Indian Appropriations Act (1871)
Indian Appropriations Act is a US law that was signed by President Grant on March 3, 1871 . The law banned the negotiation of contracts between the US government and the Indian tribes . Instead of negotiations and contracts, relations with the Indians should be regulated by unilateral laws. This law deprived the Indian tribes of an active say. Indians were incapacitated by this law.
history
Since the United States Constitution does not precisely define the relationship between the Confederation and the Indian tribes, treaties and laws were necessary. The laws were based on the Commerce Clause. Basically it can be said that the Congress and not the President was responsible for relations with the Indian tribes. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was created for this task . Until 1871 treaties between the United States Congress and the Indian tribes served as the legal basis. The contracts were negotiated by Indian agents of the Bureau of Indian Affairs , signed and had to be ratified by Congress. In these, the Indian tribes ceded areas to the federal government against payment of funds and against receipt of goods and services. Most of the time they reserved a smaller part of the affected area, most of the Indian reservations were established before 1871. The federal government had no authority to confiscate land because it was recognized that it belonged to the Indians.
After the Indian tribes had been driven further and further from their original areas, but the land hunger of the white population did not decrease, it became more and more difficult to conclude new contracts with the tribes. The Indian Appropriations Act prevented the conclusion of further agreements between the United States of America and the Indian tribes. Originally, the tribes were viewed as equal nations. With the Indian Appropriations Act , this view changed. Indians were viewed as individuals. Reserves were created, reduced, enlarged and dissolved by law. The decisive sentence in the law reads: “That hereafter no Indian nation or 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: Provided, further, that nothing contained in shall be construed to invalidate or impair the obligation of any treaty heretofore lawfully made and ratified with any such Indian nation or tribe. "
The law broke with the hundred-year-old tradition of treating tribal leaders like diplomats from a friendly but independent country. Nevertheless, the contracts concluded between 1778 and 1868 were still recognized. However, contracts still play an important role in the politics of Indian reservations and tribal sovereignty . Increasingly, the courts of the United States recognize that the Indian Appropriations Act was illegal because of the lack of approval from the Indian tribes. Laws passed by the United States Congress after 1871 are more often found to be unconstitutional. So was z. B. in the Nebraska v. Parker of the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Omaha Nation's sale of 50,000 acres did not affect the reservation boundary, which was mutually agreed upon in a treaty, the 1856 Omaha Treaty . The law regulating sales by the federal government did not include any transfer of sovereign rights. This would not have been possible since the Omaha were not citizens of the United States at the time.
Even more crucial are the laws that created the US state of Oklahoma . Land sales, as made possible by the Dawes Act , are still in effect. Due to the lack of contracts, the sale was not associated with any transfer of sovereign rights. In 2020 the US Supreme Court ruled that the reservations in the Indian Territory had never been legally dissolved, for that there should have been a treaty between the US Congress and the tribes. At one stroke, 1.5 million residents, including residents of the metropolitan city of Tulsa, fall under the sovereignty of the Creek and Cherokee , even though only 15% of the population of eastern Oklahoma are Indians. The court's decision has far-reaching consequences. The Washington Post writes, "Now that half of Oklahoma is officially Indian land, oil industry could face new costs and environmental hurdles. The landmark Supreme Court decision gives the five tribes a say over oil and gas wells, refineries, and pipelines." The Indian Appropriations Act is becoming a boomerang , as many laws passed by Congress after 1871 fall under this category.
References and comments
- ↑ www.americanindianmagazine.org: Far from being independent nations, said Henry B. Whipple, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota, Indian tribes were “wards,” entirely dependent for survival on the US government.
- ^ Indian Appropriations Act of 1871
- ^ Encyclopedia.com: Indian Appropriations Act
- ^ Cornell Law School: Present Status of Indian Treaties.
- ↑ treatiesmatter.org Treaties recognize Indian tribes as sovereign nations that exercise exclusive authority over all peoples and activities within their territories. They are as valid today as on the day they were signed and ratified.
- ↑ www.bia.gov A federal Indian reservation is an area of land reserved for a tribe or tribes under treaty or other agreement with the United States, executive order, or federal statute or administrative action as permanent tribal homelands, and where the federal government holds title to the land in trust on behalf of the tribe.
- ↑ www.supremecourt.gov: Judgment 14-1406
- ↑ Washington Post: Supreme Court says nearly half of Oklahoma is an Indian reservation. What's next?
- ↑ Washington Post July 17, 2020