1 Indian Self-Government Community Negotiations (Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, July 1988) and A Commitment to Progress (Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1989), 4. To carry out this policy initiative a self-government sector was incorporated in 1986 into the DIAND organizational structure and given responsibility for community-based self-government negotiations.

2 Currently, 219 out of 570 Indian bands in Canada are involved in some stage of the community-based self-government negotiations process. Of this number, 67 proposals, encompassing 183 bands, are in the developmental stage of this process, which involves preparatory research and community consultation (Community Negotiations Directorate, Self-Government Sector, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Ottawa, February 20, 1990).

3 At the time of writing, 10 proposals involving 25 bands were at the stage of framework negotiations and 5 proposals involving 11 bands were at the substantive negotiation phase (Community Negotiations Directorate, February 20, 1990). Examples include the Alexander and Sawridge bands in Alberta, the Gitksan-Wet'suwet'en tribal group, which includes nine reserves, in British Columbia, the Whitefish Bay band in Ontario and the Caughnawaga tribe in Quebec. The Teslin Lake, Mayo and Old Crow tribal groups in the Yukon are also involved in the community-based negotiations process, although the parameters for their negotiations are related to comprehensive claims settlements.

4 Indian Self-Government Community Negotiations, 3.

5 The desire to restore traditional political values and processes into contemporary Indian governments is regularly asserted by Indian leaders in provincial and national Indian organization conferences on self-government and in written representations to the federal government dealing with Indian self-government. For example, see Indian Government: Toward an Indian Future (Regina: Federation of Saskatchewan Indians, 1982); Assembly of First Nations, Proposals for Amendments and Additions to the Constitution Act, 1982, presented at the First Ministers Constitutional Conference on Aboriginal Rights, Ottawa, March 15, 1983Google Scholar; Tribe, Blood, The Constitutional Position of the Blood Tribe (Ottawa: Assembly of First Nations, March 15–16, 1983)Google Scholar; Indian Nations of Hobbema, Presentation of the Indian Nations of Hobbema to the S. 37(1) Conference on Aboriginal and Treaty Rights (Ottawa: Assembly of First Nations, March 15–16, 1983)Google Scholar; Proceedings of a Conference on Indian Government of the National Indian Brotherhood (Montreal, 1980); and Report of the Special Committee on Indian Self-Government in Canada (Ottawa: House of Commons, 1983), 56.

6 Daugherty, Wayne and Madill, Dennis, Indian Government Under Indian Act Legislation, 1868–1951 (Ottawa: Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1980), 2.Google Scholar

7 Directorate, Evaluation, Basic Departmental Data (Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, December 1988).Google Scholar

8 Linton, Ralph, Acculturation in Seven American Indian Tribes (Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1963), 502.Google Scholar

9 This literature is too extensive to list here. I refer to specific aspects of it in my subsequent discussion of traditional practices among plains Indians.

10 Hawthorn, H. B. (ed.), A Survey of the Contemporary Indians of Canada: Economic, Political, Educational Needs and Policy (2 vols.; Ottawa: Indian Affairs Branch, 1967).Google Scholar

11 Boldt, Menno, “Intellectual Orientation and Nationalism Among Leaders in an Internal Colony,” The British Journal of Sociology 23 (1982), 484–510CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Social Correlates of Nationalism: A Study of Native Indian Leaders in a Canadian Internal Colony,” Comparative Political Studies 14 (1981), 205–31; Long, J. Anthony and Boldt, Menno, “Leadership Selection in Canadian Indian Communities: Reforming the Present and Incorporating the Past,” Great Plains Quarterly 7 (1987), 103–15Google Scholar; Torok, C. H., “Structures and Factions in Tyendinaga Politics,” Anthropologica 14 (1972), 31–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cassidy, Frank and Bish, Robert L., Indian Government: Its Meaning in Practice (Lantzville, B.C.: Oolichan Books, 1989)Google Scholar; and Cassidy, Frank, “Aboriginal Governments in Canada: An Emerging Field of Study,” this Journal 23 (1990), 92–95.Google Scholar

12 Champagne, Duane, “American Indian Values and the Institutionalization of IRA Governments,” in Joe, Jennie R. (ed.), American Indian Policy and Cultural Values: Conflict and Accommodation (Los Angeles: American Indian Studies Center, University of California at Los Angeles, 1986), 26–31Google Scholar. See also, Champagne, Duane, “Social Structure, Revitalization Movements and State Building: Social Change in Four Native American Societies,” American Sociological Review 48 (1983), 754–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Champagne, “American Indian Values and the Institutionalization of IRA Governments.”

14 Bernard, Jesse, “Political Leadership Among North American Indians,” American Journal of Sociology 34 (1928), 315CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Ewers, John C., Blackfeet Indians: Ethnological Report on the Blackfeet and Gros Venire Tribes of Indians (New York: Garland Publishing, 1974), 40Google Scholar, and Schusky, Ernest L., “The Evolution of Indian Leadership on the Great Plains, 1750–1950,” The American Indian Quarterly 10 (1986), 66–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Thomas, David H. (ed.), A Blackfoot Source Book: Papers by Clark Wissler (New York: Garland Publishing, 1986), 22–23.Google Scholar

16 Barsh, Russell Lawrence, “The Nature and Spirit of North American Political Systems,” The American Indian Quarterly 10 (1986), 191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Ibid., 192. See also Ewers, Blackfeet Indians, and Thomas, A Blackfoot Source Book.

18 Blood Tribe and the Oldman River Regional Planning Commission, Blood Tribe Master Plan (Standoff, Alberta: Blood Tribe, 1981)Google Scholar, 2. See also Dorris, Michael, “Twentieth-Century Indians: ‘The Return of the Native,’” in Hall, Raymond A. (ed.), Ethnic Autonomy: Comparative Dynamics (New York: Pergamon Press, 1979), 71Google Scholar, and Dempsey, Hugh A., “The Blackfoot Indians,” in Morrison, R. Bruce and Wilson, C. Roderick (eds.), Native Peoples: The Canadian Experience (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986), 411.Google Scholar

19 Indian Government Under Indian Act Legislation, 81.

20 J. Anthony Long and Menno Boldt, “Leadership Selection in Canadian Indian Communities,” 109.

21 The size and composition of town councils in the adjacent towns of Pincher Creek, Fort Macleod and Cardston are specified by the Alberta Municipal Government Act. The Act provides for an elected council of six members, a separately elected mayor, and a chief administrative council appointed by the elected council. Although there are no legal impediments to the promotion of candidates by political parties in local elections, municipal politics in Alberta have remained non-partisan. All three towns have agrarian-based economies and have socially homogeneous populations mainly of retired farmers, small business owners and their employees, and local and provincial government workers. Town revenues are derived from general per capita and conditional grants from the province, local property taxes, and licensing and other fees.

22 Boldt, Menno and Long, J. Anthony, “Tribal Traditions and European-Western Political Ideologies: The Dilemma of Canada's Native Indians,” this Journal 17 (1984), 541–45Google Scholar. See also Cornell, Stephen, “Transformation of the Tribe: Organization and Self-Concept in Native American Ethnicities,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 11 (1988), 28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Fried, Morton H., The Evolution of Political Society (New York: Random House, 1967), 11–14Google Scholar. See also Miller, Walter B., “Two Concepts of Authority,” American Anthropologist 57 (1955), 271–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Boldt and Long, “Tribal Traditions and European-Western Political Ideologies,” 541. In addition, see Youngblood-Henderson, James, “Comment,” in Swagerty, W. R. (ed.), Indian Sovereignty: Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference on Problems and Issues Concerning American Indians Today (Chicago: Newberry Library, 1979), 71–72.Google Scholar

25 Boldt and Long, “Tribal Traditions and European-Western Political Ideologies,” 543, and Cornell, “Transformation of the Tribe,” 28.

26 Vachon, Robert, “Political Self-Determination and Traditional Native Indian Political Culture,” Interculture Journal 12 (1979), 45.Google Scholar

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28 Barsh, “The Native Spirit of North American Political Systems,” 184, and Miller, “Two Concepts of Authority,” 286.

29 Eisenstadt, S. N., “Primitive Political Systems: A Preliminary Comparative Analysis,” American Anthropologist 61 (1959), 208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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31 Hawthorn, A Survey of the Contemporary Indians of Canada, 176.

32 The pervasive and omnifunctional nature of Indian Affairs bureaucracy is well illustrated by Section 107 of the Indian Act which provided that all Indian agents and their superiors were automatically appointed as justices of the peace. Although Section 107 courts have now all but disappeared, they functioned as an important instrument for the enforcement of Indian Affairs policy, directed toward economic, political and cultural integration. See Jackson, Michael, Locking Up Natives in Canada: A Report of the Canadian Bar Association on Imprisonment and Release (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, June 1988), 35–37Google Scholar, and Morse, Bradford W., “A Unique Court: S107 Indian Act Justices of the Peace,” Canadian Legal Aid Bulletin 5 (1982), 131–50.Google Scholar

33 Blood Tribe Master Plan, 34–35.

34 Almond, Gabriel A. and Powell, G. Bingham Jr., Comparative Politics: System, Process and Policy (2nd ed.; Boston: Little, Brown, 1978)Google Scholar, 35. See also Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Eisenstadt, S. N., “Bureaucracy and Political Development,” in Joseph, Lapalombara (ed.), Bureaucracy and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 113.Google Scholar

36 Melody, Michael, “Lakota Myth and Government: The Cosmos as the State,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 4 (1980), 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Champagne, Duane, Strategies and Conditions of Political and Cultural Survival in American Indian Societies (Cambridge, Mass.: Cultural Survival, 1985), 45.Google Scholar