Title: Tribal Sovereignty: History and the Law - Native American Caucus of the California Democratic Party
Headings: 
Constitutional Law and Legal Precedent
Sovereignty as a Retained Right
Tribes and the Federal Government
The Cornerstones of Tribal Self-Government

Content: Today, 200 years later, tribal governments still exist for the same reasons they were originally founded: To provide for the welfare of the Indian people. Tribal governments build and maintain services like water, roads, waste disposal, emergency assistance, law enforcement, and transportation. Like the United States government, tribal government leaders are charged with protecting and developing an economic base. Like state, federal and local governments, tribal governments work to preserve and encourage culture and to support higher education. Tribal governments today are in a transition that began with independence, progressed through a long, difficult period of survival, and are now moving again toward self-determination and control. California tribal governments continue their progress protecting the legacy of sovereignty and providing for the future self-sufficiency of their people. Constitutional Law and Legal Precedent
Over the last two centuries, a unique relationship has been maintained between Indian tribes and the federal government. This relationship was defined in an 1832 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. In Worcester v. Georgia, the court ruled that Indian tribes are “distinct political communities, retaining their original rights as the undisputed possessors of the soil from time immemorial…the very term nation, so generally applied to them, means a people distinct from others, having territorial boundaries, within which their authority is exclusive, and having a right to all the lands within those boundaries, which is not only acknowledged but guaranteed by the United States.”