that could slice against cultural self-interest, or even the inverse — passing up potential profits to preserve culture, history and identity.

In a democratic system run by capitalism there are always winners and many losers. This is what America voted into office, again.

For Native people, this means that our sovereignty is also tied to billionaire populism because sovereignty’s attachment to U.S. democracy also produces a sovereignty pool of winners and losers. 

Sovereignty is the track built for Native freedom under the U.S. that will continue to bend and warp forward wherever this experiment wills it toward.

Under it we’ve built our own trains, hired conductors and are acquiring more both new and old, innovative and revitalized. I hate to use a colonizer metaphor to distinguish my belief that Native people will exist for eternity. While the metaphor isn’t ours, neither is the tool that expands our freedom. And that freedom is attached to what is ours, and we will define that going forward.

– Shaun Griswold, Journalist