Clarification part 2

Ok, so my friend Joe replied to the clarification I posted a few days ago... here was what he wrote...

Yes I like that, that does explain and clarify some confusion about sovereignty, not only for non-natives, but natives as well. It is still crazy to me that a tribal person says "Hey that can't do that, we are a sovereign nation" well, yes, you are a soveriegn nation, but your soveriegnty is limited and over ruled by the US Government. In actuality, Indian Nations never signed any treaty giving up their soveriegnty, any part of their sovereignty, congress enacted laws that gave plenary power to the US. So in actuality we never gave up these rights as a seperate nation, but some will say that we gave up that right when we allowed the US to enact policy that gave Native Peoples citizenship in the US.

Close, but not quite, Joe. As I get into more depth in the next few posts, once I am through this damned background info (I am going through the textbook and with my professor outline so I figured I better stick to the order they put stuff in as I learn it or we're ALL gonna get confused) you'll see a much more detailed explanation than that.

True, indian nations are sovereign, or more accurately, "quasi-sovereign." The United States actually refers to tribes more along the lines of "domestic dependent nations" and generally refers to their "sovereignty" in many areas, but does not concede that the nations are complete, absolute sovereign nations.
Congress did decide that the US had plenary power over the tribes, but that was not when it all began. As you will see when I get into more depth, (I know I keep saying that but it's just to explain why I haven't hit it all yet) the US relies on the "doctrine of discovery" in dealing with the tribes. Basically, the logic there is "we discovered you savages, so we have control." Yes, the US had to recognize the tribes as sovereign nations in order to be able to legitimately make treaties with them, (if the US didn't see them as capable of giving permission, then what good is their permission gonna do for the person getting permission?) but then after that, the US sharply scaled back their powers based on "sovereignty."

Essentially, even before the "plenary powers" were enacted by congress, the US recognized the tribes as dependent nations, with limited scope to their sovereignty. We'll discuss this in the cases, starting with Johnson v. McIntosh and moving through a whole bunch of cases over the next few months... but the bottom line is, although the tribes "never gave up those rights", the US didn't see the tribes as HAVING those rights to give up in the first place. The INDIANS may have felt they had those powers, the US (and England before them) never recognized them to start with.

Ok, "some will say we gave up that right when we allowed the US to enact policy that gave native people citizenship in the US" but those people would be totally wrong. Although a handful of natives got citizenship for varying reasons earlier, when the US officially gave indians citizenship, there was already a looooong history of having determined and limited the extent of indian control over their separate nations, and congress had recognized this starting much, much earlier. The first Supreme Court cases delineating the extent of tribal sovereignty started in the early 1800's, and a century later, when the indians were officially granted citizenship as a group, plenary power and most of the issues concerning sovereignty had already been settled. So the indians, in effect, gave up nothing when the Citizenship was extended to them, at least nothing that hadn't already been taken away.

Anyone else have thoughts on this? Leave a comment here or email me.