Comparing Modern Scottish and Indigenous North American Political States in Relation to Their Colonizers

Colonization has had a major impact upon the formation and relationships of the vast majority of current countries. While much of colonization happened at a geographical distance from the conquering country this was not the case for Scotland or the majority of Indigenous North Americans. Both were geographically close to their colonizers (or inhabiting the same land, in the case of Indigenous Americans), but still maintained strong separate cultures that persist in spite of forced assimilation. As acts of colonization became more politically distasteful, the respective colonizers have both changed their relationships to the colonized state to allow for greater autonomy and independence while simultaneously ensuring reliance and submission from the colonized nation. This has resulted in two surprisingly similar governmental systems. However, these modern similarities have gone largely unaddressed by the greater scholarly community. Because of this gap, academia and scholarship is deprived of valuable insight and perspectives on issues of nationalism, sovereignty, and post-colonial politics as well as better understanding of possible future movements and actions by all involved parties. In order to rectify this oversight, this paper proposes to conduct further research on the similarities between the modern Indigenous American states, the Scottish state, and the political dynamics within their relationships to their colonizers.