Political Science - Dr. Allen Huemer


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America, Prehistory to the Present (concluded)

Doubtless Senator Ross of Kansas did not object when, in 1868, in a position of some weakness, the United States negotiated a second and last Treaty With the Sioux Nation.

That same year, Amendment 14 adjusted the National Law's (The Constitution's) position on slavery. This Amendment also removed a reference (in original Article I) to slaves as "three fifths of...persons. Section one of Amendment 14 guaranteed to "any person" within "any State" "equal protection of the laws," and "due process of law." However, Article I of the Constitution did retain the following language:

    "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective number, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed."

The concept of "race" was most firmly fixed in U.S. law however, the next year in Amendment 15 to The Constitution. This amendment to the Nation's Basic Law stated that:

    "The right...to vote shall not be denied or abridged...on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

In 1871, the United States Congress discriminated (to discriminate: to make different, to set apart, mark as different) most heavily in the case of the "Indian" "race," passing the following law:

    "That hereafter no Indian nation of tribe within the territory of the United States shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe, or power with whom the United States may contract by treaty."

This enactment, attached as a rider to a Department of Interior financial appropriations bill, utterly destroyed what little remained of the treaty-making aspect of the sovereignties of the first nations of North America. Doubtless Senator Ross would have been pleased. (The enactment, incidentally, also canceled a portion of The Constitution's Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 3, without the inconvenience of going through the Amendment process.)

Using the "race" idea's call for "conversion," the 1887 Dawes Act was passed, being excused as a measure to "civilize" "the savage" (the "Indian"). Granting private ownership of land to individual tribal members, the Act has often been criticized as a poorly-disguised move to break up the Great Sioux Reservation and the Oklahoma Indian Territory. As true as this was though, the most damaging of the Dawes Act's repercussions was that by forcing Modern Conquest-State property (that is, money) economics upon North America's original political states, it destroyed the economic self-determination aspect (the self-choice of what kind of economic relations are to be culturally preferred) of those first nations' sovereignties.

The 1924 bestowal of U.S. citizenship upon all "Indians" within the U.S. borders took away yet another aspect of the sovereignties of these first nations of North America. It removed the possibility of the citizens of these nations being citizens of their own nations and placed them under the superior jurisdiction of an alien power.

The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which was passed "...to grant certain rights of home rule to Indians...and for other purposes," took away two more aspects of sovereignty: the self-determination of immigration, and the self-determination of form of government. Once again replacing the separate national self-identities of the first states of North America with the "race" category "Indian," the I.R.A. terminated their self-control of immigration policy in the same stroke:

    "The term ‘Indian' as used in this Act shall include all persons of Indian descent who are members of any recognized Indian tribe...and all persons who are descendants of such members and...all other persons of one half or more Indian Blood. For the purposes of this Act, Eskimos and other aboriginal peoples of Alaska shall be considered Indians."

The Act's call for recognized tribal governments is where it eliminated choice of government for the Ancient nations of North America. This is one area, however, where the descendants of America's original nations have mounted varying resistance over the past fifty years.

So, from the beginning until the present day, the United States has based its relationship with the Ancient first political states of North America upon a "racial" concept. ("Racial" discrimination is now illegal in the United States--except, it seems, in the case of "Indians".) Never mind that an unbiased (non-ideological) look at humankind's past shows that "race" is unreal. Never mind that the original inventors of "race" ideology knew that the concept was false. Never mind that throughout the entire course of its existence, the idea was continually being challenged by real facts. Never mind that the formidable weight of science has finally been put forth to prove that "race" does not exist biologically (for an excellent example of this see: Ashley Montagu, The Fallacy of "Race"). In the end, the United States treats the people of the first North American nations the way it does, because it has decided that they are "Indians."

How different things could have been, can be conceived of by imagining how reality would have been expresses if the authors of The Constitution had written the 3rd Paragraph of the 8th Section of the 1st Article using the following words:

    "The Congress shall have the power...to regulate commerce with the ancient nations of this continent, and with all other foreign nations, and among the several States."

In the meantime, in the wake of the "race" concept, following the obliteration of the Ancient history of North America, what has remained of "sovereignty" among groups of people who are not free to choose their own allies, make their own treaties, determine their own economics system, choose their own form of government, or have control over immigration into their groups?

One place to begin the search for an answer to this, would be in the post-I.R.A.-approved constitutions and by-laws of various tribes.

As one example of such documents there is the Constitution and By-Laws of the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Montana. Approved in 1960, the Constitution and By-Laws relinquish ultimate control in Tribal affairs to United States' law, or to agents of the U.S. Government on no less than twelve separate occasions. Elected Tribal Board members are sworn to uphold the U.S. and Montana State Constitutions before their own. The Tribal Secretary is charged with keeping Tribal accounts "open to inspection by...representatives of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs."

The Fort Peck Tribes' Enrollment Ordinance No. 1, also approved in 1960, gives final authority in determining membership in the Tribes over to the authority of the United States on six separate occasions. Membership in the Tribes is dependent, for example, on U.S. citizenship. The last vestige of an immigration policy for the Tribes is ruled out by the termination of the Ancient custom of adoption. The institution of a "blood" "race" requirement for membership in the Tribes parallels the requirement for defining "Indian" in the 1934 I.R.A. This sort of requirement appears in nearly every enrollment ordinance of all the tribes within the U.S.' borders. Yet there is hardly another nation in the entire world which requires a certain "racial" "blood" in a certain amount as a citizenship requirement. To do so would be, for any small nation, an act of national suicide, causing isolation from one's neighbors, isolation from the world at large, and eventually (and inevitably) leading to a destructive reduction in numbers.

There is indeed much talk of "sovereignty" on reservations these days. What may actually be done in the future to promote a more real sovereignty is, however, difficult to say.

Nevertheless, most tribal constitutions do contain the vehicles for their own most basic revision in the direction of real sovereignty of the primary kind. Again the Fort Peck Tribes give an example: the Constitutional Amendment Article (number 15), the Referendum Article (number 14), and the Governing Body Article (number 4) wherein the powers of the General Council are described, in the Tribes' Constitution and By-Laws, all relinquish ultimate authority in Tribal affairs to the people of the Tribes.

Perhaps this relinquishment of authority can be advanced by two powerful forces: knowledge and understanding. These forces are the powers which will in the end, destroy once and for all the terrible ideology of "race" and the slavery of spirit it induces. The more fully people know themselves (the more able they are to see and live with the realities of the past and the present--the better able they are to reject ideological fabrications), the better they will be able to know their opposition, and the more able they will be to make real choices for themselves. This would be a genuinely grand advancement in sovereignty among people most affected by the unrelenting ideology of "race." This would be a turning around of authority in tribal affairs to the people of the tribes themselves, and would be a reassertion of the Ancient forms of government.

Surely there is a great amount of terrible struggle, pain, and suffering involved in the act of becoming free from an oppressing, overpowering ideology. And yet one has to agree with the observation of one young "radical" from the Fort Peck Reservation. All might be saved, that individual observed, "If we only realized that the authority was within ourselves."

 

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