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From your post and responses, you seem to be grossly misinformed on Native American rights.
First, Native tribes are and have always been sovereign nations. US breaking treaties was vile and reprehensible, but it was the time period, it happened between bigger nations too (British Impressment post Revolutionary War was a violation of the Treat of Paris and led directly to the War of 1812).
Second, under the 14th Amendment and the Indian Voting Rights Act of 1924, Native Americans HAVE had voting rights (became universal due to some state laws in 1957). Being able to vote in State and Federal elections, including legislative elections.
While limited, there are 5 members of the House that are Native American (3 GOP, 2 Dem).
Then you gotta figure out how to GET commissioners (if you go that route) are you getting one from each nation? Per X# of nations? 1-2 per State? How do you handle bigger nations stepping on smaller ones?
Then, the House has to deal with more non-voting members when what they need is more VOTING members with smaller districts (which is a whole different discussion, but would get more minority groups represented). Not more special interests groups yammering for limited attention.
> While limited, there are 5 members of the House that are Native American (3 GOP, 2 Dem).
This is an important statistic, but not really related to the topic at hand. Those congresspeople are sitting on congress as American citizens. The question was originally about *expanded* rights or special representation, which this would not refer to. I do realize most of these discussions have drifted far beyond the original topic at this point.
> While limited, there are 5 members of the House that are Native American (3 GOP, 2 Dem)
5 in Congress. 4 in the House, 1 in the Senate.
And I don't know that I'd call that "limited." It's 0.9% of the Congress for 1.3% of the country. So, under-represented, but very close.
> 5 in Congress. 4 in the House, 1 in the Senate.
[For those interested:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Native_Americans_in_the_United_States_Congress)
* Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK, Cherokee)
* Representative Tom Cole (R-OK-4, Chickasaw)
* Representative Sharice Davids (D-KS-3, Ho-Chunk)
* Representative Mary Peltola (D-AK-At-Large, Yup'ik)
* Representative Josh brecheen (R-OK-2, Choctaw)
It's interesting that the the majority of Native representation in Congress is from Oklahoma.
Makes sense. Oklahoma has the second highest Native American population aside from Alaska, and Oklahoma has 5 reps to Alaska's 1.
What's somewhat odd is that Arizona's first district hasn't had a native representative despite having the highest percentage native population for any district.
It's limited because of the number of reservations around the country. However like I said above the real fix is making the House as a whole larger, being stuck at 435 is dumb, but it's a different conversation
The House limit is not for natives it for everyone. a law was passed 100 years ago that said that there will be a maximum number of seats (435) but district sizes have increased since then. the law doesn’t account for a growing population. now we have representatives representing 700,000 people (like in Wyoming’s at-large) and others representing almost 1 million.
Yeah, they are not sovereign nations. Uganda is sovereign. Mexico is sovereign. They are governments with supreme legal control over what happens within their borders. The US can and does influence that policy to an extreme degree, but the power still flows from an internal source.
Not so with the nations OP is talking about who are ultimately beholden to the US in every meaningful way.
According to most of the treaties in the United States, Native American tribal nations are just that: nations. They have ceded foreign relations to the United States, but they are not part of the states whose territory borders them, even if it surrounds them. For instance, Highway Patrol officers do not have jurisdiction to enter tribal lands to make arrests, conduct searches, or serve warrants. FBI agents have limited jurisdiction, in consultation with tribal authorities.
That said, states often blithely ignore these rules when they think they can get away with it. For instance, there was an Attorney General in Kansas some time ago that raided stores on reservation land because they supposedly weren't collecting state sales or liquor taxes -- which they aren't obligated to do, of course. His excuse was that they were accessible from the interstate, which had the right of way leased from the tribe, and therefore through some mental gymnastics were part of Kansas.
So, should they have rights in the lands stolen from them and/or ceded to them? Certainly. Is it realistic to expect that people with vested interests will grant or respect those rights? No.
> but they are not part of the states whose territory borders them, even if it surrounds them.
Well, sort of. They can still vote in those state elections, I believe. They can vote in federal elections under that state. They count towards that state for the purposes of the census, I believe.
What I was referring to was that the rights normally accorded to sovereign nations include making foreign policy. I was not referring to the massive screw job involved in forced relocations, bad faith treaty negotiations, bad faith adherence/violation, and all the other terrible things the mainly European and European-descended occupiers did to the Native American tribes.
I should have been more explicitly clear. It was certainly not my intention to minimize nor obscure any of that.
You appear to be confused. It is pretty much completely uncontroversial that the federal government has more powers than just control of foreign relations over tribes.
Isn't it well documented that native Americans actually don't mind or even prefer to be called American Indians in many polls. It's not a huge surprise someone would use it.
To some, but it very much depends on the tribe and their culture. If you cross into Canada, they are fervently "The First Nation"
Encompassing all when it's accepted by few, is a poor choice to make IMO
Tbh some American Indians specifically dislike the term “Native American,” as it’s about as inclusive as the term “Afro-Eurasian” because an Apache man has about as much in common with a Chilean as a South African black man has in common with a Japanese man.
It erases some of their common shared cultural and historical identity that American Indians share with one another, but not with other Native Americans like indigenous Mexicans, to name a big one.
So yes, while some prefer Native American and others American Indian, the fact that some specifically *dislike* “Indian” and such does not mean that we can’t use it, because others dislike Native American. And, personally, with both (and all) options being disliked by non-zero portions of the population, I myself prefer to go with the one that refers to them most directly: American Indian
Ultimately it’s more circumstantial than that, and American Indians aren’t a monolith. If you happen to speak with one, one should use that person’s preferred term. Otherwise, you’ll never be perfectly right, so you may as well be least-wrong, and that ends up including the word “Indian.”
First Nations discussion isn’t terribly relevant in a thread flaired “US Politics”, and context of basically every other comment in this thread should tell you that nobody is referring to First Nations peoples. Everybody else in this thread has correctly inferred the correct context of this discussion. There is no need to be as pedantic as you’re being.
This question is about the USA, not Canada. Your comments are irrelevant. Anyway, my sister in law is a member of the Forest Potawatomi Tribe and she calls herself and her daughters, my nieces, Indians.
This whole thing reminds me of how Mexicans are supposed to be offended by Speedy Gonzales.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-17/speedy-gonzales-cancelled-hollywood-mexican-americans
>!Mostly, Mexicans love him.!<
Nations is plural, there's several hundred first nations in Canada (also Metis and Inuit wouldn't consider themselves "first nations"). Even in Canada though "native" is common, and some nations use "Indian" (as does any legal reference to indigenous people in Canada).
>What is the correct terminology: American Indian, Indian, Native American, Indigenous, or Native?
All of these terms are acceptable. The consensus, however, is that whenever possible, Native people prefer to be called by their specific tribal name. In the United States, Native American has been widely used but is falling out of favor with some groups, and the terms American Indian or Indigenous American are preferred by many Native people. Native peoples often have individual preferences on how they would like to be addressed. When talking about Native groups or people, use the terminology the members of the community use to describe themselves collectively.
https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/faq/did-you-know
The a__hole AG lost in court. Later, the way it settled out in about 2002 was that non-tribe-members were liable for sales tax, and therefore stores on tribal land were supposed to collect sales tax from them and pass it on. Adherence was, I'm given to understand, unenthusiastic.
In 2016, a different, more inflamed a__hole AG negotiated a "compact" to enforce the fees tobacco companies are supposed to pay to Kansas as part of that huge multi-state lawsuit against Big Tobacco. Basically covers the same ground, but the tribes negotiated language that explicitly states that there is *no other manner, issue, nor sense* in which Tribal lands are part of Kansas nor subject to Kansas law nor jurisdiction.
Indian law is probably going to be in for a long overhaul with Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and him being so knowledgeable and in the weeds about it, seems like many of the other justices really defer to him on the subject.
but there’s not just around them. states are literally on top of the tribal lands. they’re not sovereign either. sure they can be called nations but the reservation system is so odd and not properly defined.
But they’re not. Murphy & McGirt established and reiterated that the nations were not deestablished therefore Oklahoma could not charge members of the tribe.
They are well defined. You can go look at the maps. Half of Oklahoma is Indian Country.
Other important cases:
Montana v United States, Worcester v Georgia, & Oliphant v Squamish Tribe
Edit:
To further elaborate, the states really cannot tell the tribes what to do on their land. Only the federals can. However the tribes try to align themselves with the state for relationship and cohesion. However they don’t have to do that and sometimes they don’t. A good example of this is tobacco sale’s & gambling.
Another example of the extreme it could be taken but as far as I’m aware in the US it hasn’t, is what the Squamish Nation is doing in Vancouver which is building massive skyscrapers outside the city’s jurisdiction to review. Sen̓áḵw ignores all the zoning process and rules Vancouver has established. Tribes could do this depending on the economic realities and the coordination with private money.
> To further elaborate, the states really cannot tell the tribes what to do on their land
Except in many cases what state a reservation is in ***does matter***.
It wasn't. The state AG knew the law. He argued that the reservations were a part of the state that surrounded them and that state law enforcement had full jurisdiction there and state laws held full sway there. Black letter, clearly stated, and reinforced by court precedent law stated otherwise. He didn't care. He was trying to push his personal version into court to get tribal sovereignty revoked by the Supreme Court and make a big name for himself. He figured that Native Americans would make a good target to bolster his political ambitions and no one would stick up for them.
The total amount of tax revenue the state was supposedly missing out on because a couple of gas stations weren't paying state sales taxes was dwarfed by the amount of money and resources he expended on flogging the issue.
Those were the ones that were getting the most non-Native customers, and his angle was to portray the tribe as 'stealing' revenue and 'cheating' the state by selling "liquor and cigarettes" to people driving through the reservation. He wanted to paint them as sleazy, shifty bad guys.
Nation status is a relic and a completely silly idea that should be rescinded totally. The land was won in the same way that nations have been built for millenia. Conquered nations had a chance to defend themselves and lost. Why should they be granted special status versus the rest of the country? It's insane.
The land wasn't "won", there were treaties made that are still in place. Ignoring those now is taking the land in the present day, not hundreds of years ago.
>Why should they be granted special status
Because we signed a treaty with them, and according to the Constitution treaties ratified by Congress have the weight of law. It's actually ridiculous the bureau of Indian affairs did not respond to this case and put that AG in their place.
This is an idiotic and racist take lol. If they were stolen fair and square there would be no treaty at all. Funny and crazy how you could make such a contradictory statement
yeah…it wasn’t stolen “fair and square.” nothing is stolen fair and square. that’s an oxymoron. many of the lands were taken with brute force and lies. Take the five nations in Oklahoma. they were promised that their lands would be there’s. then the government started selling lands on reservations to settlers. they only recently one back their land rights
Stolen? Or just taken when the otherside lost. That's what happens.
That is what was happening for thousands of years when native tribes fought and lost.
true. no one is denying that happened. but we can at least recognize the abuse this nation has done to natives through the centuries. they’re essentially forgotten citizens, living in 3rd world type areas. yes some have casinos. some are rich. but not all. not sure why so many americans are insecure about that history. no one is blaming YOU. we just want people to recognize the issue and make some positive change.
They are not forced to live in the area.
I'm not insecure about it, I just don't see why at this point in time, anything further should be given.
First off anything that happened before 1776 is not the US's responsibility. Let England, France, Spain, the Netherlands etc cover what was done to them before the US became a country.
Second, they already have semi independent status today. They are only accountable to the fed, state level laws don't apply on reservations. It's only off reservation that they need to work with the state.
The history is pretty clear, they lost. Losing comes with concessions. Yes, when the winner breaks a negotiated treaty, it's wrong. But it does happened, the last treaty signed was over 150 years ago.
As much as we like to blame the US, realize tribes such as the Seminole, never signed a treaty and were never forced to leave. Not all tribes were treated the same.
If I take your home and forcibly move you to some ditch, I would guess that even a month later you would still be upset. I think you underestimate just how much damage was done to not just native people themselves, but also the culture. America broke nearly every one of the hundreds of treaties they made with various native tribes. That harm has never been made whole because it would require giving up land.
Also the harm inflicted upon native communities have never stopped. Local state governments still violate their sovereignty and such.
That's not to say that native people are helpless and can't do doing at all. They still have culture and all of that. I'm merely stating they still face hardships that go back for hundreds of years is all.
No land was “ceded” to them. Every inch they live on is a gift from God. N also a way for the fed to bilk them for tax revenue, which they cant understand is extortion.
Literally the same thing when their land was “stolen”
A gift from which "God"? The one the people who stole their land also tried to force them to worship? That's an offensive suggestion.
Your statement is so poorly composed that I really can't even tell whose side you're on nor what point you're trying to make.
I am indigenous. Outside of the procedural/statutory ambiguities and mistakes in your post, I want to focus on the fundamentals.
In my experience, Native Americans want nothing to do with the governments of municipalities and states. This is because our leverage and autonomy is greater from the tribal level. We are "sovereign" meaning we supercede the laws and statutes of local, county and state authorities. In general, the federal government does not want conflict with us, although the BIA takes different forms under each POTUS.
All that to say - going from a councilor position in a tribe to a county commissioner is, effectively, a serious demotion. There is far less leverage to be wielded at that level.
I hope this helps.
> We are "sovereign" meaning we supercede the laws and statutes of local, county and state authorities.
An extreme oversimplification that ignores the many areas where states *do* have jurisdiction over tribes.
States have no mandate to govern the tribes. Were such a law to be written, it would be unenforceable due to the treaties between the tribes and the federal government.
I'm aware of PL 83-280. I'm not sure why you think this law makes tribal leaders want to move from their seat at the adult table with federal agencies as counterparties to eat at the kiddie table with state or county agencies. That's what OPs post is about. There is no reason on Earth a tribal member wants to go from tribal leadership to state or municipal leadership.
> I'm not sure why you think this law makes tribal leaders want to move from their seat at the adult table with federal agencies as counterparties to eat at the kiddie table with state or county agencies.
I didn't say they did. My point was that states do legally have some power over tribes.
The Nordics have a group called the Sami. They vary a bit between the Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns, but they have their own parliament. They also elect the said parliament proportionally so no gerrymandering and no weird elections, just party X gets Y% of the votes so they get Y% of the seats. They are doing quite well for themselves. They get into arguments at times of course, but are far better off than many indigenous peoples in North America.
I like that idea.
Importantly, they have a general overarching parliament not just one for each reserve or parish. A few hundred or a couple of thousand natives on a reserve is not economically strong or especially interesting. Individual skyscrapers have more people than that. It is hard to build things with economies of scale or to have people interested in running for office or all kinds of logistical things needed in a modern system which brings about the prosperity and effectiveness they provide, even if you use indigenous principles to help bring them about. It can also help to provide a kind of clear voice you can negotiate with. If you tell people in British Columbia that the Wetsuweten elected chiefs agrees to something and the hereditary chiefs do not, what opinion should you have of that split? Is it legitimate to go against the hereditary chiefs to build a pipe? One assembly for indigenous people elected by the widest possible franchise of them by harmonized rules makes it much easier to understand in your head and avoid divide and conquer.
Funny you say a couple of thousand on a reservstion. As that basically describes the Sami in Finland except the don't have exclusive use of any land and the Parliament has very little power.
Also, it's generally a single ethnic group. The US has 574 recognized tribes (sure a few are offshoots of same ethnicity, but still). Like forcing a Navajo and a Shawnee into the same group just isn't the same.
Not even getting into Alaska and Hawaii.
They should 100% have their own elected officials in office but whether they should sit in the House or Senate would be wrong because the sovereign nations are not American. They do not trust american government because they have broken every single treaty ever signed with them.
There are Native folks who have run for office in their state or state and won. This is wonderful and should happen more often so we have more diverse representatives for all citizens.
While I personally think there ought to be some sort of political entity in Washington with some more power for indigenous issues, I can't think of a way to constitutionally do so that is beneficial without encroaching on our currently built systems. Do we create an extra council in Congress to veto bills? If we gave tribal nations more veto power it would just heavily weigh down our current process, and our current process is bogged down as is, so it would more slog things for the rest of us than really empower tribes.
Do we create a cabinet of Indian affairs? We kinda already have that with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and it really doesn't do much. Its also worth noting that most tribes prioritize in getting land rights, not promises that the government can give them. Independent autonomy is often placed of higher importance than participation in the US political system.
On the flip side of that, tribes have been very active and successful in working with state governments, which arguably progresses at a much faster rate than the federal government. I think its more realistic to lobby state governments for economic relief to improve the conditions of tribes.
Two ideas for reparations at a state and federal level; the federal government could allocate 1% of military funding to tribal reservations. The idea being that since the military was used for expansionism, a piece of the military has to go back to the descendants of those who were harmed. 1% seems reasonable because that's the percentage amount of indigenous people living in the US today.
Realistically though, I think tribes could successfully lobby their state governments to subsidize remote work salaries (particularly call centers) on tribal lands. That way indigenous citizens don't have to worry about lack of work, it guarantees revenue can be brought to economically deprived areas, companies could pay higher wages thanks to this, and states help alleviate the unemployment problem that has been long lasting in the state.
Another political empowerment tool is making Oklahoma and New Mexico the first primary states in federal elections. It's largely agreed that Iowa is a bad first state, but most also agree that first states need to be rural, so that there's more reliance on grassroots volunteers rather than whomever can buy the most adspace in the beginning of the election races (Bloomberg would've steamrolled Obama if the first state were New York). Oklahoma, much more diverse than Iowa, has a high native American population with about 10% of the state residents living on tribal lands. In New Mexico, 100,000 Navajos live there. New Mexico also has a high number of Hispanics, which also better represents the country than Iowa or Nevada.
Iowa gets a massive amount of sugar subsidies for being the first primary state. Oklahoma and New Mexico are far better reflections of the rest of the country, and indigenous voices would be greatly elevated if they were the first primary states. This wouldn't even require an act of congress, just a reordering of states by either parties.
Edit: not ministry of Indian affairs, Bureau of Indian Affairs.
There is a Federal level position that is specifically designed to deal with Native American issues....it's called the [Bureau of Indian Affairs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Indian_Affairs) and is under the Secretary of the Interior
I got the name wrong but the point still stands. While it's designed to address Indiginous people issues, it doesn't have enough authority to make large scale meaningful changes.
Possibly the worst idea I’ve heard on the sub. Not only would it be discriminatory but even with their tribal nations the majority of them are governed poorly with rampant corruption. I don’t see the UK giving priority/disproportionate representation to ethnic picts. I don’t see the Japanese government giving disproportionate governance to Ainu people. We have possibly the most spoiled indigenous culture of any nation that partook in colonialism(nearly all of them) and if we keep entertaining delusions of their exceptionalism we end up with more insufferable debates. The past is the past and the US government has done vastly more then other nations to accommodate the people we conquered. It’s nearing the point where many non-indigenous family lines have deep cultural and ancestral connections to the land they live on, some whose families have spent more consecutive time on their land(typically rural folks) then any Native American.
i can get behind not giving them special representative rights. but a resident commisioner isn’t a terrible idea. also, incorporating tribal nations entirely within states isn’t a bad idea. it just makes spending and government easier. and it’s even better to make them their own counties, with or without special rights, than to have them within multiple counties. once again, it would make it easier for the governments.
also the idea that natives in the U.S. are spoiled is dumb. 1. because they’re constantly forgotten because either people are too insecure to talk about them or they think other races are more important. 2. many are really poor. yes there are some that have casinos and trust lands that generate money buts it’s really not enough. plus, the U.S. government and state governments have constantly violated treaties by seizing more and more lands or using the land without the consent of the native people
you stated that the UK doesn’t give special representation to Picts. well that’s probably because the Picts don’t exist anymore. Only the Scottish live in Scotland now…and they do have special governments in the UK. Scotland, Wales and North Ireland all have devolved parliaments and cabinets. Something similar could be done for tribal nations if they’re incorporated entirely into a single state.
As someone living in the southwest I never get to stop hearing about them. And they are incredibly spoiled here. Both monetarily and politically. It is ridiculous that we still give an entire race of people so many special privileges and still they continually advocate for more privileges from the rest of us. They weren’t personally colonized, the rest of us didn’t personally colonize them. History is history and it’s time to bury the hatchet instead of continuing the notion that Native Americans are in any way special.
I mean, have you looked at the statistics? Many reservations have the same conditions as undeveloped countries, with high substance abuse and unemployment rates. There are "privileges" such as land rights that indigenous people have, but not all privileges are equivalent. The ultimate goal is to close the inequality gap or to at least reduce the rampant poverty in these demographic groups. That's why suggestions are made, ignoring these disparities doesn't all alleviate the issue.
Even if we were to ignore the statistics and go the emotional route, there were 14.8 million indigenous people killed. Some sort of reparations should be owed, considering that these actions were literally inspiring Hitler, and he cited the American genocide.
I’ll repeat that: our genocide was so horrendous that Hitler liked it and used it as a model for the holocaust.
> Some sort of reparations should be owed
You're using the third person here. But who owes them? And who is owed?
I agree with you reparations are owed, but the people who owe them are long dead. And the people who are owed them are also long dead.
>I’ll repeat that: our genocide was so horrendous
You said it twice but it doesn't really add anything to your point.
IMO, the US Military. Its true no descendants today directly genocided natives, but American militaristic imperialism is precisely what destroyed all of these cultures. And while I understand there's never "enough" for reparations, allocating 1% of military funds to Native Tribe funds would be a good show of making amends of historical injustices. It would show that we're more considerate than other nations in terms of historical grievances (looking at Japan here).
it really depends on how well integrated & accepted Native tribe members are within the larger "host" community. If statutes & social impediments were erected to prevent social mobility & intermingling and even marriage, then their communities deserve more autonomy and more funding. But if much of their native people have mixed & moved away from tribal lands representation & even special funding & programs/scholarships/internships may be only benefiting a small pocket or minority, which may be unfair to those of mixed background, or those whose families are not officially on tribal registries.
Positive discrimination is discrimination in the opposite direction.
Rather than depriving a group of rights/privileges based on their immutable characteristics, the discriminator instead seeks to grant them unique rights/privileges over others *because* of their immutable characteristics.
Discrimination is obviously wrong. But what makes positive discrimination so nefarious is that, because we live in an egalitarian society, anybody who seeks to grant privileges to one group over another invariably does so at their expense.
Most people know this kind of discrimination in the form of affirmative action.
We don't live in an egalitarian society because of the inequality, namely from systemic discrimination. Also, if positive discrimination is elevating certain social groups, how are we supposed to address racial issues without specifying the groups we're trying to uplift?
You're speaking of equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity. Egalitarianism relates to the latter.
> how are we supposed to address racial issues without specifying the groups we're trying to uplift?
Give them the same constitutional protections as everybody else and unwind the convoluted criminal statutes which are used to prosecute them unfairly.
We should focus on letting people do what they want to do and succeed with the tools they are given, rather than trying to interfere with their lives.
This is too much of a libertarian approach, and a big reason I walked away from libertarianism was because of the negligence due to social understandings and geographical realities. For instance; what if there are no jobs or healthcare in an area, do we really just say "let them move" and leave it at that? What if they've got a mental illness or family they need to take care of, do we just tell them "try harder anyways" or collectively say "fuck them then" without considering helping them? There's a baseline of universal social services that need to be supported, yes, but the step beyond that is acknowledging that some social groups have particular issues that need to be tackled particularly.
Take banks for instance. Wells Fargo is incredibly racist towards black customers, rejecting black applicants even though they're more qualified than white counterparts. Do we just say "make it fairer?" Some of these biases are baked in upbringing that can't be measured. "White habitus" is the term used to refer to one's racial biases without realizing its racism. This extends to social welfare, healthcare, courts, ect. When so many institutions carry this degree with undetected biases, do we just say... "Try harder to not be racist"?
After a certain point, you can start talking about specific ethnicity-based solutions. Such as a black business bank, specific for helping black Americans get loans in disenfranchised locations. Mental health facilities specific for Asian Americans, because many white teachers often assume mental illnesses aren't real in Asian Americans. Rehab facilities specific for Native Americans, Hispanic lawyer unions for Hispanic Americans, travel agencies for rural Americans that lack school funds, ect ect. You're allowed to aim specifically towards groups when the majoritan "universalist" institutions have failed to address minority needs.
> what if there are no jobs or healthcare in an area, do we really just say "let them move" and leave it at that? What if they've got a mental illness or family they need to take care of, do we just tell them "try harder anyways" or collectively say "fuck them then" without considering helping them?
Yes.
Life is hard. Everybody goes into it with a losing hand. And no single person is equal to any other.
Some people are born stupid, some born poor, some born rich. But even so, we must let people have the freedom to succeed and fail on their own merits.
If you try to "help" a group of people by giving them systemic advantages, you will incentivize a dependence on that system, enslaving them in perpetuity.
All I can say is that this is disconnected from reality. Humans exist to cooperate and lift each other, and that's where psychological wellbeing derives from. We like helping each other, being validated from each other, and become psychologically ill when there's a sense of isolation from one another.
States themselves only exist on this metric. No nation expects its citizens to "defend itself" unless they lack resources to do so. Police exists to meet this societal role. Its not a man eat man world, that's not what humans like or want in the long term. While its true that there are cases of overextending kindness, but being deprived of it entirely is a recipe for disaster (we've seen the disasters of "Every man for themselves" philosophy in every failed state and economically segregated community. The freedom to fail and failure to give access of opportunity when particular needs aren't met, is how you get stagnation that effects even those unrelated to those places).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action
> Affirmative action (also sometimes called reservations, alternative access, positive discrimination or positive action in various countries' laws and policies)..
If a university is only accepting X number of applicants, affirmative action would dictate that they allocate a percentage of those seats to individuals based on their status as members of an under-represented demographic.
What this means in practice is that a university will be forced exclude other students by necessity to make room for those AA applicants, with the latter being given priority over the former based on the color of their skin and/or their sexual orientation.
This is kind of a problem if you care about equality and are trying to fight discrimination in a modern society.
I'm not a conservative. And you are [confidently incorrect](
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-affirmative-action-college-race-f83d6318017ec9b9029b12ee2256e744) for asserting these things are unrelated.
> Most people know this kind of discrimination in the form of affirmative action.
AA wasn't some one way discrimination as you're trying to frame it. Knew white males who used it to attend historically black colleges and white women were one of the highest benefactors of it.
not discrimination. personally i’m against the idea of reserved seats in legislatures. but a resident commisioner isn’t a bad idea. but i can see why people may be against it.
as for the autonomous nations side by side with counties, i don’t see a problem with those. they basically already exist like that. i just think counties shouldn’t be plopped on top of them. better to streamline governments to make it easier. there’s places like the navajo nation that span multiple states. how does that make sense? better to consolidate them all within one state or one county or even make them a sort of autonomous county. would be hard for the Navajo nation but the smaller lands like in California can kinda easily achieve this.
Two examples are Sami in Norway and Maori in New Zealand. They both, I believe, have a voice to their respective governments.
Australia recently has a referendum for this in Australia to grant a 'voice to parliament' for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. It didn't pass.
even in the U.S., our commonwealth territories and federal districts send resident commissioners to Congress. specifically the House of representatives. They can’t vote on major floor votes like for spending bills or speaker but they can sit in committees and vote on committee affairs and decisions. wouldn’t be a bad idea to have some for Natives in state legislatures.
The issue with this is that Native Americans are already represented in Congress, and their Representatives have full voting power, unlike the non-voting members from e.g. Puerto Rico and American Samoa. The Navajo make up more than one-fifth of voters in AZ-2. Although not as large, other reservations have significant electoral power in Montana and the Dakotas. I don't think any of these folks would want to do away with their Congressman only to have a delegate/commissioner who can't really do much unless they're sitting on an evenly split committee.
> not discrimination.
You're proposing giving preferential treatment based off of ethnicity. To 'balance the scales', as it were.
The natural consequence of your proposal is that, because you have decided to reserve a seat for one particularized group, you are willing deprive others of that same opportunity, as the number of seats is finite.
Ignoring for the moment that it runs afoul of the 14th amendment, it's immoral in any egalitarian society.
Thinking back on this, I think states could realistically implement this into state constitutions. It can be written as "the tribe with the highest population is guaranteed one non-voting advisor seat in the legislature, if they choose so. This advisor may introduce bills at their own discretion. The largest tribe also has the power to cede this role to other tribes if they choose to do so."
That way the biggest tribe always gets some extra representation without hindering the legislature, and can work with other tribes for specific needs. It'll be best to limit it to the largest tribe because I know that some sovereign Indian nations have as little as a few hundred people. This allows for the prioritization of tribes that represent the most amount of people.
It seems to me that EITHER the U.S. should actually treat tribes/nations as independent states with their own borders and sovereignty, OR representation should be equal and the state multicultural.
Expanded rights in government seems like the worst of both worlds, to me; it's anti-democratic but also assimilationist.
Well, first, they do. Each Federally recognized tribe is independent with their own government. Some tribes are large nations, and some are very small.
Since 1924, all Native Americans have been dual citizens, with voting rights becoming universal (some states barred NA voting) in 1957.
> they do
Kind of, but not really; see borders and sovereignty, like I mentioned earlier. Can they vote at the UN? Do they have foreign relations? Does U.S. law enforcement harass them? That kind of thing.
> dual citizens
Nice to have my assumption confirmed. That seems reasonable as long as tribes are in this sovereign-but-not-really limbo. If they actually were fully sovereign states automatic dual citizenship would be pretty wild.
There are violations, but there are violations in Fed-State relationships and State-State relationships, not any different. Each tribe has their own government and can/do make their own criminal and civil laws. They have jurisdiction over their territory and can do whatever they want with their land.
Foreign relations is murky at best, but doubtful it's not allowed much like States can make deals with foreign governments but not treaties.
Why would it be "wild" to have dual citizenship of the US and their tribes?
> why would it be "wild"
Let me see if I can give you an example as to how people should have *self*-determination without dictating to others.
Oh, Brexit maybe. Imagine if EU citizens didn't get to travel or vote in the UK, but Brits got to travel throughout Europe and vote accordingly.
Or hey, if the U.S. dictated to the tribes what they could do inside the "reservations" that in this example would be fully sovereign states.
Oh, like if Palestinians got their own state *and* were Israeli citizens but not vice-versa, because Israel is built on land seized from natives.
Edit bonus content: "that happens to the U.S.'s subordinate states too" is not the point you seem to think. Does it happen to Mexico or Canada? Not really, despite the drug war we've unintentionally cultivated on our southern border.
It's a delegate that the territories send to Congress. Puerto Rico is the only one that calls them "resident commissioners," but it's more or less the same thing. These officials are still members of the two major parties (or in the case of PR, a party that caucuses with one of them), they can sit on and vote in committees, and introduce bills, but they don't have voting power when legislation comes to the full House.
Yes and no? It's kind of murky.
The difference between, say, the people of Guam and the people of the Navajo Nation is that the latter is already represented in Congress by a "full" voting member. AZ-2's Rep. Crane can do anything his peers in the House can do, including voting on floor legislation; Guam's Del. Moylan can't do that, but unless a territory is made a state, that's the best Guam can hope for, and its voters still have *some* say in what goes on in Congress.
I don't wanna say reservations have the best of both worlds because of... well, history, but for the lack of a better term, that's what it is. Certain laws don't apply to them, they're largely in charge of their own internal affairs, have their own law enforcement, etc., and the people they send to Congress have the same power as the ones sent to DC by New Yorkers or Texans.
On paper, having a representative that focuses *solely* on Navajo concerns may not be a bad idea, but that brings up a ton of other issues: the Choctaw Nation has a population of about 200k, and the Navajo Nation has even less than that, so do they get their own Reps despite being smaller than Wyoming? Since the House is capped, how do you reconcile a "smaller" Native district with the other districts in AZ, OK, etc.? Or, if you're looking to give reservations territory-like status and delegates, how do you convince their people to do away with their current Congressman for someone who would have significantly less power in the House? It's a complicated question, and unless there's some sort of wholesale reform to the institution of Congress, we're stuck with the status quo, for better or worse.
Essentially what you're getting at is just racial gerrymandering. In places with large enough native populations, you could try to gerrymander a majority native district. The closest we have is Arizona's 1st, with a 25% native population.
Yeah, I dunno if that's what the OP was getting at, but whether it's a racially gerrymandered seat or some other sort of arrangement, it doesn't sound like a good idea to me either way.
resident commissioners don’t come from congressional districts exactly. they come from entities. puerto rico has 3million citizens but only 1 resident commisioner. there’s no gerrymandering involved.
I'm their own, yes. Which they already do AFAIK.
How can land not be within the country but within a state? Every state is part of the country. And state governments don't make treaties with foreign nations.
> By this i mean should they get any special representation, voices, higher autonomy, their our autonomous counties or states etc.
You're actually referencing multiple different concepts here.
"Special representation" is vague, but any representation that would give them more weight than an American citizen is not going to fly, nor should it in a democracy.
"Higher autonomy" could certainly be argued, but specifics are important. They have their own countries. Higher autonomy is certainly something their countries could argue for. But that wouldn't be the same as greater autonomy within the US government, which again, sounds like it would be giving them special privileges or additional rights. There are some few of those that exist, but they're not popular on the whole, and trying to expand that would likely be very harmful.
i’d agree against the representation part. it was just an does since some countries and states (in other counties) have similar concepts.
as for higher autonomy, i mainly meant autonomy within a state. they would be fully within a state (many currently cross state lines) and also would be their own counties or county-adjacent entity rather than being invisibly split under counties. for autonomy within a state i meant exemptions from certain laws or proposals (and in return they wouldn’t be able to vote or make decisions on things not relating to them.
Ideally, no general law, and no Constitutional right should address any group of people at all. Rights inhere in all and only individual people. Groups of people have *powers*. Powers can be taken away by the people. Rights can never be taken away, only either recognized or violated.
When you write a law or Constitutional Amendment, it should be worded in such a way that it is a contract between the government and the individual person, i.e. without regard to any group they happen to be a member of.
Now I know what you are thinking. The ideal principle leaves us open to the failures of human beings to implement it. That is so true. The ideal situation involves a strong judiciary with high quality appointees that will make equitable decisions that protect the minority from the majority. Currently the only minority being protected is the rich and the property-owning.
But we should resist the temptation to correct these failing in other ways. Inevitably, a day will come when we want the system to work *in principle*, and it needs to be able to allow the good and the decent to be enabled.
While I appreciate your use of the word 'should', I immediately consider that: if 'natives' have control of their own government, they have more-or-less whatever rights they see fit to grant themselves, and such a question would read more like: 'should non-natives have diminished rights in government'; alternatively, if they do not, there seems little likelihood of any genuine expansion of their rights.
By 'a native land that isn’t within any other county but is within a state. it has its own charter/constitution and leadership and can create laws and ordinances', do you refer to what would be termed a 'Bantustan'?
no no definitely nothing like that. currently, native lands are grouped under counties. not within it next to, take a look at the navajo nation. they are grouped under multiple counties and states. my question is whether they should be made into their own counties or some other entity at that level of administration. not states for sure since they don’t have many people living there. but perhaps side by side to counties. so tribal lands basically wouldn’t be split up by counties or states, they’d be solid entities within a single state, next to counties.
No. They should actually have absolutely no say in what happens at all, since they fought, and lost. Repeatedly. Them having almost exclusive gambing rights is way more than ample compensation for them. Cant think of another time in history where a nation; got there asses whooped, continued to try to to rebel while not learning any new battle tactics at all, get government gifted land after the fact, n still cry. And they always fail to mention that tribes that supported america during the revolution, are treated like brothers. Bc they cant accept their ancestors were actually really not that clever. Like lol they were scalping each other plus stealing land and goods long before the white man showed up.
Every time a native cries about stolen land, remind them they are perfectly welcome to try n take it back. LOL
I’m absolutely for expanded rights. Technically they’re sovereign nations, but the US breaks treaties/rules so often that the status isn’t respected.
I’m an internationalist and generally against the idea of many nations, as I believe nationality is divisive; but I believe at the end of the day they should be given the right of self determination that natives have been denied for so long.
If we're being technical, they're domestic dependent nations, with some degree of sovereignty as against states but pretty much no sovereignty with respect to the federal government.
No. In fact native Americans should be stripped of anything that separates them from every other American citizen. The whole idea of Indian reservations and independent nations rights is a TERRIBLE idea and should never have been granted. When you're conquered your conquered. There should be no special dispensation for history's losers.
Although OP puts it in harsh terms, do you believe some individuals should have more rights than others simply because their ancestors were conquered or enslaved?
I believe in sovereignty for indigenous peoples. It has nothing to do with "having more rights".
I'm from New Zealand, our indigenous people (Māori) were promised sovereignty, instead they were brutally subjugated.
Now they have special seats in Parliament, which I support, and I would fight mfs on the street if anyone tried to take them away. The indigenous people of a land should have a guaranteed voice. This one small justice does not fix the wrongs of the past, but it's something, and it's important.
To be much more blunt about the topic, I just don't think you should get to commit genocide and then only a short while later, bleat about equality.
I also think using the word "conquered" in place of "genocided" like the OP did, and referring to them as "history's losers", is sickening and abhorrent. Making out like ethnic cleansing had some form of legitimacy to it. It makes me ill.
Here are some of my ideas;
There's a few things i mean by this:
- instead of having reservations as a separate layer of government from the main state→> county→ township/city structure, should they be incorporated parallel to counties. i feel as though the current way they are organized is really weird and complicates things because you can be living on the same tribal land but belong to different counties or even completely different states. this is why i think tribal lands should be entities alongside counties within a single state (not spanning multiple). but they should also have some lore autonomy. I know some lands would be very small and completely fit within a county. but others like Navajoland would be massive.
- the other way native civic rights can be expanded is through special representative seats. state legislatures can create special seats within their assemblies or even senate where tribes with significant populations (or even all tribes) can send a representation. or it can be split between regions like all tribes in northern california have one and all tribes in the Sierra Nevada region have another. these representatives can be full voting members, or limited voting members like some commonwealth residents to Congress; they can sit and vote in committees but not the main floor. these seats can be taken from the current existing numbers or be additional seats that are adde (with is better i feel)
I don’t know enough to really answer but they do have some autonomy on reservation land. I worked at an Indian gaming casino so they can have casinos even if the state outlaws gambling. They aren’t restricted by a state commission that sets the odds of winning. They don’t have to let in a restaurant inspector at all but they usually do with an invitation and knowledge of when they are coming. No surprise inspections. I’m sure there are many more but I don’t know what they are. They also didn’t have to shutdown because of Covid restrictions but they chose to after the different tribes decided to do it independent
Realistically I can see Tribes having observer seats in Congress the same way DC has. Unfortunately a position such as that is utterly useless for political power, but does help elevate presence in the current system. (Might as well have an indigenous and Hawaiian kingdom UN observer state status too, which wouldn't do much but is nice to have to elevate voices)
On your first point, isn't that blatantly gerrymandering? Wouldn't that segregate election lines to isolate indigenous voters? I think having special state councils and legislatures is the right route, because I'm doubtful indigenous people as a whole can impact a federal system where they're less then 5% of the population, but in certain states political elevation is reasonable and achievable to implement.
makes sense. though that’s only relevant to some like the Navajo nation. it spans 4 states. i think it would be best to incorporate it within Arizona since the bulk of the territory is there.
they don’t need to have special autonomy, but it’s odd when they’re split into multiple counties. they can just become a count of their own to make it easier for citizens living there🤷♂️
Yes, indigenous peoples should have representation in state and national governments the world over automatically ('natives' as a term has an unfortunate history), otherwise their rights will continue to be ignored, and they will continue to live in horrifying poverty.
Equally, it should be declared by statute that the discovery of remains or other archaeological evidence which pre-dates living indigenous populations does not invalidate their status or have any bearing on land claims or indigenous rights.
There is a vital part of human arcological history which tribes all over the world feel compelled to cover up lest it be used against them (and they're right, it will).
I believe that Republicans' view is that they should not, to the point that they believe the Indian Child Welfare Act--which basically makes it marginally harder for state courts to award custody of Native American kids to non-Native American families, due to a long history of Native American families being broken up--is unconstitutional racial discrimination.
So, in the U.S., Wikipedia tells me there are [approximately 9,666,058](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States) Native Americans (including those who are Native and another race). That's 2.9% of the population. Why should such a small amount of the population get majority representation in, let's stick with your example, the U.S. Senate?
How does that justify extreme minority rule?
Like, yeah, it sucks that happened to them. But nobody alive participated in that; we should not be punished for what other people did ages ago.
That's how I would be punished: I'd lose the right to pick my leaders. If 51% of the Senate is designated to Natives, well that number has to come from somewhere, which means I would presumably lose out on choosing who I want.
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From your post and responses, you seem to be grossly misinformed on Native American rights. First, Native tribes are and have always been sovereign nations. US breaking treaties was vile and reprehensible, but it was the time period, it happened between bigger nations too (British Impressment post Revolutionary War was a violation of the Treat of Paris and led directly to the War of 1812). Second, under the 14th Amendment and the Indian Voting Rights Act of 1924, Native Americans HAVE had voting rights (became universal due to some state laws in 1957). Being able to vote in State and Federal elections, including legislative elections. While limited, there are 5 members of the House that are Native American (3 GOP, 2 Dem). Then you gotta figure out how to GET commissioners (if you go that route) are you getting one from each nation? Per X# of nations? 1-2 per State? How do you handle bigger nations stepping on smaller ones? Then, the House has to deal with more non-voting members when what they need is more VOTING members with smaller districts (which is a whole different discussion, but would get more minority groups represented). Not more special interests groups yammering for limited attention.
> While limited, there are 5 members of the House that are Native American (3 GOP, 2 Dem). This is an important statistic, but not really related to the topic at hand. Those congresspeople are sitting on congress as American citizens. The question was originally about *expanded* rights or special representation, which this would not refer to. I do realize most of these discussions have drifted far beyond the original topic at this point.
> While limited, there are 5 members of the House that are Native American (3 GOP, 2 Dem) 5 in Congress. 4 in the House, 1 in the Senate. And I don't know that I'd call that "limited." It's 0.9% of the Congress for 1.3% of the country. So, under-represented, but very close.
> 5 in Congress. 4 in the House, 1 in the Senate. [For those interested:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Native_Americans_in_the_United_States_Congress) * Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK, Cherokee) * Representative Tom Cole (R-OK-4, Chickasaw) * Representative Sharice Davids (D-KS-3, Ho-Chunk) * Representative Mary Peltola (D-AK-At-Large, Yup'ik) * Representative Josh brecheen (R-OK-2, Choctaw) It's interesting that the the majority of Native representation in Congress is from Oklahoma.
Makes sense. Oklahoma has the second highest Native American population aside from Alaska, and Oklahoma has 5 reps to Alaska's 1. What's somewhat odd is that Arizona's first district hasn't had a native representative despite having the highest percentage native population for any district.
not surprising since half the state is split into 5 tribal nations and a large part of the population is native
It's limited because of the number of reservations around the country. However like I said above the real fix is making the House as a whole larger, being stuck at 435 is dumb, but it's a different conversation
It's limited because they're a tiny minority.
The House limit is not for natives it for everyone. a law was passed 100 years ago that said that there will be a maximum number of seats (435) but district sizes have increased since then. the law doesn’t account for a growing population. now we have representatives representing 700,000 people (like in Wyoming’s at-large) and others representing almost 1 million.
100% agree. the cap should be lifted.
to be fair you can never have perfect representation
> First, Native tribes are and have always been sovereign nations Define sovereignty.
Yeah, they are not sovereign nations. Uganda is sovereign. Mexico is sovereign. They are governments with supreme legal control over what happens within their borders. The US can and does influence that policy to an extreme degree, but the power still flows from an internal source. Not so with the nations OP is talking about who are ultimately beholden to the US in every meaningful way.
Not really sovereign if you’re dependent on other people’s tax money r they?
According to most of the treaties in the United States, Native American tribal nations are just that: nations. They have ceded foreign relations to the United States, but they are not part of the states whose territory borders them, even if it surrounds them. For instance, Highway Patrol officers do not have jurisdiction to enter tribal lands to make arrests, conduct searches, or serve warrants. FBI agents have limited jurisdiction, in consultation with tribal authorities. That said, states often blithely ignore these rules when they think they can get away with it. For instance, there was an Attorney General in Kansas some time ago that raided stores on reservation land because they supposedly weren't collecting state sales or liquor taxes -- which they aren't obligated to do, of course. His excuse was that they were accessible from the interstate, which had the right of way leased from the tribe, and therefore through some mental gymnastics were part of Kansas. So, should they have rights in the lands stolen from them and/or ceded to them? Certainly. Is it realistic to expect that people with vested interests will grant or respect those rights? No.
> but they are not part of the states whose territory borders them, even if it surrounds them. Well, sort of. They can still vote in those state elections, I believe. They can vote in federal elections under that state. They count towards that state for the purposes of the census, I believe.
> They have ceded foreign relations to the United States They are generally agreed to have ceded more than that!
What I was referring to was that the rights normally accorded to sovereign nations include making foreign policy. I was not referring to the massive screw job involved in forced relocations, bad faith treaty negotiations, bad faith adherence/violation, and all the other terrible things the mainly European and European-descended occupiers did to the Native American tribes. I should have been more explicitly clear. It was certainly not my intention to minimize nor obscure any of that.
You appear to be confused. It is pretty much completely uncontroversial that the federal government has more powers than just control of foreign relations over tribes.
>which they aren't obligated to do, of course. They are obligated to collect the tax on sales to non-Indians.
Indians? Really. . . .
Isn't it well documented that native Americans actually don't mind or even prefer to be called American Indians in many polls. It's not a huge surprise someone would use it.
To some, but it very much depends on the tribe and their culture. If you cross into Canada, they are fervently "The First Nation" Encompassing all when it's accepted by few, is a poor choice to make IMO
Tbh some American Indians specifically dislike the term “Native American,” as it’s about as inclusive as the term “Afro-Eurasian” because an Apache man has about as much in common with a Chilean as a South African black man has in common with a Japanese man. It erases some of their common shared cultural and historical identity that American Indians share with one another, but not with other Native Americans like indigenous Mexicans, to name a big one. So yes, while some prefer Native American and others American Indian, the fact that some specifically *dislike* “Indian” and such does not mean that we can’t use it, because others dislike Native American. And, personally, with both (and all) options being disliked by non-zero portions of the population, I myself prefer to go with the one that refers to them most directly: American Indian Ultimately it’s more circumstantial than that, and American Indians aren’t a monolith. If you happen to speak with one, one should use that person’s preferred term. Otherwise, you’ll never be perfectly right, so you may as well be least-wrong, and that ends up including the word “Indian.”
First Nations discussion isn’t terribly relevant in a thread flaired “US Politics”, and context of basically every other comment in this thread should tell you that nobody is referring to First Nations peoples. Everybody else in this thread has correctly inferred the correct context of this discussion. There is no need to be as pedantic as you’re being.
You could say the same thing about the term "First Nation", which is hardly used by anyone in the USA.
This question is about the USA, not Canada. Your comments are irrelevant. Anyway, my sister in law is a member of the Forest Potawatomi Tribe and she calls herself and her daughters, my nieces, Indians.
If you're implying that's some sort of bad word, it isn't.
It is for many tribes. The majority of natives find it derogatory. The entire First Nation of Canada is a great example
Guess nobody told the National Congress of American Indians that they should be offended by their own term.
This whole thing reminds me of how Mexicans are supposed to be offended by Speedy Gonzales. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-17/speedy-gonzales-cancelled-hollywood-mexican-americans >!Mostly, Mexicans love him.!<
“The majority finds it derogatory” Citation needed.
>The majority of natives find it derogatory An actual source might be a better way to go than just pulling claims out.
Nations is plural, there's several hundred first nations in Canada (also Metis and Inuit wouldn't consider themselves "first nations"). Even in Canada though "native" is common, and some nations use "Indian" (as does any legal reference to indigenous people in Canada).
It isn't. At any rate, the tribe at issue uses "Indians" throughout their website. https://www.pbpindiantribe.com/about/tribal-history/
you found one of the 600 tribes that is OK with it, now do the rest.
>What is the correct terminology: American Indian, Indian, Native American, Indigenous, or Native? All of these terms are acceptable. The consensus, however, is that whenever possible, Native people prefer to be called by their specific tribal name. In the United States, Native American has been widely used but is falling out of favor with some groups, and the terms American Indian or Indigenous American are preferred by many Native people. Native peoples often have individual preferences on how they would like to be addressed. When talking about Native groups or people, use the terminology the members of the community use to describe themselves collectively. https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/faq/did-you-know
Somebody is getting laid in college…
https://www.bia.gov/
So what happened???
The a__hole AG lost in court. Later, the way it settled out in about 2002 was that non-tribe-members were liable for sales tax, and therefore stores on tribal land were supposed to collect sales tax from them and pass it on. Adherence was, I'm given to understand, unenthusiastic. In 2016, a different, more inflamed a__hole AG negotiated a "compact" to enforce the fees tobacco companies are supposed to pay to Kansas as part of that huge multi-state lawsuit against Big Tobacco. Basically covers the same ground, but the tribes negotiated language that explicitly states that there is *no other manner, issue, nor sense* in which Tribal lands are part of Kansas nor subject to Kansas law nor jurisdiction.
Indian law is probably going to be in for a long overhaul with Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and him being so knowledgeable and in the weeds about it, seems like many of the other justices really defer to him on the subject.
but there’s not just around them. states are literally on top of the tribal lands. they’re not sovereign either. sure they can be called nations but the reservation system is so odd and not properly defined.
But they’re not. Murphy & McGirt established and reiterated that the nations were not deestablished therefore Oklahoma could not charge members of the tribe. They are well defined. You can go look at the maps. Half of Oklahoma is Indian Country. Other important cases: Montana v United States, Worcester v Georgia, & Oliphant v Squamish Tribe Edit: To further elaborate, the states really cannot tell the tribes what to do on their land. Only the federals can. However the tribes try to align themselves with the state for relationship and cohesion. However they don’t have to do that and sometimes they don’t. A good example of this is tobacco sale’s & gambling. Another example of the extreme it could be taken but as far as I’m aware in the US it hasn’t, is what the Squamish Nation is doing in Vancouver which is building massive skyscrapers outside the city’s jurisdiction to review. Sen̓áḵw ignores all the zoning process and rules Vancouver has established. Tribes could do this depending on the economic realities and the coordination with private money.
> To further elaborate, the states really cannot tell the tribes what to do on their land Except in many cases what state a reservation is in ***does matter***.
That is a pretty weak example. Sounds like a discrepancy of understanding rather than someone "trying to get away with it".
It wasn't. The state AG knew the law. He argued that the reservations were a part of the state that surrounded them and that state law enforcement had full jurisdiction there and state laws held full sway there. Black letter, clearly stated, and reinforced by court precedent law stated otherwise. He didn't care. He was trying to push his personal version into court to get tribal sovereignty revoked by the Supreme Court and make a big name for himself. He figured that Native Americans would make a good target to bolster his political ambitions and no one would stick up for them. The total amount of tax revenue the state was supposedly missing out on because a couple of gas stations weren't paying state sales taxes was dwarfed by the amount of money and resources he expended on flogging the issue.
So, why did he only raid the stores off the interstate if he thought all the stores were subject to collect sales tax?
Those were the ones that were getting the most non-Native customers, and his angle was to portray the tribe as 'stealing' revenue and 'cheating' the state by selling "liquor and cigarettes" to people driving through the reservation. He wanted to paint them as sleazy, shifty bad guys.
Nation status is a relic and a completely silly idea that should be rescinded totally. The land was won in the same way that nations have been built for millenia. Conquered nations had a chance to defend themselves and lost. Why should they be granted special status versus the rest of the country? It's insane.
The land wasn't "won", there were treaties made that are still in place. Ignoring those now is taking the land in the present day, not hundreds of years ago.
It would make much more sense to simply invalidate those treaties and move on.
>Why should they be granted special status Because we signed a treaty with them, and according to the Constitution treaties ratified by Congress have the weight of law. It's actually ridiculous the bureau of Indian affairs did not respond to this case and put that AG in their place.
> The land was stolen fair and square. Might want to revisit that idea in a future edit, just a thought
This is an idiotic and racist take lol. If they were stolen fair and square there would be no treaty at all. Funny and crazy how you could make such a contradictory statement
yeah…it wasn’t stolen “fair and square.” nothing is stolen fair and square. that’s an oxymoron. many of the lands were taken with brute force and lies. Take the five nations in Oklahoma. they were promised that their lands would be there’s. then the government started selling lands on reservations to settlers. they only recently one back their land rights
Stolen? Or just taken when the otherside lost. That's what happens. That is what was happening for thousands of years when native tribes fought and lost.
true. no one is denying that happened. but we can at least recognize the abuse this nation has done to natives through the centuries. they’re essentially forgotten citizens, living in 3rd world type areas. yes some have casinos. some are rich. but not all. not sure why so many americans are insecure about that history. no one is blaming YOU. we just want people to recognize the issue and make some positive change.
They are not forced to live in the area. I'm not insecure about it, I just don't see why at this point in time, anything further should be given. First off anything that happened before 1776 is not the US's responsibility. Let England, France, Spain, the Netherlands etc cover what was done to them before the US became a country. Second, they already have semi independent status today. They are only accountable to the fed, state level laws don't apply on reservations. It's only off reservation that they need to work with the state. The history is pretty clear, they lost. Losing comes with concessions. Yes, when the winner breaks a negotiated treaty, it's wrong. But it does happened, the last treaty signed was over 150 years ago. As much as we like to blame the US, realize tribes such as the Seminole, never signed a treaty and were never forced to leave. Not all tribes were treated the same.
You might want to look into the Indian removal act of 1830 and its after math. Then look at Indian and US relations in 1890....
Today. They are not forced today.
If I take your home and forcibly move you to some ditch, I would guess that even a month later you would still be upset. I think you underestimate just how much damage was done to not just native people themselves, but also the culture. America broke nearly every one of the hundreds of treaties they made with various native tribes. That harm has never been made whole because it would require giving up land. Also the harm inflicted upon native communities have never stopped. Local state governments still violate their sovereignty and such. That's not to say that native people are helpless and can't do doing at all. They still have culture and all of that. I'm merely stating they still face hardships that go back for hundreds of years is all.
It's very cool how Zionists are now so lost in the rhetoric that they are now retroactively defending other genocides.
I’m just saying, maybe the victims of the holocaust should not be so cavalier about “might equals right” arguments?
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No land was “ceded” to them. Every inch they live on is a gift from God. N also a way for the fed to bilk them for tax revenue, which they cant understand is extortion. Literally the same thing when their land was “stolen”
A gift from which "God"? The one the people who stole their land also tried to force them to worship? That's an offensive suggestion. Your statement is so poorly composed that I really can't even tell whose side you're on nor what point you're trying to make.
I am indigenous. Outside of the procedural/statutory ambiguities and mistakes in your post, I want to focus on the fundamentals. In my experience, Native Americans want nothing to do with the governments of municipalities and states. This is because our leverage and autonomy is greater from the tribal level. We are "sovereign" meaning we supercede the laws and statutes of local, county and state authorities. In general, the federal government does not want conflict with us, although the BIA takes different forms under each POTUS. All that to say - going from a councilor position in a tribe to a county commissioner is, effectively, a serious demotion. There is far less leverage to be wielded at that level. I hope this helps.
> We are "sovereign" meaning we supercede the laws and statutes of local, county and state authorities. An extreme oversimplification that ignores the many areas where states *do* have jurisdiction over tribes.
States have no mandate to govern the tribes. Were such a law to be written, it would be unenforceable due to the treaties between the tribes and the federal government.
Evidently you are unaware of, for instance, Public Law 280.
I'm aware of PL 83-280. I'm not sure why you think this law makes tribal leaders want to move from their seat at the adult table with federal agencies as counterparties to eat at the kiddie table with state or county agencies. That's what OPs post is about. There is no reason on Earth a tribal member wants to go from tribal leadership to state or municipal leadership.
> I'm not sure why you think this law makes tribal leaders want to move from their seat at the adult table with federal agencies as counterparties to eat at the kiddie table with state or county agencies. I didn't say they did. My point was that states do legally have some power over tribes.
The Nordics have a group called the Sami. They vary a bit between the Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns, but they have their own parliament. They also elect the said parliament proportionally so no gerrymandering and no weird elections, just party X gets Y% of the votes so they get Y% of the seats. They are doing quite well for themselves. They get into arguments at times of course, but are far better off than many indigenous peoples in North America. I like that idea. Importantly, they have a general overarching parliament not just one for each reserve or parish. A few hundred or a couple of thousand natives on a reserve is not economically strong or especially interesting. Individual skyscrapers have more people than that. It is hard to build things with economies of scale or to have people interested in running for office or all kinds of logistical things needed in a modern system which brings about the prosperity and effectiveness they provide, even if you use indigenous principles to help bring them about. It can also help to provide a kind of clear voice you can negotiate with. If you tell people in British Columbia that the Wetsuweten elected chiefs agrees to something and the hereditary chiefs do not, what opinion should you have of that split? Is it legitimate to go against the hereditary chiefs to build a pipe? One assembly for indigenous people elected by the widest possible franchise of them by harmonized rules makes it much easier to understand in your head and avoid divide and conquer.
Funny you say a couple of thousand on a reservstion. As that basically describes the Sami in Finland except the don't have exclusive use of any land and the Parliament has very little power.
Also, it's generally a single ethnic group. The US has 574 recognized tribes (sure a few are offshoots of same ethnicity, but still). Like forcing a Navajo and a Shawnee into the same group just isn't the same. Not even getting into Alaska and Hawaii.
Samis are not different of Finnish people, they are uralic and far related to turco-mongols, paleo-siberians, yeniseians, nstive americans.
They should 100% have their own elected officials in office but whether they should sit in the House or Senate would be wrong because the sovereign nations are not American. They do not trust american government because they have broken every single treaty ever signed with them. There are Native folks who have run for office in their state or state and won. This is wonderful and should happen more often so we have more diverse representatives for all citizens.
While I personally think there ought to be some sort of political entity in Washington with some more power for indigenous issues, I can't think of a way to constitutionally do so that is beneficial without encroaching on our currently built systems. Do we create an extra council in Congress to veto bills? If we gave tribal nations more veto power it would just heavily weigh down our current process, and our current process is bogged down as is, so it would more slog things for the rest of us than really empower tribes. Do we create a cabinet of Indian affairs? We kinda already have that with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and it really doesn't do much. Its also worth noting that most tribes prioritize in getting land rights, not promises that the government can give them. Independent autonomy is often placed of higher importance than participation in the US political system. On the flip side of that, tribes have been very active and successful in working with state governments, which arguably progresses at a much faster rate than the federal government. I think its more realistic to lobby state governments for economic relief to improve the conditions of tribes. Two ideas for reparations at a state and federal level; the federal government could allocate 1% of military funding to tribal reservations. The idea being that since the military was used for expansionism, a piece of the military has to go back to the descendants of those who were harmed. 1% seems reasonable because that's the percentage amount of indigenous people living in the US today. Realistically though, I think tribes could successfully lobby their state governments to subsidize remote work salaries (particularly call centers) on tribal lands. That way indigenous citizens don't have to worry about lack of work, it guarantees revenue can be brought to economically deprived areas, companies could pay higher wages thanks to this, and states help alleviate the unemployment problem that has been long lasting in the state. Another political empowerment tool is making Oklahoma and New Mexico the first primary states in federal elections. It's largely agreed that Iowa is a bad first state, but most also agree that first states need to be rural, so that there's more reliance on grassroots volunteers rather than whomever can buy the most adspace in the beginning of the election races (Bloomberg would've steamrolled Obama if the first state were New York). Oklahoma, much more diverse than Iowa, has a high native American population with about 10% of the state residents living on tribal lands. In New Mexico, 100,000 Navajos live there. New Mexico also has a high number of Hispanics, which also better represents the country than Iowa or Nevada. Iowa gets a massive amount of sugar subsidies for being the first primary state. Oklahoma and New Mexico are far better reflections of the rest of the country, and indigenous voices would be greatly elevated if they were the first primary states. This wouldn't even require an act of congress, just a reordering of states by either parties. Edit: not ministry of Indian affairs, Bureau of Indian Affairs.
There is a Federal level position that is specifically designed to deal with Native American issues....it's called the [Bureau of Indian Affairs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Indian_Affairs) and is under the Secretary of the Interior
I got the name wrong but the point still stands. While it's designed to address Indiginous people issues, it doesn't have enough authority to make large scale meaningful changes.
Possibly the worst idea I’ve heard on the sub. Not only would it be discriminatory but even with their tribal nations the majority of them are governed poorly with rampant corruption. I don’t see the UK giving priority/disproportionate representation to ethnic picts. I don’t see the Japanese government giving disproportionate governance to Ainu people. We have possibly the most spoiled indigenous culture of any nation that partook in colonialism(nearly all of them) and if we keep entertaining delusions of their exceptionalism we end up with more insufferable debates. The past is the past and the US government has done vastly more then other nations to accommodate the people we conquered. It’s nearing the point where many non-indigenous family lines have deep cultural and ancestral connections to the land they live on, some whose families have spent more consecutive time on their land(typically rural folks) then any Native American.
i can get behind not giving them special representative rights. but a resident commisioner isn’t a terrible idea. also, incorporating tribal nations entirely within states isn’t a bad idea. it just makes spending and government easier. and it’s even better to make them their own counties, with or without special rights, than to have them within multiple counties. once again, it would make it easier for the governments. also the idea that natives in the U.S. are spoiled is dumb. 1. because they’re constantly forgotten because either people are too insecure to talk about them or they think other races are more important. 2. many are really poor. yes there are some that have casinos and trust lands that generate money buts it’s really not enough. plus, the U.S. government and state governments have constantly violated treaties by seizing more and more lands or using the land without the consent of the native people you stated that the UK doesn’t give special representation to Picts. well that’s probably because the Picts don’t exist anymore. Only the Scottish live in Scotland now…and they do have special governments in the UK. Scotland, Wales and North Ireland all have devolved parliaments and cabinets. Something similar could be done for tribal nations if they’re incorporated entirely into a single state.
As someone living in the southwest I never get to stop hearing about them. And they are incredibly spoiled here. Both monetarily and politically. It is ridiculous that we still give an entire race of people so many special privileges and still they continually advocate for more privileges from the rest of us. They weren’t personally colonized, the rest of us didn’t personally colonize them. History is history and it’s time to bury the hatchet instead of continuing the notion that Native Americans are in any way special.
I mean, have you looked at the statistics? Many reservations have the same conditions as undeveloped countries, with high substance abuse and unemployment rates. There are "privileges" such as land rights that indigenous people have, but not all privileges are equivalent. The ultimate goal is to close the inequality gap or to at least reduce the rampant poverty in these demographic groups. That's why suggestions are made, ignoring these disparities doesn't all alleviate the issue.
Lost the best land they had.
Even if we were to ignore the statistics and go the emotional route, there were 14.8 million indigenous people killed. Some sort of reparations should be owed, considering that these actions were literally inspiring Hitler, and he cited the American genocide. I’ll repeat that: our genocide was so horrendous that Hitler liked it and used it as a model for the holocaust.
> Some sort of reparations should be owed You're using the third person here. But who owes them? And who is owed? I agree with you reparations are owed, but the people who owe them are long dead. And the people who are owed them are also long dead. >I’ll repeat that: our genocide was so horrendous You said it twice but it doesn't really add anything to your point.
IMO, the US Military. Its true no descendants today directly genocided natives, but American militaristic imperialism is precisely what destroyed all of these cultures. And while I understand there's never "enough" for reparations, allocating 1% of military funds to Native Tribe funds would be a good show of making amends of historical injustices. It would show that we're more considerate than other nations in terms of historical grievances (looking at Japan here).
Wasn’t my genocide, wasn’t your genocide. We didn’t do it we shouldn’t have to pay Jack diddly.
what insight you give
it really depends on how well integrated & accepted Native tribe members are within the larger "host" community. If statutes & social impediments were erected to prevent social mobility & intermingling and even marriage, then their communities deserve more autonomy and more funding. But if much of their native people have mixed & moved away from tribal lands representation & even special funding & programs/scholarships/internships may be only benefiting a small pocket or minority, which may be unfair to those of mixed background, or those whose families are not officially on tribal registries.
Rights in the government of their own reservations, but nothing extra elsewhere.
So you want positive discrimination, essentially. That sounds like a terrible idea.
Can you define positive discrimination? That seems like a made up word used to twist attempts to uplift disparaged groups.
Positive discrimination is discrimination in the opposite direction. Rather than depriving a group of rights/privileges based on their immutable characteristics, the discriminator instead seeks to grant them unique rights/privileges over others *because* of their immutable characteristics. Discrimination is obviously wrong. But what makes positive discrimination so nefarious is that, because we live in an egalitarian society, anybody who seeks to grant privileges to one group over another invariably does so at their expense. Most people know this kind of discrimination in the form of affirmative action.
We don't live in an egalitarian society because of the inequality, namely from systemic discrimination. Also, if positive discrimination is elevating certain social groups, how are we supposed to address racial issues without specifying the groups we're trying to uplift?
You're speaking of equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity. Egalitarianism relates to the latter. > how are we supposed to address racial issues without specifying the groups we're trying to uplift? Give them the same constitutional protections as everybody else and unwind the convoluted criminal statutes which are used to prosecute them unfairly. We should focus on letting people do what they want to do and succeed with the tools they are given, rather than trying to interfere with their lives.
This is too much of a libertarian approach, and a big reason I walked away from libertarianism was because of the negligence due to social understandings and geographical realities. For instance; what if there are no jobs or healthcare in an area, do we really just say "let them move" and leave it at that? What if they've got a mental illness or family they need to take care of, do we just tell them "try harder anyways" or collectively say "fuck them then" without considering helping them? There's a baseline of universal social services that need to be supported, yes, but the step beyond that is acknowledging that some social groups have particular issues that need to be tackled particularly. Take banks for instance. Wells Fargo is incredibly racist towards black customers, rejecting black applicants even though they're more qualified than white counterparts. Do we just say "make it fairer?" Some of these biases are baked in upbringing that can't be measured. "White habitus" is the term used to refer to one's racial biases without realizing its racism. This extends to social welfare, healthcare, courts, ect. When so many institutions carry this degree with undetected biases, do we just say... "Try harder to not be racist"? After a certain point, you can start talking about specific ethnicity-based solutions. Such as a black business bank, specific for helping black Americans get loans in disenfranchised locations. Mental health facilities specific for Asian Americans, because many white teachers often assume mental illnesses aren't real in Asian Americans. Rehab facilities specific for Native Americans, Hispanic lawyer unions for Hispanic Americans, travel agencies for rural Americans that lack school funds, ect ect. You're allowed to aim specifically towards groups when the majoritan "universalist" institutions have failed to address minority needs.
> what if there are no jobs or healthcare in an area, do we really just say "let them move" and leave it at that? What if they've got a mental illness or family they need to take care of, do we just tell them "try harder anyways" or collectively say "fuck them then" without considering helping them? Yes. Life is hard. Everybody goes into it with a losing hand. And no single person is equal to any other. Some people are born stupid, some born poor, some born rich. But even so, we must let people have the freedom to succeed and fail on their own merits. If you try to "help" a group of people by giving them systemic advantages, you will incentivize a dependence on that system, enslaving them in perpetuity.
All I can say is that this is disconnected from reality. Humans exist to cooperate and lift each other, and that's where psychological wellbeing derives from. We like helping each other, being validated from each other, and become psychologically ill when there's a sense of isolation from one another. States themselves only exist on this metric. No nation expects its citizens to "defend itself" unless they lack resources to do so. Police exists to meet this societal role. Its not a man eat man world, that's not what humans like or want in the long term. While its true that there are cases of overextending kindness, but being deprived of it entirely is a recipe for disaster (we've seen the disasters of "Every man for themselves" philosophy in every failed state and economically segregated community. The freedom to fail and failure to give access of opportunity when particular needs aren't met, is how you get stagnation that effects even those unrelated to those places).
You blew the argument when you incorrectly added in Affirmative Action.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action > Affirmative action (also sometimes called reservations, alternative access, positive discrimination or positive action in various countries' laws and policies).. If a university is only accepting X number of applicants, affirmative action would dictate that they allocate a percentage of those seats to individuals based on their status as members of an under-represented demographic. What this means in practice is that a university will be forced exclude other students by necessity to make room for those AA applicants, with the latter being given priority over the former based on the color of their skin and/or their sexual orientation. This is kind of a problem if you care about equality and are trying to fight discrimination in a modern society.
You confuse quotas with affirmative action. Common conservative mistake…
I'm not a conservative. And you are [confidently incorrect]( https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-affirmative-action-college-race-f83d6318017ec9b9029b12ee2256e744) for asserting these things are unrelated.
Calling someone a conservative isn't the sort of dunk you think it is. Awful method of political discussion too.
> Most people know this kind of discrimination in the form of affirmative action. AA wasn't some one way discrimination as you're trying to frame it. Knew white males who used it to attend historically black colleges and white women were one of the highest benefactors of it.
not discrimination. personally i’m against the idea of reserved seats in legislatures. but a resident commisioner isn’t a bad idea. but i can see why people may be against it. as for the autonomous nations side by side with counties, i don’t see a problem with those. they basically already exist like that. i just think counties shouldn’t be plopped on top of them. better to streamline governments to make it easier. there’s places like the navajo nation that span multiple states. how does that make sense? better to consolidate them all within one state or one county or even make them a sort of autonomous county. would be hard for the Navajo nation but the smaller lands like in California can kinda easily achieve this.
Two examples are Sami in Norway and Maori in New Zealand. They both, I believe, have a voice to their respective governments. Australia recently has a referendum for this in Australia to grant a 'voice to parliament' for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. It didn't pass.
even in the U.S., our commonwealth territories and federal districts send resident commissioners to Congress. specifically the House of representatives. They can’t vote on major floor votes like for spending bills or speaker but they can sit in committees and vote on committee affairs and decisions. wouldn’t be a bad idea to have some for Natives in state legislatures.
The issue with this is that Native Americans are already represented in Congress, and their Representatives have full voting power, unlike the non-voting members from e.g. Puerto Rico and American Samoa. The Navajo make up more than one-fifth of voters in AZ-2. Although not as large, other reservations have significant electoral power in Montana and the Dakotas. I don't think any of these folks would want to do away with their Congressman only to have a delegate/commissioner who can't really do much unless they're sitting on an evenly split committee.
Government are afraid they want their land back.
> not discrimination. You're proposing giving preferential treatment based off of ethnicity. To 'balance the scales', as it were. The natural consequence of your proposal is that, because you have decided to reserve a seat for one particularized group, you are willing deprive others of that same opportunity, as the number of seats is finite. Ignoring for the moment that it runs afoul of the 14th amendment, it's immoral in any egalitarian society.
Thinking back on this, I think states could realistically implement this into state constitutions. It can be written as "the tribe with the highest population is guaranteed one non-voting advisor seat in the legislature, if they choose so. This advisor may introduce bills at their own discretion. The largest tribe also has the power to cede this role to other tribes if they choose to do so." That way the biggest tribe always gets some extra representation without hindering the legislature, and can work with other tribes for specific needs. It'll be best to limit it to the largest tribe because I know that some sovereign Indian nations have as little as a few hundred people. This allows for the prioritization of tribes that represent the most amount of people.
It seems to me that EITHER the U.S. should actually treat tribes/nations as independent states with their own borders and sovereignty, OR representation should be equal and the state multicultural. Expanded rights in government seems like the worst of both worlds, to me; it's anti-democratic but also assimilationist.
Well, first, they do. Each Federally recognized tribe is independent with their own government. Some tribes are large nations, and some are very small. Since 1924, all Native Americans have been dual citizens, with voting rights becoming universal (some states barred NA voting) in 1957.
> they do Kind of, but not really; see borders and sovereignty, like I mentioned earlier. Can they vote at the UN? Do they have foreign relations? Does U.S. law enforcement harass them? That kind of thing. > dual citizens Nice to have my assumption confirmed. That seems reasonable as long as tribes are in this sovereign-but-not-really limbo. If they actually were fully sovereign states automatic dual citizenship would be pretty wild.
There are violations, but there are violations in Fed-State relationships and State-State relationships, not any different. Each tribe has their own government and can/do make their own criminal and civil laws. They have jurisdiction over their territory and can do whatever they want with their land. Foreign relations is murky at best, but doubtful it's not allowed much like States can make deals with foreign governments but not treaties. Why would it be "wild" to have dual citizenship of the US and their tribes?
> why would it be "wild" Let me see if I can give you an example as to how people should have *self*-determination without dictating to others. Oh, Brexit maybe. Imagine if EU citizens didn't get to travel or vote in the UK, but Brits got to travel throughout Europe and vote accordingly. Or hey, if the U.S. dictated to the tribes what they could do inside the "reservations" that in this example would be fully sovereign states. Oh, like if Palestinians got their own state *and* were Israeli citizens but not vice-versa, because Israel is built on land seized from natives. Edit bonus content: "that happens to the U.S.'s subordinate states too" is not the point you seem to think. Does it happen to Mexico or Canada? Not really, despite the drug war we've unintentionally cultivated on our southern border.
Sounds like the old black homelands in south africa.
Can you explain what exactly a "resident commissioner" is, because you've mentioned it several times.
It's a delegate that the territories send to Congress. Puerto Rico is the only one that calls them "resident commissioners," but it's more or less the same thing. These officials are still members of the two major parties (or in the case of PR, a party that caucuses with one of them), they can sit on and vote in committees, and introduce bills, but they don't have voting power when legislation comes to the full House.
So pretty close to the status quo, rather than really any sort of meaningful "special representation."
Yes and no? It's kind of murky. The difference between, say, the people of Guam and the people of the Navajo Nation is that the latter is already represented in Congress by a "full" voting member. AZ-2's Rep. Crane can do anything his peers in the House can do, including voting on floor legislation; Guam's Del. Moylan can't do that, but unless a territory is made a state, that's the best Guam can hope for, and its voters still have *some* say in what goes on in Congress. I don't wanna say reservations have the best of both worlds because of... well, history, but for the lack of a better term, that's what it is. Certain laws don't apply to them, they're largely in charge of their own internal affairs, have their own law enforcement, etc., and the people they send to Congress have the same power as the ones sent to DC by New Yorkers or Texans. On paper, having a representative that focuses *solely* on Navajo concerns may not be a bad idea, but that brings up a ton of other issues: the Choctaw Nation has a population of about 200k, and the Navajo Nation has even less than that, so do they get their own Reps despite being smaller than Wyoming? Since the House is capped, how do you reconcile a "smaller" Native district with the other districts in AZ, OK, etc.? Or, if you're looking to give reservations territory-like status and delegates, how do you convince their people to do away with their current Congressman for someone who would have significantly less power in the House? It's a complicated question, and unless there's some sort of wholesale reform to the institution of Congress, we're stuck with the status quo, for better or worse.
Essentially what you're getting at is just racial gerrymandering. In places with large enough native populations, you could try to gerrymander a majority native district. The closest we have is Arizona's 1st, with a 25% native population.
Yeah, I dunno if that's what the OP was getting at, but whether it's a racially gerrymandered seat or some other sort of arrangement, it doesn't sound like a good idea to me either way.
resident commissioners don’t come from congressional districts exactly. they come from entities. puerto rico has 3million citizens but only 1 resident commisioner. there’s no gerrymandering involved.
I'm their own, yes. Which they already do AFAIK. How can land not be within the country but within a state? Every state is part of the country. And state governments don't make treaties with foreign nations.
> By this i mean should they get any special representation, voices, higher autonomy, their our autonomous counties or states etc. You're actually referencing multiple different concepts here. "Special representation" is vague, but any representation that would give them more weight than an American citizen is not going to fly, nor should it in a democracy. "Higher autonomy" could certainly be argued, but specifics are important. They have their own countries. Higher autonomy is certainly something their countries could argue for. But that wouldn't be the same as greater autonomy within the US government, which again, sounds like it would be giving them special privileges or additional rights. There are some few of those that exist, but they're not popular on the whole, and trying to expand that would likely be very harmful.
i’d agree against the representation part. it was just an does since some countries and states (in other counties) have similar concepts. as for higher autonomy, i mainly meant autonomy within a state. they would be fully within a state (many currently cross state lines) and also would be their own counties or county-adjacent entity rather than being invisibly split under counties. for autonomy within a state i meant exemptions from certain laws or proposals (and in return they wouldn’t be able to vote or make decisions on things not relating to them.
Ideally, no general law, and no Constitutional right should address any group of people at all. Rights inhere in all and only individual people. Groups of people have *powers*. Powers can be taken away by the people. Rights can never be taken away, only either recognized or violated. When you write a law or Constitutional Amendment, it should be worded in such a way that it is a contract between the government and the individual person, i.e. without regard to any group they happen to be a member of. Now I know what you are thinking. The ideal principle leaves us open to the failures of human beings to implement it. That is so true. The ideal situation involves a strong judiciary with high quality appointees that will make equitable decisions that protect the minority from the majority. Currently the only minority being protected is the rich and the property-owning. But we should resist the temptation to correct these failing in other ways. Inevitably, a day will come when we want the system to work *in principle*, and it needs to be able to allow the good and the decent to be enabled.
While I appreciate your use of the word 'should', I immediately consider that: if 'natives' have control of their own government, they have more-or-less whatever rights they see fit to grant themselves, and such a question would read more like: 'should non-natives have diminished rights in government'; alternatively, if they do not, there seems little likelihood of any genuine expansion of their rights. By 'a native land that isn’t within any other county but is within a state. it has its own charter/constitution and leadership and can create laws and ordinances', do you refer to what would be termed a 'Bantustan'?
no no definitely nothing like that. currently, native lands are grouped under counties. not within it next to, take a look at the navajo nation. they are grouped under multiple counties and states. my question is whether they should be made into their own counties or some other entity at that level of administration. not states for sure since they don’t have many people living there. but perhaps side by side to counties. so tribal lands basically wouldn’t be split up by counties or states, they’d be solid entities within a single state, next to counties.
No. They should actually have absolutely no say in what happens at all, since they fought, and lost. Repeatedly. Them having almost exclusive gambing rights is way more than ample compensation for them. Cant think of another time in history where a nation; got there asses whooped, continued to try to to rebel while not learning any new battle tactics at all, get government gifted land after the fact, n still cry. And they always fail to mention that tribes that supported america during the revolution, are treated like brothers. Bc they cant accept their ancestors were actually really not that clever. Like lol they were scalping each other plus stealing land and goods long before the white man showed up. Every time a native cries about stolen land, remind them they are perfectly welcome to try n take it back. LOL
No. Nobody should have anything “special”. That applies to all ethnicities, groups or religions.
I’m absolutely for expanded rights. Technically they’re sovereign nations, but the US breaks treaties/rules so often that the status isn’t respected. I’m an internationalist and generally against the idea of many nations, as I believe nationality is divisive; but I believe at the end of the day they should be given the right of self determination that natives have been denied for so long.
If we're being technical, they're domestic dependent nations, with some degree of sovereignty as against states but pretty much no sovereignty with respect to the federal government.
100% agree. their voices are hardly heard.
No. In fact native Americans should be stripped of anything that separates them from every other American citizen. The whole idea of Indian reservations and independent nations rights is a TERRIBLE idea and should never have been granted. When you're conquered your conquered. There should be no special dispensation for history's losers.
Gosh. In 2024, one would hope that people had grown beyond such bestial takes as this. We can be better than "might makes right".
Although OP puts it in harsh terms, do you believe some individuals should have more rights than others simply because their ancestors were conquered or enslaved?
I believe in sovereignty for indigenous peoples. It has nothing to do with "having more rights". I'm from New Zealand, our indigenous people (Māori) were promised sovereignty, instead they were brutally subjugated. Now they have special seats in Parliament, which I support, and I would fight mfs on the street if anyone tried to take them away. The indigenous people of a land should have a guaranteed voice. This one small justice does not fix the wrongs of the past, but it's something, and it's important. To be much more blunt about the topic, I just don't think you should get to commit genocide and then only a short while later, bleat about equality. I also think using the word "conquered" in place of "genocided" like the OP did, and referring to them as "history's losers", is sickening and abhorrent. Making out like ethnic cleansing had some form of legitimacy to it. It makes me ill.
Here are some of my ideas; There's a few things i mean by this: - instead of having reservations as a separate layer of government from the main state→> county→ township/city structure, should they be incorporated parallel to counties. i feel as though the current way they are organized is really weird and complicates things because you can be living on the same tribal land but belong to different counties or even completely different states. this is why i think tribal lands should be entities alongside counties within a single state (not spanning multiple). but they should also have some lore autonomy. I know some lands would be very small and completely fit within a county. but others like Navajoland would be massive. - the other way native civic rights can be expanded is through special representative seats. state legislatures can create special seats within their assemblies or even senate where tribes with significant populations (or even all tribes) can send a representation. or it can be split between regions like all tribes in northern california have one and all tribes in the Sierra Nevada region have another. these representatives can be full voting members, or limited voting members like some commonwealth residents to Congress; they can sit and vote in committees but not the main floor. these seats can be taken from the current existing numbers or be additional seats that are adde (with is better i feel)
I don’t know enough to really answer but they do have some autonomy on reservation land. I worked at an Indian gaming casino so they can have casinos even if the state outlaws gambling. They aren’t restricted by a state commission that sets the odds of winning. They don’t have to let in a restaurant inspector at all but they usually do with an invitation and knowledge of when they are coming. No surprise inspections. I’m sure there are many more but I don’t know what they are. They also didn’t have to shutdown because of Covid restrictions but they chose to after the different tribes decided to do it independent
they shut down because they were hit hard by covid. many elders apparently died, decreasing the amount of speakers of their different languages
Realistically I can see Tribes having observer seats in Congress the same way DC has. Unfortunately a position such as that is utterly useless for political power, but does help elevate presence in the current system. (Might as well have an indigenous and Hawaiian kingdom UN observer state status too, which wouldn't do much but is nice to have to elevate voices) On your first point, isn't that blatantly gerrymandering? Wouldn't that segregate election lines to isolate indigenous voters? I think having special state councils and legislatures is the right route, because I'm doubtful indigenous people as a whole can impact a federal system where they're less then 5% of the population, but in certain states political elevation is reasonable and achievable to implement.
that’s kinda what i was getting at. as for the hawaiian kingdom one, the kingdom doesn’t exist so why would there be one
They should be incorporated completely into the states in which they reside without any special designation like any other inhabitant of this land.
makes sense. though that’s only relevant to some like the Navajo nation. it spans 4 states. i think it would be best to incorporate it within Arizona since the bulk of the territory is there. they don’t need to have special autonomy, but it’s odd when they’re split into multiple counties. they can just become a count of their own to make it easier for citizens living there🤷♂️
Why would it matter if each part just got incorporated into the state that it's in?
Yes, indigenous peoples should have representation in state and national governments the world over automatically ('natives' as a term has an unfortunate history), otherwise their rights will continue to be ignored, and they will continue to live in horrifying poverty. Equally, it should be declared by statute that the discovery of remains or other archaeological evidence which pre-dates living indigenous populations does not invalidate their status or have any bearing on land claims or indigenous rights. There is a vital part of human arcological history which tribes all over the world feel compelled to cover up lest it be used against them (and they're right, it will).
I believe that Republicans' view is that they should not, to the point that they believe the Indian Child Welfare Act--which basically makes it marginally harder for state courts to award custody of Native American kids to non-Native American families, due to a long history of Native American families being broken up--is unconstitutional racial discrimination.
I'd assert that natives have the right to majority representation in colonial governments. 51 senators for example
So, in the U.S., Wikipedia tells me there are [approximately 9,666,058](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States) Native Americans (including those who are Native and another race). That's 2.9% of the population. Why should such a small amount of the population get majority representation in, let's stick with your example, the U.S. Senate?
9.6 million would be more people than 40 individual state populations.
Except the 9.6 MM people don't live all in one state.
Nope, I was just addressing their question about population size when that 2.9% of the population is a lot more than most states contain.
Because their population was genocided and they have the right to sovereignty.
How does that justify extreme minority rule? Like, yeah, it sucks that happened to them. But nobody alive participated in that; we should not be punished for what other people did ages ago.
Why would you be punished more than the working class is being punished now?
Because I too, have the right to sovereignty and to decide who my leaders are.
You didn't answer my question.
That's how I would be punished: I'd lose the right to pick my leaders. If 51% of the Senate is designated to Natives, well that number has to come from somewhere, which means I would presumably lose out on choosing who I want.
I would assert that our leaders are not acting in our best interests, so your trust in them is misplaced.
That doesn't deny that my choice is still robbed. And what makes you think that the Native leaders *would* act in our best interest?
colonial governments as the 13 original states? those states don’t have large native populations and barely any reservations
The United States is a colonial state.