Indian Treaties
Discussion | Summary
The Dann sisters' situation highlights the long-standing injustice faced by the Shoshone people, who have been systematically deprived of their ancestral lands by settlers and the U.S. government. Despite revised treaties and encroachments, the Shoshone never relinquished their connection to the land. The U.S. government's failure to honor treaty obligations exacerbates the issue, as pointed out by Prucha and DeLoria. It's crucial for Congress to respect and return treaty rights to indigenous peoples.
Historical Injustice: Shoshone people systematically deprived of ancestral lands.
Revised Treaties: Initial treaties reduced land and encroachments defiled pristine environments.
Government Failure: Laws from Congress and actions by BLM and Department of Interior don't align with treaty obligations.
Broken Treaties: U.S. has never honored a single Indian treaty, as noted by Vin DeLoria, Jr.
Call to Action: Congress needs to respect and return treaty rights to indigenous peoples.
These points emphasize the ongoing struggle for indigenous land rights and the need for government accountability.
Discussion | Full Text |
Spring 2016
To thoroughly understand the situation of the Dann sisters, one must recognize that over the course of 150 years the Shoshone people have been systematically robbed of their ancestral homelands by Anglo-American settlers and the U.S. government, homelands they had occupied for many thousands of years. Like the Nez Perce and other plateau peoples, initial treaties were revised, reducing the amount of land upon which they depended for sustenance, and encroaching settlers, devoid of humanity with regards Native Americans, squatted on and forever defiled their pristine environments. But the original holdings never diminished in the eyes of the Dann sisters or the rest of the tribe, and the mystical nature of the land makes deeding and selling it a foreign proposition.
Unfortunately, America is the way it is, ‘de-civilized’ as one attorney fighting gun manufacturers today described it. Native American people like the Dann sisters have received the ‘raw end of the stick’ in the most broadly defined sense of the phrase. The laws from Congress that inform and instruct the BLM and Department of Interior in the case of the Dann’s do not comport with the treaty obligations that Americans have with indigenous people. The readings from Prucha are clear on this matter. By 1868 treaties were an instrument for “civilizing Indians” (10) and a “catch-all for legislating the good life” (14). And as was also noted, the duality of the courts in the cases Choctaw v Oklahoma and Montana v U.S. regarding land ownership was completely arbitrary, when in fact “any doubtful expression in [the treaties] should be resolved in the Indians’ favor” (395) was duly expressed and inherent in treaties as a matter of common and international law.
Prucha points out the “broken treaty” syndrome (17) and acknowledges that respected scholar Vin DeLoria, Jr. is right in claiming that the U.S. has never honored a single Indian treaty. But he clearly understands the problem lies in the halls of Congress where the people have the most say in the United States. It’s up to all of us to ask Congress to return and respect treaty rights to indigenous peoples. The original treaty for the Shoshone reservation where the Dann’s grazed their livestock set aside 1.8M acres in 1868, which was reduced to 1.2M acres in a revision in 1872, and today encompasses only 546,500 acres. These encroachments represent a failure of the executive and legislative branches of the government to exercise their broad authority to uphold the spirit of original treaty language.
References
Prucha, Francis Paul. American Indian Treaties: The History of a Political Anomaly. Berkeley: U of California, 1994. Print.