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The Importance Of Tribal Sovereignty In The United States

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In the United States, there are 567 federally recognized Native American tribes. Of those, there are 326 reservations, which are considered Native American sovereign nations (history.com). To be a sovereign tribal nation by definition is “the concept of the inherent authority of indigenous tribes to govern themselves within the borders of the United States. (Tribal Sovereignty in)” The beginning of the reservations started with the Treaty of Hopewell, a treaty made by the US. government in 1785 “placing the native Cherokees under the protection of a young United States and setting boundaries for their land (history.com).” From there was a landslide of broken promises. After hundreds of years, Native Americans finally have reservation borders that are …show more content…

Part of this argument is that tribes aren’t sovereign in the first place, saying “American Indians are not a separate nation any more than blacks or Jews or Korean immigrants are” (Riley, Naomi). And while knowing the US. government has broken promises and treaties with the Native people, they also bring to light that the US. decided that they could modify or terminate any treaties with Native Americans, without the tribes consent (Riley, Naomi). “It is time for both the US government and the tribes to stop pretending that they are like foreign countries negotiating a settlement” (Riley, Naomi). People are confused and troubled as to why the government is acting as though they are separate from the United States. Many believe that if we treated tribes like France, a country or government apart from our own, we shouldn’t be funding or giving money to them (Riley, Naomi). That we could use that money toward something more beneficial to the general people of the US. The general opinion for this stance is that it would be more fair to everyone to abolish the tribal sovereignty and reservations, based on government funds and land or

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