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There is nothing more important to Indian governments and Indian people than sovereignty. That is why I am honored to be able to share my thoughts about sovereignty with you, and to hear your words of wisdom.

I'd like to begin at the beginning and talk about the history of Indian sovereignty, for without an understanding of where we've been, it is hard to know where to go.

There are basically three types of sovereigns in the United States. There is the federal government, which is sometimes called the supreme sovereign. There are state governments, which derive their sovereignty from the federal government, and there are Indian governments. Indians' sovereignty predates both federal and state governments. That means Indian governments have inherent sovereignty which is not derived from any other government, but rather from the people themselves.

Sovereignty is often a hard concept for people to grasp. Part of the reason for this is that there is no clear definition of sovereignty. However, there are a number of generally accepted, fundamental attributes that qualify something as sovereign.

First, and most important, are people. There must be a distinct, unique group of people. These people must have a distinct language, a distinct moral and religious structure, and a distinct cultural base. They must have a specific geographic area that they control and regulate. Within that area, they must possess governmental powers, including the power to tax and the power to change their government if they see fit. These governmental powers must be acknowledged by the people who are subject to them, and they must be enforceable by some sort of authority, whether it be military, police, or general citizen control.

When you break it down like this, sovereignty no longer seems so hard to understand. It is not some abstract concept - it is about real people, their lives, and their dignity. And it is being made and remade every day. Look at the Palestinians. Look at the states of the former Soviet Union. The same thing that has happened for hundreds and thousands of years is still happening today. People will work and fight and die to protect their sovereignty.

There is one more fundamental attribute of sovereignty that I have not mentioned yet. That is recognition by another sovereign, such as the way the United States recognizes the existence of Mexico or Canada. For Indian tribes, the mechanism of recognition was treaties.

Treaties are a contract between governments. When two governments enter into a treaty with each other, that means they are recognizing each other as sovereigns. For example, states generally enter into contracts with each other that are called compacts. Recently, tribes have also begun to enter into compacts with states to establish casino gaming.

Treaties are the basis of the relationship between tribes and the United States. When the United States government recognized tribes as sovereigns through treaties, they were following in the footsteps of European nations that had done the same thing. The Europeans had two very good reasons for entering into treaties with Indian tribes. First, tribes had significant military power. Until around 1800, tribes—if they had united—had enough military power to run Europeans off this continent. After 1800, the growing masses of white people in the East, coupled with changes in military technology, changed this situation.

The second reason that Europeans made treaties with Indian tribes was that until about 1800, tribes controlled the balance of power in this country. That means if you were France, you wanted the tribes to support you against Spain or Britain or any other European country that had a presence here.

If the tribes wouldn't support you, you at least wanted them to remain neutral towards you. What you did not want was for tribes to be against you, because they were powerful enough to crush your efforts if they chose to.

As a side note, it is interesting to look at the language used in treaties right around 1800. Before 1800, when Indian tribes still represented a significant threat to the United States, the federal government called Indians their "red brothers." After 1800, when tribes were no longer seen as powerful enough to drive the white man off the continent, the federal government began calling Indians their "red children."

It was also around this time—during the 1800s—that many Indian tribes entered into what can be described as large "real estate transactions" with the United States. Those transactions have colored the dynamics of federal-tribal relationships ever since.

As you know, at one time the Mille Lacs Band hunted and fished throughout north central Minnesota. But when the United States took our land and resources under the Treaty of 1855, we were left with only 61,000 acres of land. Some additional lands were later added at East Lake and Lake Lena.

We were also left with an important agreement—an agreement upon which we have based our essential existence as a nation. As a part of our "real estate transaction," the United States agreed that our tribal government would exercise sovereign authority within our reservation boundaries, and that we would be funded forever by the federal government.

Today we exercise that sovereignty over our domain. That is the price that the United States paid for taking our lands. That is the price we paid. That price gives us the right to regulate all matters impacting the Mille Lacs Reservation, including: civil regulatory jurisdiction, environmental jurisdiction, taxation and land use.

Many of you have heard about the policy of Termination of Indian Tribes, which the United States adopted in the early 1950s under the Eisenhower administration. The idea of terminating treaty ties between Indian tribes and the United States government had been considered since 1871, when formal treaty making with Indian tribes had ended. With the election of General Eisenhower as president of the United States, and the Republican party in control of Congress, the termination idea gained national support.

The federal government's line of reasoning was that Indians wanted more freedom, so why not give it to them? Instead of keeping Indian tribes "dependent" on the federal government, why not cut them lose?

To do this, the federal government planned to eliminate all federal legal protection and support services to tribes - in other words, back out of their promises and responsibilities again. And because government officials were ready to drop their responsibilities, they assumed the tribes they chose to terminate were ready and willing to handle the devastation that would follow. The deprivation and misery that followed were a disgrace to the entire nation.

But one person believed that treaties with Indians should not be violated. His name was Felix S. Cohen. Cohen was an expert in Indian law and a respected philosopher with degrees from Harvard University and Columbia's School of Law. He wrote the Handbook of Federal Indian Law, which is used to this day as a vital resource. He was also a famed philosopher on the nature of American Democracy.

In 1953, during the heat of the argument over termination, Cohen made a remarkable analogy that described the state of the Indian living in America as a gauge for the state of American democracy itself.

The analogy reads as follows: "Like the miner's canary, the Indian marks the shift from fresh air to poison gas in our political atmosphere; and our treatment of Indians, even more than our treatment of other minorities, reflects the rise and fall in our democratic faith."

For centuries, canaries had been used by miners to scout out the level of poisonous gas in mines before any workers were allowed to go in. The miners figured that if the canaries died from the toxic fumes, then the mine was not safe enough for humans to enter.

By making his analogy, Cohen was saying that the treatment of the Indian in America was a reliable gauge of the state of American democracy. He recognized that if the federal government was willing to mistreat Indians -the most vulnerable group in the country - then it was probably denying all vulnerable peoples their democratic rights.

It is not by accident that when Cohen made his analogy about Indians. The McCarthy era was flourishing in the United States. At the same time government officials were trying to terminate all funding to Indian tribes, they were also hunting down innocent people and branding them as communists and enemies of the government. American society in the 1950s was one of strict conformity, and those who didn't fit the bill were denied justice.

Fortunately, President Richard Nixon put a stop the Termination era and in 1970 began a new policy of Self-Determination for tribes. He saw this nation's debt to our people, and he rightly recognized that this debt was an ongoing one.

The tide certainly shifts as the years pass. Today there are some members of Congress who once again seek to take funding away from the Indian tribes. Many people want to bypass this nation's responsibility to American Indians and cut off tribes altogether. We call this policy "termination by appropriation."

The Mille Lacs Band has no problem with the vision of an America composed of many smaller governing bodies. We are one of those governing bodies, and we exercise our power of self-government. But our sovereignty does not excuse the United States from its debts to our People. This is not a question of our dependency. This is a matter of the United States' legal obligation to Indian tribes across the nation.

The fact is, we don't see ourselves as the government's "red children." We never have. And ever since we made our first treaties, Indian tribes have been fighting our way back to the kind of recognition we enjoyed before 1800.

Fortunately, we are beginning to see some important changes. President Clinton is providing tribes direct access to him, just as tribes had direct access to the president at the time of the original treaties. And we do have some supporters in Congress who have said the trust responsibility "includes the protection of the sovereignty of each tribal government." In fact, last June, the Attorney General created an Office of Tribal Justice to coordinate policy towards Indian tribes.

This kind of interaction—government-to-government relationships at the highest level—is the goal of all sovereigns. But a goal isn't something we reach by accident. We must work at it. For Indian tribes, that means we must carefully examine our sovereignty and then work to keep it as strong as possible.

One of the easiest ways to do this is by simply making a list. Earlier, I mentioned the fundamental attributes of sovereignty: a language, a moral and religious structure, a cultural base, a specific geographic area, governmental powers, and recognition by other sovereigns.

Several years ago, we sat down at Mille Lacs and made a list of all these things. Next to each one, we wrote down the percentage of that attribute that our Band had at the time of the original treaties. Then we wrote down the percentage we currently had.

By making this list, we were able to see how strong or weak we were in each vital area of sovereignty. For example, we realized that culturally and religiously, the Mille Lacs Band was on about same level it had been at the time of the original treaties. We also discovered that our governmental authority was actually stronger than it had been at that time. But on the down side, we found that we had experienced a tremendous loss in the area of language, so strengthening our language became one of our top priorities.

I suggest that you make your own list and see where you stand today. Then use your list to keep watch over sovereignty. We cannot afford to lose any ground, and must work to strengthen any areas that are weak.

Attacks on sovereignty are increasing. State governments are trying to assert regulatory authority over Indian tribes in many areas, including economic enterprises, environmental regulations, social programs, education standards, and taxation.

There are also the federal regulations that were intended to be beneficial to Indians, but wind up having aspects that erode our sovereignty. For example, Public Law 280 transferred some federal authority to some state governments, which negatively impacted tribal sovereignty.

The decision makers who are responsible for these laws, the ones who are responsible for upholding the federal government's side of the sovereignty equation, are sadly lacking in understanding about this issue. Probably only ten members of Congress can identify what sovereignty is, and only four can really tell you what it means. If they hear the term sovereignty, they think of King George the Third and the American Revolution - they don't think of the federal government's relationship with Indian nations.

Indian tribes and federal officials are totally mismatched. Indian tribes begin and end discussion with the concept of sovereignty—it's our core, our root, our foundation.

Federal officials, on the other hand, begin a discussion with "how much money does it cost?" or "how big a voting block is this?" or "who will attack me if I support this bill?" The administrators in the federal government aren't much different. Few people in the BIA understand sovereignty, and those who do tend to ignore it.

Then there are the tribes themselves. Tribes are sovereigns, but they don't always treat other tribes like sovereigns. They don't always do the things that could help promote the sovereignty of other tribes, and sometimes they do things that jeopardize sovereignty for all of us.

For example, some tribes are using the federal courts to resolve their differences with each other or with other entities. That means they're letting another sovereign come in and solve their problems.

This practice has started a serous debate in Indian country. Some people believe that the more you invoke sovereignty as a defense in court cases, the more vulnerable you make it to attack. Other people feel that if Indian tribes do not fight each attack on sovereignty, no matter how small, we risk seeing it eventually waste away to nothing.

This is a serious problem, perhaps the most serious problem we face today. But I am confident it is one we can solve, just as we have solved so many difficult problems in the past. As Shining Arrow, a Crow, once said, "If you have one hundred people who live together, and if each one cares for the rest, there is One Mind."

Source: http://americanindianpolicycenter.org/projects/marge1.html