Trego's Mountain Ear

I keep seeing commentary about the need for a two-state solution in Israel – a separate state for Palestinians.  Not every American realizes that we have hundreds of separate nations within our country – I don’t know of any Indian Reservations in Delaware or New Jersey, but If I drive west, I’ll go by the Kootenai Reservation in Bonners Ferry, heading south puts me through the Salish-Kootenai in Ronan, and driving east I travel through the Blackfeet in Browning.

While these are termed Indian Reservations, they are legally ‘domestic dependent nations’.   Understanding Tribal Sovereignty gives us this description:

“The U.S. Supreme Court has acknowledged that tribal governments are the oldest sovereigns on the continent—Native American sovereignty predates the sovereignty of the U.S.—and as such, tribes and tribal people maintain some degree of control, though a diminished measure of sovereignty to be sure. Tribal sovereignty includes the right to govern one’s community, the ability to preserve one’s culture, and the right to control one’s own economy.

The sovereignty status (tribal sovereignty encompassing Native American military, social, and economic development) of Indian nations still remains today. As sovereign entities, Indian nations are guaranteed the power and/or right to determine their form of government, define citizenship, make and enforce laws through their own police force and courts, collect taxes, and regulate property use.”

The missing power that really emphasizes the ‘dependent’ part is the ability to keep and maintain their own military – but I have never seen a powwow that didn’t include an armed color guard.  Still, our Native neighbors have all the rights of American citizens, plus some additional rights and obligations based on the individual tribe.

One of the ironies is that a tribal member has more forms of identification than the average American.  Just having the blood quantum or DNA isn’t enough to qualify – it also takes the tribal membership, the recognition of being a member of a separate ‘domestic, dependent nation.’

Pappy Boyington – the WWII Marine Ace – had the blood quantum from his Sisseton mother – but was not a tribal member.  Woodrow Keeble, on the other hand, was a member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate.  Both men received the Medal of Honor for their service in the US military.

For anyone who may have missed the lesson, several of the tribes that are now ‘domestic, dependent nations’ had some fairly harsh encounters with other Americans.  A brief review of the Comanche will show some atrocities that exceed those committed by Palestinians.  The Iroquois name for George Washington was (probably still is) Town Destroyer:

“As a Mohawk citizen of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy – the oldest living democracy in the Western Hemisphere – when I see statues of Washington, like the towering equestrian monument at the Virginia Capitol in Richmond, or the colossus in front of Federal Hall in New York, I see not only a founding father, but also a genocidal one. The title by which Washington was known to Native nations, Hanödaga:yas or Town Destroyer, was one he inherited from his great-grandfather, John Washington, a slave-owning planter and colonel in the Virginia militia who, during Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676, had the chiefs of several tribes killed. His great-grandson lived up to the name of Town Destroyer in his treatment of Indigenous nations both during and after the Revolutionary War (1775–83). Wanting to remain neutral but forced to choose sides, some Haudenosaunee nations fought alongside the colonists during the war. Others, like the Mohawk, fought with their longstanding allies, the British.”

George Washington, Town Destroyer | Frieze

I can’t say that our Reservations are a perfect solution – but I have met, and know some great people who are members of our ‘dependent domestic nations.’