INTRODUCTION

A thorough treatment of the constitutional status of American Indians would involve a complete analysis of the unique and complex field of federal Indian law, which cannot be adequately described merely by reference to the numerous treaties, statutory enactments of Congress, and court decisions or federal administrative decisions. (1) The legal and political status of Indian tribes, the relationship of Indians to their tribes and to their states, and the relationship of tribes to the states and to the United States government have long been issues of controversy.

Tribes have traditionally been viewed by federal courts as dependent or "tributary" nations, possessed of limited elements of sovereignty and requiring federal protection. (2) Congress has alternatively viewed tribes as sovereign political entities, or as anachronisms, which must eventually be extinguished. The result has been two conflicting federal policies - separation and assimilation; one designed to protect Indians from the rest of society and to leave them with a degree of self-government within their own institutions; and the other calculated to bring Indians within the mainstream of American life by terminating special federal trust relationships and federal programs and services.

Termination reached its aegis during the Eisenhower administration of the 1950s. The Nixon administration took a strong stand against termination. In his message on Indian affairs, July 13, 1970, President Nixon said:

"Because termination is morally and legally unacceptable, because it produces bad practical results, and because the mere threat of termination tends to discourage greater self-sufficiency among Indian groups, I am asking the Congress to pass a new concurrent resolution which would expressly renounce, repudiate and repeal the termination policy as expressed by the House Concurrent Resolution 108 of the 83rd Congress. This resolution would explicitly affirm the integrity and rights to continued existence of all Indian tribes and Alaskan Native governments, recognizing that cultural pluralism is a source of national strength. It would assure these groups that the United States government would continue to carry out its treaty and trusteeship obligations to them as long as the groups themselves believed that such a policy was necessary or desirable. [It would] affirm for the Executive branch that the historic relationship between the federal government and the Indian communities cannot be abridged without the consent of the Indians."

NOTES:

1)Felix Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law, 1945, listed the existence of 4,264 separate statutes having application to American Indians.
2) See Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 350 (1832).

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