Sovereignty in Quebec and Native America

In the last ten or twenty years scholarship in Native American studies has seen the rise of  a separatist or sovereigntist movement. Tribal-affiliated scholars have asserted a right to unique intellectual traditions, and to literary self-determination. The terms "intellectual sovereignty" and "rhetorical sovereignty" often associated with Robert Warrior and Scott Lyons, have become de rigueur citations in books and articles on Native American Literature.
There's another entity that has been asserting sovereigntist and separatist sentiments over this period: Quebecois. Rather like American Indian tribes, Quebecois feel the yoke of being a "domestic dependent nation" within a larger national entity that neglects and condescends toward it. And like the Quebecois, many tribes articulate their distinct identity through speaking a special language. But, like many post-colonial authors, the literary artists working in these languages face a dilemma between seeking a larger audience in English, or sticking to their native tongue.
The claim to original sovereignty relies on a priority, on preexisting the formation of the nation that now subsumes it. Canada was French before it was English. Its founders, Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain, were French.
I believe that as in Quebec, tribal sovereignty is more an intellectual than a political concept. Tribes resent, and yet depend upon, the BIA and its bureaucratic services, just as Quebec relies upon Canada. Quebec has an assemblée nationale, a bibliotheque nationale, etc., yet this is a nominal nationalism, like the Cherokee or Navajo Nation.
Any study I might write using this comparison would have to examine First Nations relations with Quebec, and their colonial origins. French Canadians cherish the ideal of a "génie coloniale"--the idea that French colonists had greater sympathy and understanding toward native nations than the English did. There is a good deal of truth to this. French colonists did not try to claim land from the Indians the way the English did. Patricia Seed's American Pentimento makes an interesting argument about how English colonial law and ideology was all about seizing land rights from the Indians, whereas the Spanish and Portuguese claimed the labor and resources of the Indians, not the land. But sometimes the "génie coloniale" comes off sounding like an effort to assert common cause with the Indians against the English.
One good point I might pursue would be that the Durham report of 1840, following the patriot rebellions of 1837-38, treated the French much like Jacksonian policies treated the American Indians: as primitives without true culture or history, who would have to assimilate or perish in the face of a tide of Anglo-Saxon superiority.