What is “this country?” Not “Indian Country,” but the country in which we live. How is it defined?

Is “this country” the fifty states? Does “this country” include the territories of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Marianas, and the “Minor Outlying Islands”? (Honestly, has anyone who never served in the Navy ever heard of some of these places?)

I suppose most of us would include all the land inside the borders of any one of the fifty states as “this country.” And I also suppose most of us assume that the Constitution and Bill of Rights protect residents who live in this country.

Well, it turns out that the law of the land does not apply to everyone in “this country.” The Constitution and Bill of Rights only apply to American Indians if and when the federal government declares that they do.

The federal lands of the national parks—which are not subject to state laws—are “this country,” even though they’re outside the states’ jurisdiction. And the federal lands of the Indian reservations, which also lay within the borders of the states, are also “this country,” but they often are not governed by state law either.

Sidebar: A “reservation” is not a “territory,” like Puerto Rico. The residents of territories are entitled to send delegates to the political parties’ conventions. The residents of reservations are not. Instead, they participate in federal elections through the states’ political parties—even though in some instances the reservations are not otherwise governed by state law.

But not all of “Indian Country” lies within the borders of any state. Indian Country isn’t even a physical location, a place, as most of us think of places. Nor is it a nation. It’s just a “country,” and it is governed almost entirely by federal, not state, law.

Justice for American Indians

Sidebar: Don’t call me a “native American.” The word “native” sounds like a naked savage to me. I’m very proud of my Cherokee/Choctaw heritage—what little I have been able to learn about it because my Cherokee/Choctaw grandmother died denying she was anything but lily white. One thing she and my father were very proud of, though, was that the Cherokee/Choctaw are called “civilized tribes.” Go figure.

The laws of this country governing reservations, Indian tribes, and citizens with Indian ancestors are arcane. In brief, the way I see it, American Indians don’t receive equal justice under the law.

Now the federal government has agreed to settle a long-standing class-action lawsuit against an agency of the Department of the Interior, a suit known as Corbell v Salazar. The “class” suing the government is the class of so-called “native Americans.” Not all of these plaintiffs live on reservations. Many of them, if not most, are—like me—Melting Pot Americans who will not benefit from the settlement.

The Corbell lawsuit began over a decade ago as an attempt to expose the corrupt Bureau of Indian Affairs’ financial mismanagement of Indian reservations on federal lands. And I am sure the tribes on reservations are owed the billions of dollars the government now proposes to pay them. It seems like justice, I suppose. Or maybe like charity.

Or does it? Isn’t this just a BandAid that further strains the American taxpayer (including American Indian taxpayers) at a time we can ill afford it?

Will the government change the way it “manages” Indian Country from now on? No. The whole reservation system is broken.

Sidebar: The same people who have decided to give these paltry “reparations” to American Indians for past cruelty and crimes also have decided not to give reparations to African American descendants of slaves. I don’t understand this. Is it because we now have an African-American president who is not the descendant of slaves?

The Indian Vote?  

Do you know when “native Americans” got the vote? I bet you think they were given the right to vote by the 1869 15th Amendment, which gave emancipated slaves the vote. Well, you are wrong. Native Americans did not even get the right to vote when women of all other races did in 1920. No, American Indians did not have the right to vote in federal elections until 1924—and not in every state’s elections until (in some cases) 1956.

That’s why so many American Indians and their descendants do not “self-identify” to the Census Bureau. If my grandmother had admitted she was Cherokee/Choctaw in 1920, she would not have been eligible to vote in Oklahoma (former “Indian Territory”). And when my father was born if his birth certificate had listed him as anything but Caucasian, he would not have been entitled to the right to vote when he reached his majority. If my grandparents had chosen to identify my father as non-white on his birth certificate, and if I had been born in Utah instead of Michigan, I suppose I might not have been identified as white, either.

The federal government’s token payment to mythical “Indian country” is absurd. There is no amount of money on earth that can solve the problems of American Indians without a complete rethinking of the whole concept of a “reservation” and “Indian country.”

Where do you think this money is going to go? What makes you think the politicians at the Department of the Interior now know how to spend this money? Will the money be used to build first-class schools on the reservations? Or will the money end up expanding gambling on the reservations?

Chalk Ghost—Co-Winner of 2009 TextNovel Grand Prize

I’m in the throes of finalizing my manuscript of a paranormal mystery novel, Chalk Ghost. The protagonist, Lily-Rose Whitehorse, is an American Indian college student studying forensic accounting, because she knows how badly the federal government has mismanaged tribal finances and defrauded the reservations.

For this reason I am currently studying the history of the reservation system and the laws governing the reservations. The latest twist in this sad history is the federal government’s settlement of Corbell v. Etc. (The defendant has changed with each new administration.)

In my not-so-humble opinion, this settlement is demeaning. “Native Americans” are not an endangered species being protected on federal lands. They are being confined and deprived of the rights of citizenship.

Justice has yet to be done.