When I think about history, and try to come up with initial conditions in government that could have brought the native tribes on board rather than deporting an

When I think about history, and try to come up with initial conditions in government that could have brought the native tribes on board rather than deporting and destroying them, I thought that maybe people could make a voluntary declaration of their cultural identity during voter registration and again while voting. The House of Representatives would have a separate fixed pool of seats for cultural representation, but the cultural groups would not be guaranteed at least one seat, like the states; if your group doesn't have enough membership to meet the cutoff, you don't get seats that election. Every group with at least one Representative would get two seats in the Senate. Only those declaring for a culture could vote in the races for their seats. You'd end up with the Senator from Southern Baptist arguing with the Senator from Postmodern Counterculture, or the Representative in Hispanic-American seat 5 hashing things out with the Representative from Secular Scientists. Mergers and schisms could cause the representation to track with changes in the population. Perhaps Iroquois Confederacy would have to merge with Algonquian Peoples and Five Civilized Tribes to stay politically relevant. Anglo Male Landowners might split into Urban-Industrial and Southern Whites. It never could have happened, though. The only cultural group with representation back then was Anglo Male Landowners, and they were unlikely to share power voluntarily. Anglo Male Landowners are still over-represented in US federal government. I don't think an "at large" position would actually represent the whole country. It would give more power to the one of two political parties with support of the majority that election. You really need a mechanism to ensure minority positions can get more representation, such that any majority blocs have to seek consensus with at least one minority bloc to get anything done. The two-party system is washing out a lot of voices that never even get lip service from anybody, ever.