Abstract
In my presentation I would like to point to possible new directions in the United States Indian policy which began to be discussed in the last decades of the twentieth century and which are gaining increasingly more clear contours at the present time. The United States deals with Indian tribes as “domestic dependent nations.” The status of Indian tribes in the United States is that of nations, not ethnic minorities, with the inherent right to exercise sovereign powers over their citizens, territory, and property through independent political structures.
This fact separates Indian nations from the multicultural perspective of American society and is expressed by the term “government-to-government relationship.” Throughout the history of the United States, tribal-federal relationship assumed various forms depending on the implementation of frequently changing federal Indian policies which were not stable and clearly articulated until the announcement of the self-determination policy in 1970. Today, after more than forty years since the official inauguration of the self-determination policy, there is a lack of specific vision which could be shared by the federal government and Indians.
Obama’s Presidential Campaign in 2008 and the first years of his presidency instilled a lot of hope in Native peoples that a new era in Indian affairs would take place, an era characterized by more consensual relations with the federal government. In my contribution I would like to mention the possibilities of realizing bipartisan consensual relations.
If the U.S. government created a space for political negotiations with tribal leaders and made tribal consultation legally enforceable it would not only strengthen the government-to-government relationship but also the American democracy.