What do George Washington, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama have in common, besides having been presidents?
President George Washington entered into treaties that constitutionally protected Native American tribes as separate governments, and this was reaffirmed by Presidents Clinton, Bush. and Obama.
Known as Tribal sovereignty, Indigenous People have the inherent authority to govern themselves within the borders of the United States. The Tribes are recognized as “domestic dependent nations” and there are a number of laws clarifying the relationship between the federal, state, and tribal governments.
Not being considered citizens of the United State, but, rather, co-inhabitants of the continent upon which the political entity existed, the U.S. Constitution dealt with the Native Americans two times in
- Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3: “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States … excluding Indians not taxed.”
- Article I, Section 8 “Congress shall have the power to regulate Commerce with foreign nations and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes”.
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The Fourteenth Amendment reinforced these sections.
This, and court cases through the years, has established that Tribal authority is not granted by the states in which Indian lands are located. It is just the way it should be and is. And while the Executive Branch has no authority in matters relating to Native American tribes, Congress has ultimate authority in matters affecting the Indian tribes, while also having the duty to protect the tribes with the necessary legislative and executive authorities to do so.
There are more than 500 tribal nations who had ceded land and natural resources, even giving up their own culture in order to exist as nations, and treaties based on the clear understanding that tribes were and would remain sovereign, governing their people as nations were signed with the U.S. government.
Those treaties were paid for.
There really isn’t a “Great White Father” unless, like the Holy Trinity, the Triune God, it is actually a collective and not the one man president.
In spite of proposed pipelines being protested because they would cross land historically and culturally sacred to Native Americans, Trump has signed two oil pipeline projects into construction after considerable opposition from Indian nations. In so doing he ignored the Rosebud and Standing Rock Sioux tribes’ longstanding rights as separate nations to have a say in this process. He does not have the power to do that.
He, who took an oath to uphold the Constitution, chose to ignore it.
He has temporarily stopped hiring in the Bureau of Indian Affairs and when he proposed his budget, it contained considerable funding cuts for the Department of the Interior which would have the BIA suffer disproportionate budget cuts and employee reductions within the Interior department.
Just as with the rescinding of civilian federal employees upcoming raises, Trump says such actions will free funds for investment in economic infrastructure. Investing in building the economy promises to provide additional market based employment, and provide more jobs and profits in the national economy. Trump’s promise to voters and to American Indians was that he was going to take steps to increase employment, profits, and general economic income.
Cutting funds to the BIA means fewer resources and programs to rural tribal governments and communities.
His plans would reduce Indian communities to merely populations of potential workers and not as tribal communities with rights to self-government, land, and collective economic resources and entrepreneurship. It would end tribal sovereignty.
To this end, the Trump administration holds that the tribes are a race rather than separate governments, and to allow for certain exemptions relative to their sovereignty, as a race these would be extending illegal preferential treatment.
One such exemption he wants to remove is the exemption from new Medicaid work rules being introduced in several states. Presently Native Americans don’t have to pay penalties for not having health coverage under the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.
Mary Smith, who was acting head of the Indian Health Service during the Obama administration and is a member of the Cherokee Nation, points out,
“The United States has a legal responsibility to provide health care to Native Americans. It’s the largest prepaid health system in the world — they’ve paid through land and massacres — and now you’re going to take away health care and add a work requirement?”
Since the Tohono O’odham Nation straddles the Southern border it has announced it will not allow Trump’s border wall to be built on its homelands. The wall would separate tribal families that have lived on both sides of the border since before the border existed.
By ignoring tribal sovereignty, Trump would not have to negotiate any arrangement with the tribe and simply take their land.
Any protection from this happening if Trump gets his wish to remove tribal identity and consider Native Americans just another racial group, would be lost.
So we need to accept that Donald J Trump is not obsessed with immigrants, he also has a problem with the Indigenous People.