Not Neighborhoods But Nations: The rhetoric and reality of sovereignty

BACKLASH. Tribal fishing rights have fostered anti-Indian demonstrations, such as this 1978 protest in Washington state. Photo by Matt McVay/Seattle Times

There are no immigration officials at the borders, but even casual tourists know when they enter Indian Country. It’s the disc jockey talking Navajo on AM radio in Arizona and the tribal police cruiser on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. It’s the preponderance of tribal and federal institutions that exist nowhere else in the nation, such as Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) offices, tribal health clinics, and tribal environmental protection offices. It’s also the unmistakable signs of a unique heritage: buffalo herds and frybread, beadwork and wild rice.

But what makes federally-recognized tribes unlike other communities in America is not food, government services, or tourist-oriented trading posts but something larger and deeper: It’s each tribe’s sovereignty. Crossing into a reservation, no matter how small, is crossing into another nation, a nation as real (many argue) as any other.

Tribes are not simply ethnic neighborhoods but actual nations with a land base, a unique “government-to-government” relationship with the federal government, and a status, says the Supreme Court, “higher than states.”

And they are not going away. Indeed, more than 500 years after European settlement, tribes now assert their status as sovereign nations more aggressively than ever before

“Growing up I don’t recall the word sovereignty being used,” says Verna Fowler (Menominee), president of the College of Menominee Nation in Wisconsin. The dictionary defines sovereignty as “freedom from external control” or “autonomy.” Instead of using the word sovereignty at that time, tribal leaders talked in more general terms about treaties and “the tribe’s ability to govern itself,” she says.

Sovereignty Matures

The shift in rhetoric began in the self-determination era in the 1970s when the federal government gave tribal governments more responsibility to manage programs that it once administered. Suddenly even small tribes started looking after their own law enforcement, natural resource management, economic development, housing, and, of course, education. It was in this era that the first tribal colleges were founded. By taking over the work of state and federal governments, tribes began to act, at last, more like modern political institutions.

The expression of sovereignty has grown incrementally. Fowler argues that sovereignty as a political agenda matured when tribes started building casinos in the 1980s. “Gaming brought sovereignty to the fore,” she says.

Because tribes were sovereign, it was argued, they had a right to build casinos, even in states where gaming was illegal. This has resulted in a reinvigorated sense of tribal “nationalism” as federally-recognized tribes begin to see sovereignty as more than an abstract right. It is also a practical tool for the development of tribal economies and, more broadly, for the long-term survival of tribes as distinct peoples.

These expressions of sovereignty inevitably generate conflict. While tribes say they are working to protect their rights and sustain their communities, some non-Indians argue that tribal sovereignty is unpatriotic and unfair. “Why do we have nations within a nation?” asks Oklahoma businessman Mike Cantrell, founder of a state organization called One Nation, Inc. Tribal control is a threat to non-Indian economic interests, he argues. “How can we have a fair marketplace with tribal economies based on government subsidies?”

Cantrell’s position can be dismissed as marginal and “racist.” But there are plenty of non-Indians who wonder why tribes make such a fuss over sovereignty in the first place. Viewing the poverty of many reservations, it is possible to wonder what, in fact, tribes are defending. Why must there forever be a “Diné Nation” or a “Lakota Nation”?

The legal history is in treaties, the U.S. Constitution, and court decisions. Beyond that, the answer is found within the cultural fabric of many reservations. Sovereignty reflects feelings of identity as a people, one that is more easily felt than explained.

“Why does culture matter?” I once asked a student at Turtle Mountain Community College in North Dakota. He hesitated for a long time and then finally told a simple story about walking down an empty college corridor after hours and hearing, somewhere in the distance, the sound of drums. “It makes you feel good,” he concluded. “It makes you feel like we’re moving up.” Others insist that culture is central to their identity.

This desire to sustain tribal communities reaches beyond politics and survives in both good times and bad. It survives even after centuries of forced assimilation. But the benefits of sovereignty are also tangible and become obvious when taken away. This is precisely what happened to numerous tribes during the post-World War II program aptly named “termination.”

Termination Tangible

Arguing that many tribes had sufficiently “developed” both socially and economically, Congress started unilaterally terminating its recognition of tribes all across the country. Tribal governments were no longer recognized; land fell under state and local jurisdiction; direct federal aid ended. Advocates argued that Indians were being emancipated from reservations that some compared to concentration camps. Indians were, at last, joining the mainstream of American society.

MENOMINEE MARCH. Glen Miller (Menominee) carried a bamboo flag pole in this march in 1971. The Menominee and their supporters marched 220 miles to the state capital to protest living conditions after termination. Photo by Bruce M. Fritz, Capital Times

In 1954, the Menominee Tribe was one of the first to be terminated. But the promised emancipation didn’t take place. Prior to termination, the Menominee Tribe operated its own sawmill and funded its own hospital, schools, and some community services, according to Congressional testimony. After termination, recalls Fowler, the community gained the distinction as “Wisconsin’s pocket of poverty.”

“Jobs were lost, services ended, the community began to unravel — and there was no political recourse,” according to Fowler. Testimony before Congress showed that the percentage of Menominees who received public assistance rose from 14% in 1954 to roughly 50% by 1973. Thousands of acres of Menominee land were lost to non-Indian ownership.

“Essentially, we didn’t exist in the books of the federal government,” she says. “The treaties were negated. We were not eligible for BIA programs. Our tribal identity was gone; we were living on land governed by the county.” And because jobs ceased to exist, people began to leave.

As the harmful impact of termination became clear, political support eroded in Washington, DC, and across the nation. In 1973, Congress restored federal recognition to the Menominee Tribe. Fowler (who worked on the campaign for restoration) became the executive director of the committee charged with rebuilding the tribal government system.

With a reconstituted government and land base, the tribe’s forestry enterprise became an industry model. The tribe created jobs — more than 1,000 tribal members are employed by the tribe, and profit from gaming helped create the tribal college. In this way, sovereignty is the engine of opportunity.

Memory of termination in Wisconsin and across Indian Country has left a legacy of suspicion and a fierce determination to defend treaty rights. American Indian people always fear a new termination era. “We live with the memory of termination just as Jews live with the memory of the Holocaust,” says Fowler.

‘Dependent Nations’

However, termination also revealed just how dependent these sovereign nations really are, even in the modern era of tribal self-determination. The complicated and, some argue, contradictory fact of tribal sovereignty is that it depends on federal funding. Because most land on reservations is not taxable, tribes lack the income from taxes that states enjoy. Tribes receive federal funds for services such as education, health care, law enforcement, housing, and roads. They are also eligible for federal grants and some block grant programs that states receive.

Without federal recognition and federal appropriations, many — possibly most — tribes would become mere shadows of their former selves. Keeping federal dollars flowing into tribes is a priority of tribal governments. Citing key Supreme Court rulings, they argue that funding is part of the federal government’s “trust responsibility.” The Marshall Court introduced the argument that the federal government has a responsibility to provide for their needs as “domestic dependent nations.”

In this way, economic dependence not only sustains tribes as functioning communities, it also demonstrates sovereignty. The reasoning goes something like this: “Because we are sovereign nations, the federal government is legally obligated to provide for our needs. If funding is eliminated — or even reduced — then our sovereignty is being questioned.”

There is widespread recognition that federal funding is necessary for survival, but some tribal members ask how “sovereign” is a nation when survival depends on the federal government?

This is the unacknowledged gap between the rhetoric and reality of tribal nationalism, argues Tom Shortbull, president of Oglala Lakota College in South Dakota. “You can’t be sovereign unless you have the purse strings. You have to generate your own income.”

In other words, if tribes want to be sovereign, then they have to act sovereign. “At some point, the goal should be to become so self-sufficient that you can sever federal funding if that is what the tribe desires,” he says. But, he adds, “I don’t hear anyone arguing for that.” States also depend upon federal appropriations but not as much. As a former South Dakota State legislator, he sees how states benefit from federal appropriations, while tribes must hustle for the scraps.

Embracing the Responsibilities

A great deal has changed in the past 30 years since the federal government embraced the concept of tribal self-determination and officially renounced centuries of assimilationist policies. But too many tribes have failed to fully embrace the opportunities — and responsibilities — of sovereignty.

“Tribal leaders in general have some concept of sovereignty, but many don’t know how to exercise it to their best advantage,” says Fowler. Given the opportunity to run programs and services, the tendency within many tribes is to simply copy state and federal government. “Rather than develop laws tailored to the priorities of the tribe, all they do is adopt state law,” Fowler says. “All that does is erode sovereignty.”

The problem, others argue, goes beyond a lack of innovation within tribal government. The mindset within tribal communities, argue some, is still grounded in dependence. “People stand around saying, ‘Take care of us,’” says one tribal college faculty member. The focus is on sustaining federal funding and services, not “getting ahead.”

But waiting for the federal government to provide the magic bullet for prosperity is futile, according to Dr. Steven Cornell, who led a multi-year study of tribal economic development at Harvard University. A key finding from his study is that tribes can prosper — but only when they are willing and able to take control.

Cornell acknowledged the difficulty of the task. Tribes are hampered by a multitude of external barriers, including geographic isolation, legal challenges to sovereignty, lack of financial capital, lack of natural resources on some reservations, and a climate of suspicion and racism in surrounding non-Indian communities.

“Tribes may not be able to do very much, at least in the short term, to alter the legal position they occupy within the larger society,” he acknowledged in a book he and Joseph P. Kalt edited in 1992, What Can Tribes Do? Strategies and Institutions in American Indian Economic Development. However, he continued, tribes can choose to be “more or less aggressive in asserting the sovereignty they possess.”

Cornell and his team found that the successful tribes all aggressively assumed authority over tribal development decisions. Taking advantage of their sovereign powers, successful tribes are willing to reform their tribal governments and create a climate of trust necessary for investment.

“There is a need for tribes to update constitutions,” agrees Fowler, “especially those working under old BIA constitutions.” Many of these tribes have truncated governments, hampered by constitutions unchanged since the 1930s when tribes had few real responsibilities or opportunities.

In this work, says Fowler, tribal colleges have a vital role to play. The future of sovereignty depends on “education, education, education,” she argues. There need to be more programs in tribal leadership, and current leaders need to be more firmly grounded in the history, language, and governance of their tribal nations. Voter education programs sponsored by several tribal colleges exemplify Fowler’s vision.

Tribal members need to become more involved in the political life of their tribes. Turned off by corruption or nepotism, she hears many young people say they don’t want to be part of anything so dirty. “Politics is not dirty,” she responds, “although some people make it dirty.”

Students, she feels, need to better understand the political system and help push for reforms. Tribal colleges can educate today’s political leaders and empower future leaders who can, in turn, build stronger sovereign nations.

Paul Boyer, Ph.D., is the author of two reports on American Indian higher education published by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and served as founding editor of the Tribal College Journal from 1989-1995. He also writes and speaks about undergraduate education in America. His most recent book is College Rankings Exposed (Peterson’s, 2003).