Sovereignty refers to supreme political authority, independent and unlimited by any other power.  However, discussion of the term "sovereignty" in relation to the impact of the quest for human resources gathering must be taken up within a framework of internal colonisation. Internal colonisation is the historical process, and also the political reality, defined in the structures and techniques of government, that consolidate the domination of indigenous peoples by a foreign yet sovereign settler state.

Sovereignty is a social creation.  It is the result of choices made by people in a particular mindset of a social or political order bent on invading the lands of an indigenous people. Historically, it is rooted in the notion that sovereignty mandates a redistribution of natural resources, and the indigenous control of them, enforced by the superior posture of a new political hierarchy.

The practice of history cannot help but be implicated in colonisation. War, peace, cooperation, antogonism and shifting dominance and subservience, are all to be found in the shared history of settlers and indigenous populations.  Also, most discussions of indigenous sovereignty are founded on a particular and instrumental reading of history that serves to stress its imposition through freely adopted treaty arrangements.  These invariably recognised separate political existence and territorial independence of indigenous peoples. However, none of this historical diversity of coexistence is reflected in the official history and doctrinal bases of settler state soveriegnty today.

The imposition of sovereignty, being a social phenomenon, is a biological process related to the evolution of behaviours associated with the biology of conflict.