This paper investigates the concept of Relational Sovereignty as put forth by Thurman Lee Hester in “Political Principles and Indian Sovereignty”. Hester's work places both the philosophical and practical significance of Indigenous governance in the foreground and offers new prompts for thinking about authority and power in U.S. and global politics. Relational sovereignty challenges the state-centric models of sovereignty that dominate Western political thought. It seeks to understand authority in an Indigenous context—where authority is not equated with power and where the interconnectedness of community and the ethical stewardship of a place is paramount. This paper also plumbs Hester's idea for theoretical depth—how it compares with autonomy as the West understands autonomy—and whether it is workable in the Indigenous governance system. It employs case studies of Indigenous groups to bolster this argument with concrete examples. It merges those studies with a policy analysis of contemporary Federal Indian Policy in the U.S.