Indigenous nations across North America and beyond have asserted sovereignty over their people and territory for as long as European colonizers have tried to claim it. Several have formalized that assertion in a specific way: by issuing their own travel documents. These passports don’t just identify their holders — they make a legal and political claim at every border where they’re presented. They say: the issuing nation exists as a sovereign entity, its citizens have rights beyond what the surrounding state recognizes, and those rights include the right to cross borders on their own terms.
The documents range from widely-used and internationally recognized (Haudenosaunee) to politically powerful but practically limited (Lakota) to primarily symbolic within the US legal system (Cherokee). Each reflects a different kind of sovereignty claim, a different legal history, and a different relationship with the states whose borders they challenge.
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The Haudenosaunee Passport: The Strongest Claim
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy — Six Nations, Iroquois Confederacy — has the strongest legal grounding of any Indigenous sovereignty document. Its passport is backed by a continuous governance history of several centuries, specific treaty relationships (including the Jay Treaty of 1794 guaranteeing the right to cross what became the US-Canada border), and legal recognition of Haudenosaunee sovereignty in both US and Canadian law. Several countries have at various points accepted the Haudenosaunee passport for travel, and the 2010 lacrosse team controversy made international headlines because of the genuine legal complexity of the situation.
Full breakdown: The Haudenosaunee Passport
The Lakota Nation Passport: Rooted in a Violated Treaty
The Republic of Lakota declared independence from the United States in December 2007 and began issuing passports. The legal argument is grounded in the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty — which the Supreme Court ruled in 1980 was illegally violated when the US took the Black Hills after gold was discovered. The Lakota have refused over $1 billion in compensation, insisting on land return. The Republic of Lakota passport is the most politically direct assertion on this list: a travel document as legal brief, arguing that the US has been in breach of its treaty obligations for 150 years.
Full breakdown: The Lakota Nation Passport
The Cherokee Nation Passport: Sovereignty Inside the Federal System
The Cherokee Nation operates as a domestic dependent nation within the US legal framework — more treaties with the US than any other nation, more of those treaties broken, and ultimately a recognized tribal government with significant self-governance rights within the US system. The Cherokee passport is an identity and sovereignty document used alongside US passports, reflecting a different legal strategy: working within the federal system while asserting the full scope of sovereignty that system allows, rather than asserting external sovereignty that transcends it.
Full breakdown: The Cherokee Nation Passport
The Common Thread
Every Indigenous sovereignty travel document on this list exists because the issuing nation has concluded that the surrounding state’s claim to control its people’s movement is not legitimate — or at least, not fully legitimate. The Haudenosaunee never ceded sovereignty. The Lakota signed a treaty the US violated. The Cherokee signed dozens of treaties and had them broken one by one, culminating in a forced removal that violated a Supreme Court order.
The documents are partly legal instruments and partly cultural assertions: they say, at every border crossing where they’re presented, that these nations exist on their own terms, that their people are not simply citizens of the surrounding state, and that the border itself — a concept that postdates most of these nations’ governance by centuries — does not have unquestioned authority over their movement.
Whether that argument succeeds at any given border depends entirely on whether the states controlling those borders are prepared to engage with it. The Haudenosaunee argument has sometimes succeeded. The Lakota and Cherokee arguments, with their different legal structures, generally haven’t — yet. The conversation is ongoing and evolving.
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Full Coverage in This Series
- The Haudenosaunee Passport: The Six Nations’ Sovereignty Document
- The Lakota Nation Passport: Rooted in a Treaty the Supreme Court Said Was Violated
- The Cherokee Nation Passport: Sovereignty Inside the Federal System
- Main Hub: Passports Without Countries
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Related: Passport Index · Residency Comparison
