Turtle Talk

I will first examine some of the legal and policy trends in America’s treatment of Indians that are currently taking place. For several years now, I have thought that the study of America’s so-called Indian law is completely predictable and intellectually moribund. Recently, however, there have been competing developments emanating from the Supreme Court and the Congress–for example the recent decision in United States v. Lara and the development of the Self-Governance Program–that offset my concerns that a neo-termination policy has fully emerged. Examining the current policy trends and predicting where things are headed presents an interesting forensic examination.

Secondly, because I am generally an optimist and believe that there must be a silver lining somewhere within these antagonistic developments, I will examine what I perceive to be the opportunities that lie in the current policy landscape. These may not be intuitive assessments for anyone who genuinely believes that the Self-Determination Policy is really working. But opportunities do exist, and they should be better understood in order to seize upon them.

Lastly, I will examine this whole policy quandary from a normative perspective. For the entirety of American history, the United States has basically approached policy questions involving the Indians from one simple perspective –” what do we do with them?” Well, the other side of that policy question is rarely asked, which is, “what do we Indians want for ourselves?”

This is an important question to answer as Native peoples take more control over our own lives. But the question is more difficult than one might think. There is very real tension for Indians in this day and age between choosing the easy path towards living the good life as a member of American society, or choosing the traditional and more difficult path of struggling to preserve life as free and distinct peoples and nations. Compounding the difficulty of this choice is the fact that, because of our inherent differences and generations of colonization-induced social and cultural change, Indians today see the world through very different lenses. Understanding what exactly is happening to us, much less being able to respond coherently, makes the goal of formulating Indigenous survival strategies especially challenging.