Indigenous Nations and Government-to-Government Relations: What UNDRIP Changed
A Shift That Not Everyone Has Caught Up To
For most of American history, the path for an Indigenous nation seeking a formal relationship with the federal government ran through one gate: federal recognition. The Bureau of Indian Affairs’ federal acknowledgment process was, in practice, the primary mechanism through which Indigenous peoples established government-to-government standing. If your nation was not on the federally recognized list, the assumption — often unstated but pervasive — was that you did not have the standing to engage as a government.
That assumption is no longer fully accurate. And it is important to say that clearly, because many people — including many Indigenous people — are not yet aware of how significantly the landscape has shifted.
Government-to-government relations between Indigenous nations and the federal government are not limited to federally recognized tribes. This is not a theoretical claim. It is a reflection of where international law, federal policy, and the broader understanding of Indigenous rights have moved — a movement the Xi-Amaru Republic exists to help people understand and exercise.
The History: Why Federal Recognition Became the Standard
The federal recognition framework has its roots in the treaty era and was formalized through the mid-twentieth century as the federal government developed administrative processes for managing its relationships with Indigenous nations. For recognized tribes, it unlocked specific legal protections, federal programs, and a formal government-to-government standing within U.S. domestic law.
For many years, federal recognition was not just the primary path — it was treated as the only path. Indigenous nations without it were often invisible to federal institutions, regardless of their actual governance capacity, historical continuity, or the standing they held under international law.
It is worth acknowledging, as with any long-standing system, that many of the people who worked within the federal recognition framework were and are genuinely trying to do right by Indigenous peoples. The framework itself developed in an era with limited tools and limited understanding. The question is not whether those people acted in bad faith — many did not. The question is whether the framework they inherited is still the complete picture. It is not.
What Changed: International Law and the Government-to-Government Principle
The shift in how government-to-government relations are understood did not happen overnight. It emerged through decades of international Indigenous rights advocacy, culminating in UNDRIP‘s adoption in 2007 and the U.S. endorsement in 2010. The Declaration’s framework — particularly Articles 3, 4, and 5 — established clearly that Indigenous nations have inherent rights to self-determination and governance that exist independent of domestic recognition processes.
This created a foundation for a broader understanding of government-to-government relations — one that does not require a federal acknowledgment letter as the prerequisite for sovereign standing. Several UNDRIP articles speak directly to this:
Together, these articles affirm that an Indigenous nation’s standing as a government — its right to govern its own people, maintain its own institutions, and engage in relations with other governments — derives from international law. Not from federal acknowledgment. Not from a BIA determination. From the inherent rights of Indigenous peoples as recognized by the international community.
Government-to-Government Relations for Non-Recognized Nations: What It Looks Like Today
The concept of government-to-government relations for non-federally-recognized Indigenous nations is not hypothetical. It exists in federal consultation processes, state-level engagement frameworks, and international Indigenous rights forums. The change is real, even if it is not yet uniformly understood or uniformly practiced.
Several dimensions of this shift deserve attention:
Consultation Obligations
Federal agencies are increasingly obligated to consult with Indigenous peoples on matters affecting their rights and interests — obligations that flow from UNDRIP principles and are being incorporated into federal policy frameworks. These consultation processes are not limited to federally recognized tribes in all contexts. Non-recognized Indigenous nations with legitimate governance structures and clear community standing have grounds to engage in these processes.
International Forums
In international Indigenous rights spaces — the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, OAS working groups on ADRIP implementation — Indigenous nations engage as governments regardless of their domestic recognition status. The Xi-Amaru Republic’s outreach to the OAS Working Group on ADRIP (WG-ADRIP) and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is a direct exercise of this international government-to-government engagement.
State and Local Relations
Several state governments and local jurisdictions have developed frameworks for engaging with Indigenous nations and communities that are not limited to federally recognized entities. The understanding that Indigenous governance can be legitimate and worth engaging with — independent of federal status — is growing at multiple levels of government.
UNDRIP as the Framework for Engagement
Perhaps most significantly, UNDRIP has created an international framework within which Indigenous nations can engage as governments with any signatory state — including the United States. When the U.S. endorsed UNDRIP in 2010, it acknowledged that the rights affirmed in the Declaration apply to Indigenous peoples broadly. An Indigenous nation grounding its governance in UNDRIP has standing to engage with any institution that respects that framework.
The Xi-Amaru Republic and Government-to-Government Relations
The Xi-Amaru Republic operates with this understanding built into its foundation. The Republic does not seek federal recognition as a prerequisite for its existence or its governance authority. But it does pursue government-to-government engagement through the appropriate channels — international law frameworks, OAS engagement, and the growing body of federal and state policy that acknowledges Indigenous governance beyond the recognized list.
This is not adversarial. The Republic does not position itself against the U.S. government or any other democratic institution. Many people within those institutions are working in good faith toward greater justice for Indigenous peoples. The Republic seeks to engage with them as a government engages with other governments — on the basis of shared frameworks, mutual respect, and the international principles that both parties have acknowledged.
What the Republic adds to this conversation is clarity. Many Indigenous peoples and many government officials do not yet fully understand that government-to-government relations are not exclusively a federally recognized tribe’s domain. Part of the Republic’s mission is to provide better understanding of Indigenous rights — including this one — so that the framework that already exists can actually be used.
Why People Are Not Yet Aware — And Why That Is Changing
It would be unfair to criticize individuals and institutions for operating under outdated assumptions when those assumptions have been the prevailing standard for so long. The federal recognition framework was dominant for decades. The shift represented by UNDRIP and the evolving understanding of government-to-government relations is relatively recent, and its implications are still being worked out in policy, in practice, and in public awareness.
But the shift is real. And awareness of it is growing — in academic literature, in legal advocacy, in federal policy discussions, and in the increasing number of Indigenous nations and communities that are choosing to operate on the basis of inherent rights rather than waiting for federal acknowledgment.
The Xi-Amaru Republic exists precisely at this intersection — where the law has moved, where the awareness is catching up, and where people need clear, accessible information about what their rights actually are. Part of the Republic’s public mission is to help close that gap: to take the language of international Indigenous rights out of academic journals and policy papers and make it legible, practical, and actionable for real people.
A Nation Built for This Moment
There is also a spiritual dimension to this moment that the Xi-Amaru Republic holds openly. The shift in how the world understands Indigenous rights is not only a legal development. It is part of a larger restoration — of identity, of standing, of peoples returning to the foundation God established for them. The democratic and international legal movements that have produced UNDRIP and the broadening of government-to-government relations are, from a Kingdom perspective, part of the correction of things that were broken. Many people within those movements are working toward something true, even if they do not name it in those terms.
The Xi-Amaru Republic honors that work. It also goes further — grounding its governance not only in international law but in Kingdom Culture, in the authority that flows from God rather than from governments, and in the understanding that the restoration of Indigenous national identity is ultimately a spiritual homecoming as much as it is a political one.
Explore the Republic’s Government-to-Government Engagement
Visit aboriginalministryofjustice.org/citizenship-pathway to learn more about the Xi-Amaru Republic, its international engagement, and how its governance structure is grounded in the rights UNDRIP affirms for all Indigenous peoples.
