Ojibwe in Minnesota

What Sovereignty Means

the Ojib we  43 The Red Lake Reservation brought all of its hereditary tribal chiefs into the government as advisers,and to this day they sit at all council meetings to advise the council and participate in all proceedings .In2009, WhiteEarthadopted major constitutional reforms that try to incorporate older ideals and values as part of its government structure, although these reforms have not been approved by the mct or the bia .31 The ira was a positive development for Indian self-rule and far less obtrusive than the direct management of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but it also established quasidemocratic institutions that undermined older Indian ideas of leadership, representation, culture, and justice. Post-ir a tribal governments were an improvement over bia control but were riddled with major structural problems . These problems include no proper voting and recall procedures and a judicial branch appointed by and serving at the pleasure of the tribal council. There was no balance of power or accountability woven into the new constitutional frameworks. The substantive change introduced with the Indian Reorganization Act was that Indians had the power to represent Indian interests and manage affairs within reservation boundaries. The Ojibwe did not regain their traditional leadership structure in 1934, but tribal sovereignty was on the rise. What Sovereignty Means The underpinnings of tribal sovereignty, treaty rights, and modern casino development are all deeply embedded in American law, which makes them paradoxically very well documented but poorly understood by most ojibweboysat Millelacs,1930 44  pe Ople Of minnes Ot a Americans. The U.S. Constitution has only two sections that pertain directly to Indians. Article 6 states that treaties are “the supreme law of the land.” Article 1 states that only “The Congress shall have the power to ...regulate Commerce ...with the Indian tribes.” From those two statements, successive groups of U.S. Supreme Court justices have built a huge body of legal precedents upon which the status of the Ojibwe and other tribes now rests.32 The first and most significant decisions on Indian sovereignty came in the form of three loosely related cases often called the Marshall Trilogy.They get their name from John Marshall, chief justice of the Supreme Court in the 1830s. The three cases (Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, Worcester v. Georgia, and State v. George Tassels) used the scanty language in the U.S. Constitution to create the concept of domestic dependent nations. The legal ruling was that tribes were in fact nations, putting their laws and actions above those of individuals , states, or county governments. In Cherokee, for example, the court ruled that the State of Georgia had no authority to relocate the Cherokee Indians because the tribe was a nation that had existed before the United States. At the same time,the rulings also contained very paternalistic language about tribal nations, calling them dependent on the United States. The court’s rulings appeared to be in the favor of the Indians. The Cherokee could not be forced from their lands by a state government, for example. But the longterm effects served to undermine tribal sovereignty. Using the words “little red children” and “great white father,” the court made it clear that the U.S. government maintained supremeCourt ChiefJustice JohnMarshall the Ojib we  45 significant power over Indians. Tribal sovereignty existed, but at the pleasure of the federal government. Over the next one hundred years, the courts and Congress further defined and limited the nature of tribal sovereignty but never eliminated it.In Ex Parte Crow Dog (1883), the court reinforced the legal precedent in the Marshall Trilogy that state (or, in this case, territorial) government had no jurisdiction over Indians. A Lakota Indian named Crow Dog had killed another Indian and was punished in a traditional tribal council. The council’s decision was to banish Crow Dog and his family for four generations and to mandate that Crow Dog care for the widow of the man he had killed.Dakota Territory officials felt Crow Dog was getting away with murder in spite of his punishment by tribal custom, so they tried and convicted him of murder in territorial court.The U.S.Supreme Court overturned his conviction because the territory had no jurisdiction over tribes, just as a state or territory had no jurisdiction over other nations. White outrage continued after the ruling in Crow Dog, however, and Congress did exercise its“plenary authority” over tribes...