And a FAQ: https://www.bia.gov/frequently-asked-questions
The land they directly control can be anywhere from tiny to gigantic, depending on the particulars: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Indian_L...
Many people also live in surrounding areas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_reservations_in...
Much of the time the tribes have their own small governments, similar to municipal services, but also often with their own equivalents to "courts", "police", etc., who may utilize different corrective measures than the US ones. Often they will have an agreement with surrounding law enforcement (or the federal government) to partner up on certain categories of infractions, such as traffic violations or murders.
Some tribes have some money thanks to casinos and other business activities, but most are unfortunately quite poor, and many of their communities must work very hard to survive.
(This all is just my layman's understanding. I am not Native American, but I've lived near their communities. Please correct me if I'm wrong!)
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Edit: The 2023 movie Killers of the Flower Moon is really worth watching: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killers_of_the_Flower_Moon_(fi...
> I had no idea some enjoyed so much autonomy, or that something other than the democratically elected government arranged for courts to exist in some regions.
I just want to clarify that while "autonomy" may be the case on paper, the reality on the ground often seems more bleak -- at least to me :(
From what I can see as an outsider living near and traveling through some communities in the West, it seems like they don't really "enjoy autonomy" as much as "learned to hang on, by a thread, to what they have left".
It's a really sad sight to behold, ancient cultures reduced to communities smaller and poorer than your average middle-class California suburb. Depending on the particular tribe and reservation, a lot of times they are more "trailers and mobile homes scattered over acrid plateaus" than "thriving communities". The cultural ties they have to the past -- in food, in dance, in song, in story, in way of life -- seem to be more acts of remembrance, occasionally celebratory but often somber or perhaps even mournful :( By and large the dominant theme today is poverty. Overwhelming poverty, at 300% that of the White poverty rate.
I don't mean that they are joyless or hopeless, but that it's a very far cry from what real sovereignty and community would look like if they still controlled their ancestral extents and resources, everything from land to water to fish & game and real diplomatic autonomy, not as a "domestic dependent nation" beholden to the US Congress. Today they exist not in equal partnership with the United States, but at its mercy.
Whatever US laws say on paper, in reality the tribes are often treated as second-class citizens living in the invisible margins of American life, and only in ways that Congress allows. And to the extent they are protected by US law at all, those laws can be changed on a whim by a new generation/administration of US policymakers, as they have many, many times in the past through the United States' frequent betrayals. Yes, the tribes have some specialized courts and law enforcement today, but that's more Congress throwing them a bone. It's not true sovereignty, but something more like house arrest, where they're "allowed" to manage some of their internal affairs, but only as long as and only in ways that Congress sees fit.
They don't often have their own economies beyond casinos and tourism, they can't manage their own foreign relations with other nations outside the USA, they often don't own their own land, etc. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_sovereignty_in_the_Unit...). TLDR the United States forcibly relocated the tribes to some of the worst geographies (after killing many), and then told them what they are and aren't allowed to do on the land that we allow them to live on. Many are freely murdered and never investigated (https://www.nativehope.org/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-w...).
> If I ever visit the USA, this sounds like they'll be some of the culturally most interesting places to include in the trip.
If you ever visit (welcome! sorry for the grimness above), just please approach them with the respect you'd show any unfamiliar culture. Some tribes have facilities (like museums or visitors' centers) for receiving tourists. Others may be less welcoming, especially, well, if you're a White European.
If you want to understand their cultures, don't just see them from the US side, with our laws and statistics and treaties glossing over the centuries of violence and erasures.
In books, movies, documentaries, and even video games, many tribes have tried to tell their own stories from their own points of view. If you want to visit any, it might be worth doing a bit of reading beforehand and then maybe reaching out to tribespeople to see if they would be willing to actually meet you...?
If you just drive near or through these communities, you'll only see them at their surface levels, because they're usually not a tourist destination in the way that, say, the welcome centers of a US state would be.
Sorry if any of the above sounded preachy. That wasn't my intent. I just didn't want you to blindly stumble into a situation thinking things are great now, with tribal members welcoming you with open arms and eager to show you their culture.
Anyway, I do hope you come visit someday and see for yourself, then come back and tell us where we were wrong!
You will run into confusing situations where a county law enforcement official might patrol on a reservation because there is overlap or nebulous boundaries with the blessing (cross deputizarion) from the tribal law enforcement. However some tribes defer more of their governance to a Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.
For a largely autonomous example, the Cherokee in North Carolina are interesting. Largely funded by their casinos and now marijuana which is legal on their reservation but not the encompassing state of North Carolina. They have fairly strict rules around membership, such that a Cherokee that was shipped off to Oklahoma is not eligible for membership. Land ownership is based on tribal membership, not quite following standard American rules. It’s a fun deep dive to read up on their system.
The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe referenced in the article is one such Federally recognized tribe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe_(Native_American) https://www.bia.gov/service/tribal-leaders-directory
Each tribe is free to determine its own legal structure, as it is a separate polity (a sovereign nation) from the US -- sort of. US federal law still applies on federal reservations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United...
But it's certainly nothing like the primitive society you are imagining, and that's partly why I think a lot of American Indian nations don't use that word to describe themselves.
For example, the "Seneca tribe" calls themselves the Seneca Nation. That is, they were and are a group of people sharing common ethnicity, culture, language, and some kind of governmental organization across their territory, which at one point covered a large portion of what is now western New York state. They lived in towns with palisade walls and farmed several crops. They interacted with other nations in a complicated geopolitical system involving trade, alliance, and war. It's a far cry from the image of dumb savages in crude huts.
In the USA today, American Indian nations are essentially sovereign nations, and have some of their own territory in areas called reservations. So that's what we are talking about here: the actions of a sovereign nation, with its own government and geographical territory.
That sounds a lot more accurate given the explanation (also from other comments) where they have their own courts and everything. Odd that the words reservation and tribe are still in use like this.
(And perhaps I should clarify: I didn't mean to imply that these people (evidently having a billion to invest in solar) are living in huts or otherwise are like the historic hunter-gatherer societies I mentioned. The word evoced that image for me, but of course I realise that this cannot be accurate, hence the confusion.)
In any case, it’s quite common in the US for groups like this to be referred to as a “tribe”. I guess today you’re one of the lucky 10,000.
> Because the Constitution vested the Legislative Branch with plenary power over Indian Affairs, states have no authority over tribal governments unless expressly authorized by Congress. While federally recognized tribes generally are not subordinate to states, they can have a government-to-government relationship with these other sovereigns, as well.
> Furthermore, federally recognized tribes possess both the right and the authority to regulate activities on their lands independently from state government control. They can enact and enforce stricter or more lenient laws and regulations than those of the surrounding or neighboring state(s) wherein they are located. Yet, tribes frequently collaborate and cooperate with states through compacts or other agreements on matters of mutual concern such as environmental protection and law enforcement.
From https://www.bia.gov/frequently-asked-questions
Unfortunately, this is just a continuation of the numerous betrayals the US and military units have inflicted on them for the past centuries. Our government and soldiers routinely violated the treaties we signed and forcibly relocated and murdered many people.
Many tribes did not retain their federal recognition and just kinda exist in a no-man's land between states and the federal government, lacking much of the autonomy of the federally recognized tribes.
But you're totally right, the name itself doesn't mean much.
I seem to remember being taught in school that the native american reservations exist because of treaties signed by the united states government with sovereign nations (those nations being the native americans) and that the US government is obligated to respect their autonomy and sovereignty by the terms laid out in those treaties.
i don't mean to contradict your claims that the Federal Government has a long history of violating these treaties, as that is undoubtedly true. i'm just curious because the way i interpreted your description makes it seem as if they're only autonomous because the federal government has chosen to recognize them.
Through centuries of conquest and betrayal, the US governments have eroded much of the tribes' previous power, and these days they exist under a complex legal framework in which they have some sovereignty and some autonomy, but not to the same degree that, say, Canada or China have. Their rights under US law are granted by (and can be revoked by) acts of Congress. Lacking their own militaries and international diplomacy, they are more like states than countries as we think of them.
But it's actually way more complicated than that and depends on whether the tribe is federally recognized, what specific rights Congress withheld from them, whether they are prosecuting tribesmembers, other Indians, or non-Indian Americans, etc.
At the end of the day, it unfortunately comes down to who has the bigger stick. Tribes can say no all they want but it's up to the US Congress to listen or not. And they don't necessarily have the same Constitutional protections that US states have, either. It just really depends. And again, I'm not an expert at all!
This page has more detail: https://www.uaf.edu/tribal/academics/112/unit-4/generalprinc...
No, I just did not know what it meant and certainly would not have guessed something close to nation as it turns out to be! I'm feeling like there's suddenly more countries on the planet than I knew about, and wondering why we never hear from them on the news or elsewhere! Well, until now at least :)
A sibling comment says they avoid the word tribe to avoid the historic associations though, so I don't know what their preferred word would be. Probably it also differs between groups or even individuals within one.
B) its more like what would be referred to as a "semi autonomous region" in other countries. They have their own governments, police forces, etc.
C) they probably secured some sort of outside investments, these native american reservations are by no means unsophisticated. Other reservations have been able to bring in revenue by using their autonomy to establish casinos and resorts on their lands, even in states where that would be illegal outside of the reservations (because the reservation's autonomy means that they aren't necessarily bound by the laws of whatever state they are in).
> “We, as the Ute Mountain Ute tribe, had been a fossil fuel tribe with oil and gas for a long time, probably over 50 years. Today, with the changes in legislation, global warming, and climate change, you can see the impact of what's happening to our world.
I think I only ever heard tribe used to describe a group or maybe 10-30 hunter-gatherers, or perhaps the descendants of such a group, but this is clearly not that. It sounds more like it might be a municipality with jurisdiction over some city+-sized plot of land? Or is it like a church type of structure where anyone in the area can sign up to be a member? Or something completely different?
I've tried looking up tribe but the definition I get is this
> A unit of sociopolitical organization consisting of a number of families, clans, or other groups who share a common ancestry and culture and among whom leadership is typically neither formalized nor permanent.
That doesn't sound like the type of structure to have a billion USD to invest. There's three definitions given but none of them fit the context here