Sovereignty Over Native Land Diminishing

Today I sit back in my chair playing poker with an Indian who has seemingly been assimilated into the ways of the US government. He owns no land; the government owns the house he resides within. The issue is clear, he is in government housing, forced through poverty to live among the rules and regulations of US legislature and other Authorities. If his family had chosen to reside on the reservation, would he be faced with such a position?

In 1896, the Acts of the Fifty Fourth Congress, was passed allotting five tribes the use of one hundred and sixty acres of land to any one individual within those five tribes. The Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Seminoles and Chickasaws all had land that was at their disposal, with conditions. In order to make any changes that would benefit him as an individual, he would have to approach the US Government.

First, ownership of land was unheard of by a Native American. The Euro Americans claimed stake to unoccupied land, and wars broke out. The land was already occupied, but not owned in the Euro American sense. Now the Euro American government decides, since they had slaughtered so many, they should give it back. There are more than five tribes, so why give it to only five? In fact, when the Euro Americans were starving and cannibalizing the Native Americans in Jamestown, the Wampanoag tribe gave up provisions for them. What land was given to the Wampanoag, or the Pequot, and the Narragansett tribes?

Even today Native Americans worry sovereignty over their land is diminishing. With cases like Nevada Vs. Hicks and Atkinson Trading Co. Vs Shirley, they grow weary of the government’s control over their communities. First we give land to the Native Americans with condition, now we slowly take over what sovereignty they did have.

A group of Native Americans is concerned enough to write up a “Strategic Plan to Stop the Supreme Court.s Erosion of Tribal Sovereignty” (http://www.ncai.org/ncai/resource/documents/governance/Sept11Summary.pdf). If the courts continue to allow sovereignty to diminish, the tribes will lose the control over their own tribal communities. Eventually the entire tradition and culture of the Native American will take its steps into forgotten history. Who is the real “Indian giver” here?