This doctoral dissertation research project will examine alternative formulations of sovereignty and non-state nationhood expressed through the practices and collective values of the indigenous Gwich'in Nation. Sovereignty often is described as ultimate state power over a set territory with fixed borders. This project will confront that orthodox understanding with alternative understandings of both power and territory. The communities who populate the Gwich'in Nation inhabit fifteen disparate villages between the northern U.S. and Canadian border and across overlapping geographies that include multiple legal jurisdictions, inter-governmental relations, environmental management collaborations, social economies, and distinct cultural conceptions of space and time. These geographies are the sites in which the Gwich'in people practice and articulate their transboundary sovereignty in a relational, coexistent process despite ongoing challenges from federal, provincial, state governments and private corporations. What the Gwich'in Nation proposes in their exercise of sovereignty is to assert a physical, social, and political form of power that is distinctly Gwich'in and that operates within the shared national landscape of their people, while simultaneously living in the larger nation-states of the U.S. and Canada. The objective of this project is to analyze the practices and articulations of Gwich'in sovereign power as they coexist within other sovereign bodies (U.S. and Canadian governance entities) in order to propose a new formulation of relational power. The doctoral student will employ an indigenous-based research methodology to inform community-based data accumulation and dissemination models while also using traditional qualitative research techniques. Methods will include one-on-one interviews, community-based focus groups, and conceptual mapping workshops on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border. The diversity of methods will be used to render understandings of how the Gwich'in people operate as a nation; how the Gwich'in Nation exercises sovereignty throughout its multiple geographies; and how members of the Gwich'in Nation conceive their nation in theoretical and material ways. The alternative formulations of sovereignty expressed and practiced by members of the Gwich'in Nation are part of a larger, emerging conversation in indigenous communities around the world. Not only is there a need for introducing more examples of dynamic sovereignty from indigenous nations into political geography, there is legitimate cause to examine these practices for a changing world where vocalizations of self-determination and the desire for some political communities to operate outside the nation-state nexus is increasing at a rapid pace, accelerated in part by international mechanisms such as the U.N Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and rulings of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. This project will engage contemporary global political changes in conversations about power, state, and nation and share how the indigenous Gwich'in Nation offers alternative operations of power and assembly within a complex geography. The Gwich'in Nation demonstrates how traditional culture, sovereign power, and geography can be sustained and shared by a people as well as how nations can coexist and adjudicate boundaries, jurisdictions, and natural environments. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.