I’ve always taught my federal Indian law students that many — if not most — of the tribal constitutions adopted in the years immediately following the Indian Reorganization Act were imposed on the tribes by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. These were the model IRA constitutions. If you look at the constitutions adopted around that time, you see a lot of similar features: lack of separation of powers, no tribal courts, Secretarial approvals for everything up to and including breathing. But as Blake said, he who generalizes is a fool.

Recent works of scholarship challenge that notion that the Bureau imposed model constitutions. First, Elmer Rusco’s chapter in American Indian Constitutional Reform and the Rebuilding of Native Nations. And now David Wilkins’s introduction to the new book, Felix S. Cohen’s On the Drafting of Tribal Constitutions. Elmer Rusco’s 2000 book on the IRA, A Fateful Time, argues that the BIA considered thrusting model constitutions at tribes, but rejected the plan in favor of an outline. Wilkins notes that it appears some tribes did receive a model constitution from the BIA (the one reproduced as Appendix A in the Cohen book), and others received a model corporate charter or the outline.

It would be worthwhile to do a survey of the 181 tribes that voted to accept the IRA. What do their constitutions say?