Citizenship and the Good Life: Cherokee and American Regimes in Conflict

Abstract

There is a tension between indigenous and American views of the citizen, a tension permeating civic discourse and policy making. While previous work has couched this tension in racial prejudice and greed, we posit an antecedent factor: regime. To demonstrate this, we use Aristotelian thought to create a new interpretive framework to analyze competing claims of citizenship and the good life. Focusing on the tension between the Cherokee Nation and the United States in the late 18th Century, we find the latter's liberal views of citizenship at odds with the former's non-liberal views. This research aims to restore debates surrounding questions of the good life and apply it to understanding conflicts between regimes.