As part of Mainstreet Radio’s Treaty Rights and Tribal Sovereignty series, Catherine Winter presents report on the concept called tribal sovereignty, and a look at the where this complex set of rules comes from, and how it affects Indian people today. Report includes various interviews with tribe members.
Tribal sovereignty gives Native American bands the right to govern themselves -- to a degree. They can set their own rules about natural resources, such as fish, in some places. Some bands can also print license plates and run casinos. But Native American tribes can't coin money or make treaties with other countries. Scholars call their status semi-sovereign or quasi sovereign.
Transcripts
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JOYCELYN SHINGOBEE WADDELL: This section here, it's called Nation Within A Nation. And it deals with the sovereignty and tribal government.
CATHERINE WINTER: At the New Indian Museum on the Mille Lacs Ojibwe Reservation, manager Joycelyn Shingobee Waddell walks into an exhibit where big white letters on a curved blue wall spell out a quote from former tribal chair Art Gabot.
JOYCELYN SHINGOBEE WADDELL: Our sovereignty is as sacred as our land. It is our right and ability to control our own destiny.
CATHERINE WINTER: Another wall holds symbols of sovereignty, a car door from a tribal police car, showing that the band has its own police force, a bumper with a Mille Lacs band license plate, showing that the band can license cars, and what looks like a slot machine, such as you might see in an Indian casino.
JOYCELYN SHINGOBEE WADDELL: And you can also pull a little lever here.
CATHERINE WINTER: Instead of spinning up lemons, the slot machine shows pictures of things built with money from the band's casinos, a water tower, a clinic, a school. Waddell says the point is to show the Mille Lacs Band has its own laws and culture and the right to govern itself. Scholars of Indian history and law say the right of tribes to govern themselves was not a gift from the US government. Tribes had sovereignty before Europeans came to North America. Minneapolis attorney Henry Buffalo, a member of the Red Cliff Band of Chippewa, says that's why Europeans made treaties with tribes.
HENRY BUFFALO: They decided that they would recognize these tribes as nations as they were. And they also decided, as a matter of policy and consistent with international law, that they would treat these tribes the same as they treated each other in terms of recognizing the nation status.
CATHERINE WINTER: Buffalo says the American government followed the same policy.
HENRY BUFFALO: The early American government was not in a position of directing or ordering the tribes to do one thing or another. As a matter of fact, they depended on both military and economic alliances that they had with Indian tribes to ensure their early survival. They carried on the policy of recognizing these Indian tribes as nations.
CATHERINE WINTER: In the 1800s, the Supreme Court began chipping away at Native sovereignty. The court called tribes dependent nations that were wards of the United States. It said the United States was a superior and civilized nation, so Congress could regulate tribal affairs and even go back on treaties. In 1953, Congress gave states the power to prosecute crimes on some reservations. But Minnesota's Appeals Court recently ruled that tribes still have the authority to issue tickets for various driving offenses on reservations.
Many tribes have recently begun asserting their right to police their reservations and to use other sovereign powers they once let slide. The few Indian tribes flush with casino cash can hire lawyers to press treaty rights cases. They can build governments that regulate natural resources or education. Henry Buffalo.
HENRY BUFFALO: For many years, they did not have the resources to assert these powers and authorities. And that's one of the natures of the sovereign. The fact that their powers lay dormant and not used does not mean that they lose them.
CATHERINE WINTER: Some Native people want tribes to go even farther, to throw off the United States and be entirely self-governing. On the White Earth Reservation last week, a dozen members of the band gathered at the government building to rally against their current leaders. White Earth has been fraught with such conflict for years. Activist Marvin Manypenny says a lot of the internal strife stems from the band's quasi sovereign status. He says the current form of government was imposed by the United States.
MARVIN MANYPENNY: If we compare the original 13 colonies here who were under the thumb of the King of England and the very thing that the United States brought revolution to get out of, they've placed us in the same type of position here. And what I'm talking about is true self-determination that either we're going to succeed or we're going to fail. And I think that should be left up to us. That to me is true self-determination.
CATHERINE WINTER: The issue of how much sovereignty tribes should have evokes extremism on both sides. Minnesota Appeals Court judge Jim Randall believes tribal governments should be eliminated. Judge Randall has written lengthy opinions arguing that Indian people living on reservations are denied civil rights because their governments don't have to comply with the state or federal constitutions.
JIM RANDALL: There's no civil service. There's no veterans preference act. There's no laws against racial or sexual harassment or discrimination. There's no freedom of speech or freedom of press. There's no recourse to the constitutional courts of the state, if you have a complaint about how the tribal officials are running the election or the government.
CATHERINE WINTER: Judge Randall calls the current system red apartheid. And some Indian people agree. But many are appalled by his ideas. They say sovereignty allows tribes to protect their culture, history, and language.
DON WADDELL: Judge Randall's kind of concepts would be very devastating to tribal people, to just take that all away.
CATHERINE WINTER: Don Waddell, a tribal government official for the Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa.
DON WADDELL: The sovereignty is in the people. And the only way you take sovereignty away is you take the people away. The United States has sovereignty. Per se, the United States government doesn't have anything. It's the people of the United States that control that. And if you want to take that sovereignty away, you have to do away with those people or subjugate those people somehow, with political might or military might. And there's international laws that protect countries from doing that.
CATHERINE WINTER: Waddell says only a few extremists advocate doing away with tribal governments. And he doesn't think it will happen. He thinks the federal government is moving toward allowing tribes to expand their use of sovereignty. Other observers believe the opposite is happening, that court decisions and laws continue to narrow the right to self-government. The complex web of law means that for now, the rights of tribes vary widely, from reservation to reservation. But on each reservation, at least some of the sovereign powers Native people had before Europeans arrived still remain. I'm Catherine Winter. Main Street Radio.