Title: Tribal sovereignty legal definition of Tribal sovereignty
Headings: 
Native American Rights
Native American Rights
Tribal Sovereignty
Treaty Rights
Reserved Rights Doctrine
Federal Power over Native American Rights
Hunting and Fishing Rights
Water Rights
Gaming Rights
Further readings
Cross-references
Native American Rights
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Content: Although the historic events and specific details of each tribe's situation vary considerably, the legal rights and status maintained by Native Americans are the result of their shared history of wrestling with the U.S. government over such issues as tribal sovereignty, shifting government policies, treaties that were made and often broken, and conflicting latter-day interpretations of those treaties. The result today is that although Native Americans enjoy the same legal rights as every other U.S. citizen, they also retain unique rights in such areas as hunting and fishing, water use, and Gaming operations. In general, these rights are based on the legal foundations of tribal sovereignty, treaty provisions, and the "reserved rights" doctrine, which holds that Native Americans retain all rights not explicitly abrogated in treaties or other legislation. Tribal Sovereignty
Tribal sovereignty refers to the fact that each tribe has the inherent right to govern itself. Before Europeans came to North America, Native American tribes conducted their own affairs and needed no outside source to legitimate their powers or actions. When the various European powers did arrive, however, they claimed dominion over the lands that they found, thus violating the sovereignty of the tribes who already were living there. The issue of the extent and limits of tribal sovereignty came before the U.S. Supreme Court in Johnson v. McIntosh, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543, 5 L. Ed. 681 (1823). Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Marshall described the effects of European incursion on native tribes, writing that although the Indians were " admitted to be the rightful occupants of the soil … their rights to complete sovereignty, as independent nations, were necessarily diminished, and their power to dispose of the soil, at their own will, to whomsoever they pleased, was denied by the original fundamental principle, that discovery gave exclusive title to those who made it."