“From Doctrine to Proclamation: How Faith Still Frames U.S. Indian Policy” by Kerri J. Malloy

The Reservation Tribal Office at Lake Superior via the National Park Service.

From the earliest Supreme Court rulings to the annual presidential proclamations that mark National Native American Heritage Month, the United States has treated Native sovereignty as both a legal and moral question, one rooted as much in theology as in jurisprudence. The very architecture of federal Indian law emerged from Christian doctrines of discovery and dominion that sacralized conquest and ownership.

These religious foundations continue to shape political and legal discourse today. From President George H. W. Bush’s 1990 proclamation inaugurating National American Indian Heritage Month to President Joe Biden’s 2024 proclamation and Donald Trump’s 2025 message, the evolution of presidential language reveals a persistent tension between cultural recognition and political sovereignty. The story of Native–federal relations, it turns out, is also a story of faith, of how the moral vocabulary of “providence,” “trust,” and “guardianship” became the secular language of U.S. Indian law.

The Religious Roots of Sovereignty and Dominion

In 1823, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Johnson v. M’Intosh, the case that enshrined the Doctrine of Discovery into American law. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that the United States had inherited from European monarchs the “ultimate dominion” over the lands “while in the occupation of the Indians.” That principle, that Indigenous nations could occupy land but not own it, was borrowed directly from fifteenth-century papal bulls, including Inter Caetera (1493), in which Pope Alexander VI granted Christian explorers the right to claim and convert non-Christian lands.

In Johnson, theology became law. The “Christian discovery” framework was secularized through legal reasoning, translating divine right into property rights. Two other cases completed this trilogy of theological jurisprudence: Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), which described tribes as “domestic dependent nations,” and Worcester v. Georgia (1832), which defined the federal government as the tribes’ ultimate guardian.

Together, these rulings built the federal “trust relationship,” under which the United States claims legal title to tribal lands while asserting a moral duty to protect them. What began as a theology of benevolent dominion evolved into a bureaucratic system of dependency. The religious justification for conquest that Christians had a sacred obligation to guide non-Christians persists in the secular language of “trust,” “protection,” and “stewardship.”

From Doctrine to Diplomacy: Presidential Language as Civic Theology

The union of moral language and legal authority continued into the modern era. When President George H. W. Bush issued Proclamation 6230 in November 1990, officially designating National American Indian Heritage Month, he invoked this same fusion of law and faith. Bush celebrated the “fascinating history and time-honored traditions of Native Americans,” but he also recognized something deeper: “Our Constitution affirms a special relationship between the Federal Government and Indian tribes,” he wrote, describing it as a “unique government-to-government relationship” that had endured despite injustice.

In a crucial sentence, Bush reaffirmed “support for increased Indian control over tribal government affairs” and “greater economic independence and self-sufficiency for Native Americans.” That language marked a subtle but important moment: it placed tribal sovereignty within a constitutional and moral framework, treating it not as a privilege granted by Washington but as a right inherent in the nation’s founding principles.

Bush’s proclamation reflected a civil theology of partnership, a fusion of religious benevolence and civic duty. The federal government was still cast as protector, but now the guardian’s task was to enable independence rather than assimilation. In the decades that followed, most presidents, Republican and Democrat alike, maintained that dual rhetoric, pairing cultural recognition with a moralized promise of self-governance.

President Joe Biden’s 2024 proclamation followed this tradition but updated its moral register. Biden pledged to “uphold Tribal sovereignty and self-determination” and to honor the “treaties and promises we made to Tribal Nations.” The tone echoed Bush’s affirmation of trust but shifted from paternal care to partnership from “guardianship” to “reciprocity.”

President Trump’s 2025 Message and the Persistence of Civil Religion

When President Donald Trump released his 2025 Message on National Native American Heritage Month, the moral language of stewardship gave way to the political language of unity. “We are a people,” the message declared, “with a common language, history, and culture.” The phrasing sounds inclusive, but it erases the plurality at the heart of Native sovereignty. Native nations have their own languages, laws, and histories; their political existence predates the United States itself.

In its tone and structure, Trump’s message reflected the enduring influence of American civil religion and the belief that the United States is bound together by a sacred national covenant rooted in liberty, equality, and divine providence. This faith in national unity often functions as a substitute for, rather than a fulfillment of, justice. The idea that “we are one people” leaves little room for nations within the nation. Trump’s message referenced two executive actions that illustrate how moral rhetoric continues to shape legal authority.

On January 23, 2025, Trump issued a memorandum on the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, directing the Department of the Interior to “assist the Lumbee Tribe in obtaining full Federal recognition.” The directive framed recognition as a matter of presidential will “a promise fulfilled.” Yet under U.S. law, tribal recognition is a congressional function, not an executive favor. The memo blurred those boundaries, portraying sovereignty as something bestowed rather than inherent.

That same day, Trump signed Executive Order 14191, “Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families.” Section 7 directed the Interior Department to explore how families eligible to attend Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schools could use federal funding for private, charter, or faith-based education. Supporters called it “educational freedom;” Native educators recognized the echo of an older theology of salvation through schooling.

In response, the BIE issued a letter to tribal leaders on February 28, 2025, announcing an expedited two-week “consultation” process to meet the order’s deadline, a compressed timeline that many tribes viewed as consultation in name only. The language of “freedom” and “choice” resurrected the same logic that once justified missionary schooling: that Native well-being required external moral correction.

Law as Faith: TribalCrit and the Enduring Theology of Colonization

Tribal Critical Race Theory (TribalCrit), developed by scholarBryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, provides a lens for understanding why these religious patterns persist. TribalCrit begins with the premise that colonization is not an event of the past but a structure that continues to shape law, education, and culture. U.S. policy toward Indigenous peoples, Brayboy argues, is “rooted in imperialism, White supremacy, and a desire for material gain,” but it is sustained through moral narratives of benevolence.

This is why federal Indian law can be described as a kind of civil religion. It uses moral language of “trust,” “protection,” “freedom,” “heritage” to justify legal control. Presidential proclamations function as annual rituals of this faith, transforming the political relationship between sovereign nations into a story of moral stewardship. Each November, the government performs its own liturgy of recognition, reaffirming not the equality of nations but the righteousness of the federal order.

The Native American Heritage Month proclamations are thus civic sacraments of inclusion. They sanctify the existing hierarchy while appearing to reconcile it. In celebrating Native “heritage,” the federal government recognizes Indigenous culture while leaving untouched the theological logic, the belief in a singular moral authority, which continues to underpin its governance.

Toward a Secular Covenant: Reimagining Sovereignty Beyond Faith

If the United States is ever to fulfill its legal and moral obligations to Native nations, it must disentangle its civic theology from its constitutional law. The Doctrine of Discovery, which once clothed conquest in Christian morality, still lingers in the “trust” model of federal Indian law. That trust relationship assumes that the federal government holds Native lands in stewardship “for the benefit” of Native peoples, a formulation that grants moral authority to the state while denying political equality to the tribes.

A secular reimagining of this relationship would begin with co-sovereignty, not custodianship. It would replace the paternal language of trust with the legal vocabulary of consent. It would recognize that treaties are not relics of the past but living documents, binding under both domestic and international law.

In recent years, small steps have moved in that direction. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), endorsed by the United States in 2010, affirms the right of Indigenous peoples to “maintain and strengthen their distinct political, legal, economic, social, and cultural institutions.” The Department of the Interior’s 2022 initiative to review the Federal Indian Boarding School system signals a willingness to confront these theological roots. But until that reckoning extends to the executive language of law itself, the gap between moral recognition and political sovereignty will remain.

A truly secular covenant between the United States and tribal nations would recognize that justice does not depend on divine mandate or presidential grace. It would be grounded in consent, equality, and shared jurisdiction.

From Recognition to Relationship

The evolution of presidential proclamations, from Bush’s invocation of a “special relationship” to Biden’s language of “self-determination” and Trump’s call for unity, reveals the persistence of faith in America’s own moral destiny. This belief in providential exceptionalism has long allowed the United States to reconcile conquest with conscience, casting domination as duty.

The path forward requires a different faith, not in divine providence or national destiny, but in the rule of law as mutual accountability. Sovereignty is not heritage, and recognition is not relationship. Until the United States learns to separate its civil religion from its constitutional obligations, its annual gestures of inclusion will remain rituals of self-absolution.

True reconciliation begins when the law ceases to preach. ♦

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Recommended Citation

Malloy, Keri J. “From Doctrine to Proclamation: How Faith Still Frames U.S. Indian Policy.” Canopy Forum, December 12, 2025. https://canopyforum.org/2025/12/12/from-doctrine-to-proclamation-how-faith-still-frames-u-s-indian-policy/.

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