Lands Of Various Indian Tribes example essay topic

United States of America claims to be one of the most democratic countries in the world. Every high school student knows that "democracy" means "government of people", a society where every group's interests are represented and where the supreme power belongs to citizens of this particular country. On the surface, America's system seems to be working well - everybody has a chance to get education, make a good living, and keep his / her historical and cultural identity. Going deeper, however, might not seem so optimistic. Wide public is not even aware of discrimination against Native Americans that takes place for many years now and is not likely to stop if nothing is done. This paper argues that, even though the American government claims to promote equality and democracy in the whole world, the State still badly mistreats its own citizens and people whom Americans owe their whole historical development and well-being - the Native Indians.

Over the course of a century, thousands of Native Indian families struggled financially because of their dependence on an unreliable government to manage their holdings properly. Sometimes, the government was unable to procure payments, but even when it had, the funds still were not disbursed to the families that owned the land. It can be surely said that nothing will happen to the government officials that were the architects of this corruption because they are allowed to hide behind the veil of public service. Not surprisingly, this issue has not gotten the attention it deserves because of the parties involved: the US Government was and is still doing something quite dishonorable to a very small minority with little media influence, and the Native American tribes. Historical roots of the virtually free usage of resources from Indian reservations go a long way back into the history. In the 18th century, the US government agreed to protect lands of various Indian tribes by passing laws that prohibited non-Indians from settling on those lands (FCNL article, 3/28/2005).

The laws were not followed and neither the government nor the courts enforced them - numerous settlers took over the land of the Indians. In 1830 the official governmental policy became removal of Indians from their lands and resettling them farther west. In 1831, Chief Justice Marshall ruled that the lands on which Native Americans reside continued to belong to the United States, and that the tribes should be considered "domestic dependent nations... Their relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to his guardian". (FCNL article, 3/28/2005) Later on, the Federal Government became a trustee of the tribes, and was managing, leasing and collecting money for the land-usage.

From 1887 until 1934 the Allotment Act, forced to break all Indian land into small pieces owned by individual Indians. Indians still could not manage their land however they wanted to. The government continued to be their trustee and had an exclusive right to sell any natural resources that were found on, under or above that land. That gave a start to numerous contracts with large corporations and small companies that extract oil, remove minerals, diverse water, cut timber and exercise similar uses on those lands. Some of those contracts have been signed with favored corporations, even if they were against native-Indian interests.

The royalties collected under those contracts were supposed to be distributed among the land-owners (FCNL article, 3/28/2005). Audits have shown problems with usage of Indian lands that have been on for over a century. For example, an audit of 1915 has shown that the management of Indian accounts was fraught with "fraud, corruption, and institutional incompetence" (FCNL article, 3/28/2005). It was becoming more and more obvious that the money for resource-usage is not going to the owners of that land.

In 1950's it became known that the government has under-compensated Native Americans for the right to their natural resources. The royalties they received were more than 20 times less than the royalties received by non-Native Americans who live in the same area (Wagner). In 1992, the House Committee on Government Operations investigated the situation and produced a report named "Misplaced Trust: The Bureau of Indian Affairs' Mismanagement of the Indian Trust Fund". (FCNL article, 3/28/2005).