Dave L Wrote:
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> Ah, that's why they have Casinos.
>
> Are the part of the United States?
>
> Dave L
>

Yes, although they have a somewhat anomalous status.... in some ways analogous to that of protectorates like Puerto Rico, in other ways different due to being SURROUNDED by U.S. states.

The legal status is somewhat schizophrenic.... officially, they are sovereign nations that (maybe just temporarily.... this would have to be argued in the courts) ceded most of their lands in exchange for cash payments PLUS permanant protections (& sometimes annual payments) as "domestic dependent nations".

The problem with this is that a lot of the land cessions were involuntary on their part, involving military coercion on the part of the U.S.

Another problem is that they are on somewhat shaky legal ground in the sense that many treaties weren't properly ratified..... some were signed only by a minority of tribal leaders, who didn't have the authority to speak for the rest, or who in some cases.... like that of my own tribe.... were SPECIFICALLY forbidden by written tribal constitutions from ceding lands (in OUR case, the U.S. Supreme Court even declared the treaty & forced eviction unconstitutional BEFORE it happened.... but the President illegally ignored the courts & ordered troops in anyway. Needless to say, "freeing up" MILLIONS of acres of highly productive & already developed lands this way, providing everything from houses & towns for White voters to move into, complete with livestock & personal possessions that the forcibly removed Indians weren't allowed to take with them...... he got away with it. The courts offered a settlement, more than a century later, but only for pennies on the dollar even at 1838 prices).

In many other cases, treaties were unilaterally rewritten & modified by a greedy Congress, so that the "resulting" treaty at the U.S. end involved more land & less cash than the one the Indians had signed.... usually, the army would then tell the tribes what the treaty had turned into & tell them to lump it or be shot.... sometimes the U.S. didn't even bother to inform the tribes of the difference until years later.

Worse yet, virtually every treaty was subsequently broken by the U.S., either through cash payments or other specified services NOT being made, or through betrayal of "no more land cession" clauses from prior treaties.

Heh, try this one on for size.... in the case of my own people (Cherokee), not only did we lose lands via unprovoked White agression (would you believe a preemptive attack in the early years of the Revolution.... just because the nascent U.S. was worried that the Cherokee "MIGHT decide to" honor treaties they'd made with Britain instead of siding with the rebellious colonies? They attacked us BEFORE WE'D EVEN DECIDED WHICH SIDE TO PICK, and in the process burned out dozens of towns, killed thousands of Cherokee and took thousands more as slaves, AND forcibly took over the best farming region in Cherokee hands! Then, after the unconstitutional treaty & forced expulsion which resulted in 25% tribal mortality (marched at bayonet & rifle point in the middle of winter, with little food, & often WITHOUT being allowed to have brought personal possessions like blankets or extra clothing.....), the treaty was possibly broken by U.S. inability to provide adequate security for the relocatees (a protection clause was in the treaty) from threats involving frequent attacks by Osage Indians (we were forbidden by the treaty from having our own military, & told to "let the army handle" the Osage... which the army DIDN'T do) & by civil unrest (murderous feuding between those who'd illegally signed the treaty & those who'd been forced onto the Trail of Tears because of it), then DEFINITELY broken at the start of the U.S. Civil War. Remember that protection clause? The U.S. troops stationed in the Cherokee Nation WITHDREW at the merest RUMOR of an advancing Confederate army.....at which point the Confederates heard of this withdrawal, and advantageously SENT such an army into the (illegally) undefended Cherokee Nation, arriving some SIX MONTHS after the federal troops had pulled out.

The Confederates then forced the Cherokee to sign a treaty of alliance with them AT GUNPOINT.... despite which, MORE Cherokee fought FOR the Union than against it (Cherokee Regiments fought on BOTH sides of that conflict), and the very Cherokee Principal Chief who'd been forced to sign the Confederate treaty actually FLED into Union territory for asylum, which was GRANTED by the U.S. army (he spent the rest of the war in Washington D.C., on a federal stipend!).

And THEN, despite the fact that the Cherokee Nation only sided with the Confederacy when forced to do so at gunpoint, AFTER the U.S. had egrariously broken it's own treaty by pulling out (when there was NO reason to do so!) & leaving the Cherokee undefended, and that the Union sympathizing Cherokee Principal Chief who'd been forced to sign the Confederate Treaty sought asylum with the Union and repudiated the treaty, AND the fact that more Cherokee fought FOR the Union than against it.......

..... the U.S. not only declared that the Cherokee Nation was a "traitor" to the U.S. for having signed that Confederate Treaty, but they used this as an excuse to "confiscate" the unpaid 90% of the pitiful sum promised by the original unconstitutional (declared so by the U.S. Supreme Court itself, as you'll remember!) treaty (most of the 10% that WAS paid in advance went missing in the war, btw, it might even have been looted by Union troops!), AND punished the Cherokee Nation WORSE than it did rebellious Southern states that had wholeheartedly and enthusiastically seceded & joined the Confederacy! (As ONE example, a small fraction of "Cherokee".... mostly intermarried Southern Whites & mixed bloods of partial Southern White ancestry.... owned slaves. The U.S. declared that these slaves were now offically "Cherokee citizens" & were due a per capita share in the entire Cherokee Nation & all it's assets. This would have been like saying that not only were ex-slaves in the Confederacy freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.... (which was done)... but that they were then FULL VOTING CITIZENS of those ex-Confederate states (which wasn't done) & would be given a per capita share of everything in their state (which wasn't done. Hell, Blacks made up the majority population of many southern states.... they didn't even get "40 acres and a mule" or protection of their right to vote in elections, let alone a per capita percentage of everything that White Southerners had owned).

(Don't even LET me get going on SUBSEQUENT events, ranging from Allotment, Oklahoma Statehood, Termination, and IRA (No connection to the Irish) reorganization....)

So, "technically", virtually NONE of the treaties are now valid, & something like 80-90% of the U.S. should theoretically revert back to tribal hands.

Needless to say, this isn't going to happen. Hell, one Cherokee land claim resulted in a judge EXPLICITLY saying "legally speaking, you're 100% in the right, but to enforce the law would result in undue discomfort for too many (White) people & cost too much money, as a result of which I'm going to instead decide AGAINST your claim".

And while tribes ARE legally sovereign (some even issue their own international passports, and have chartered offshore banks).... the enforcing agency is the federal govt & the U.S. court system. So, when it comes to conflicts between tribes & federal/state govts.... can you guess how often Sovereignty is ignored, or tribes are coerced into decisions? Hell, the BIA has sometimes even threatened to cut off federally mandated funds, or refuse to pay individual Indians monies held in trust for them, unless the tribal govt did things (altered enrollment criteria in a certain way, restructured tribal govts, stopped resisting the termination of it's federally recognized tribal status, etc.) that the BIA wanted the tribe to do. The BIA has even sent in federal troops to FORCIBLY get what they want. (On the other hand, back in the days when the ARMY was in charge of Indian reservations, things were worse. Years ago, embarrasing photos were leaked.... showing armed U.S. troops FORCING Hopi Indians to vote in a tribal election, in an obiously NON-secret ballot procedure. Hopi claim they were even told WHO to vote for, and that ballots were inspected before they were placed in the ballot box. As a consequence, there are TWO Hopi governments.... a "modern" one the U.S. govt recognizes, and a traditional one that is the only one that most Hopi will acknowledge as valid).

So, getting back to your Casino comment.... the reason tribes have Casinos, is that the law "technically" allows federally recognized tribes* to have them if they want to (as sovereign nations....), and that they PAY the states a percentage of the take (& submit to various constraints on Casino operations) in order for states to "let" them do what the tribes sovereign status grants it the UNHINDERED right to do in the first place.

(*Or in some cases, states allow STATE recognized tribes that are NOT even federally recognized, and that in some cases were given state recognition by the states SPECIFICALLY in order to allow them to build casinos in circumvention of state law, and thus.... of course.... pass on casino profits into state tax coffers as per negotiated agreement).

So, impoverished tribes do it as a source of revenue, and the states (& feds) use military (well, military, National Guard, & misc Law Enforcement) personnel.... or the explicit threat of using same.... to steal part of the profits & to control the form that the gambling operations will take..... sovereignty or no.

Life's a bitch, ain't it?

Kenuchelover