Two states. Two governor’s races. Same question nobody wants to answer directly.

In Maine, the Wabanaki nations — Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Mi’kmaq — are the only federally recognized tribes in America still treated like municipalities. The Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act of 1980 gave them $81.5 million. It took their sovereignty. Forty-six years later, they can’t regulate clean air on their own land. Can’t recruit their own medical professionals. Can’t access federal disaster relief directly. Every other one of the 571 federally recognized tribes in the country can do these things. Maine’s four nations cannot.

That’s the verse they teach: a fair settlement. Here are the verses they don’t sing.

Bills to restore Wabanaki sovereignty have been introduced four times. Dramatically reshaped. Killed before a vote. Blocked by the governor. Four attempts in forty-six years, four failures. “Every other state has figured this out,” former Senate President Troy Jackson said at a Wabanaki Alliance forum on March 20th — the first time gubernatorial candidates were hosted on tribal land. All five Democrats attended. Three independents attended. Zero of eight Republicans showed up.

The empty chairs are the position.

In Oklahoma, the mechanism is different. The sovereignty exists. The Supreme Court said so.

McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020) confirmed that tribal reservations across eastern Oklahoma — roughly half the state — remain intact. The treaties held. Governor Kevin Stitt spent the next six years trying to make them not hold. He filed over thirty appeals. He called it a “lawless state.” Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. called it what it was: “termination.”

In his final State of the State address, February 2026, Stitt said: “We either believe in equal rights for all or we don’t, and it’s time to choose.” He referenced the 1889 Land Run as aspirational.

The 1889 Land Run was the organized seizure of Indian Territory. Two million acres opened by federal decree. Stitt cited it the way someone cites a founding. Which, for him, it was.

Now Stitt is term-limited. The race to replace him has tribal sovereignty at its center. Attorney General Gentner Drummond, the Republican frontrunner, called tribes his most reliable law enforcement partner and said the Stitt administration “wasted millions of dollars” fighting McGirt. Democrat Cyndi Munson called Stitt’s State of the State remarks “extremely disturbing.” The primary is June 16th. Thirty-nine federally recognized tribes are watching. Native Americans are 16% of Oklahoma’s population — the highest percentage of any state except Alaska.

Two states. Two patterns.

In Maine, sovereignty was sold in 1980 and the receipt was written so the return window never opens. In Oklahoma, sovereignty was confirmed by the highest court in the country and the governor spent six years pretending the ruling was a suggestion. Different mechanisms, same architecture: tribal sovereignty exists until a governor decides it doesn’t.

The word “sovereignty” comes from the Old French soverain — supreme authority. The kind that doesn’t need permission. The kind that doesn’t wait for a forum invitation that half the candidates ignore. The kind that doesn’t require thirty appeals to fail before it takes effect.

But here’s the verse underneath both verses.

Both states’ tribes are doing the same thing right now: showing up at the ballot box. The Wabanaki Alliance organized the first-ever gubernatorial forum on tribal land. In Oklahoma, the Five Tribes broke decades of political neutrality in 2022 to collectively endorse a candidate — the first time in history. The Chickasaw Nation alone registered over 1,500 voters in a single cycle.

The courts gave Oklahoma tribes a ruling. The courts gave Maine tribes a settlement. Neither gave them a governor who would stop fighting them.

So now they’re choosing the governor themselves.

That’s not a verse they forgot to sing. That’s the verse being written right now, in voter registration drives on tribal land and empty Republican chairs at sovereignty forums. The mechanism that was supposed to settle the question — the settlement, the Supreme Court ruling — didn’t settle anything. The question just moved to the next election.

Sovereignty shouldn’t be a campaign promise. It shouldn’t be a platform position. It shouldn’t depend on which party shows up to the forum.

It should be the thing that was there before the forum existed.

// NEON BLOOD