Title: American Indians and the Constitution (Update) | Encyclopedia.com
Headings: American Indians and the Constitution (Update)
American Indians and the Constitution (Update)
AMERICAN INDIANS AND THE CONSTITUTION (Update)
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Content: On the political side, the idea of trust responsibility gradually blossomed into massive programs to assist Indians in adjusting to the economic and political institutions of the West. The Supreme Court confused the issue considerably in United States v. Kagama (1886) when it invoked this trust responsibility as a basis of congressional power, even as it ruled that the commerce clause did not justify the establishment of a criminal justice system on an Indian reservation. In concluding that the trust responsibility gave the federal government such powers, the Court appeared to give Congress virtually unlimited power over Indians. The Constitution did not, of its own force, limit the powers of tribal governments. In Talton v. Mayes (1896), the Court upheld the laws of the Cherokee Nation regarding grand jury composition on the grounds that the Cherokees were self-governing, and had been so since before the adoption of the Constitution. Therefore, only the powers the Indian nation had specifically surrendered were to be subject to constitutional protection. This theory was reaffirmed sixty years later by a lower federal court in Native American Church v. Navajo Tribal Council (1959), laying the groundwork for modern tribal sovereignty claims that tribes are separate political entities with a status higher than states. The Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 reduced this political isolation, imposing on tribes some of the guarantees of the federal Constitution in their dealings with individuals, including their own citizens. religious liberty was the most notable constitutional guarantee not imposed on Indian tribes, because some of them were traditional theocracies. This law was enacted in response to a lower court ruling in 1965, Colliflower v. Garland, in which it was decided that an Indian could appeal a tribal court decision to a federal district court on the ground that the tribal court was partially a creation of the national government.