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Check out the sub-topics below to learn more about some reasons why old treaties matter so much today.
Reliance
Despite hundreds of years of reliance on treaties such as these, tribes live with the fear that the government will unilaterally decide to stop honoring treaty terms. Today, Indian tribes have limited power to enforce centuries’ old agreements—tribes ultimately must depend upon the federal government’s willingness to honor its agreements, which in many cases is the same government that took the tribe away from their ancestral lands and that has maligned them for centuries. Under this regime, tribes are extremely vulnerable—if their treaties are honored, life as they know it can continue on—it not, there is little that they can do about it.
Vulnerability
Many Indian tribes are greatly impoverished, meaning that many members rely upon food stamps and other forms of assistance in order to survive. Though many tribal leaders acknowledge this harsh reality, many Native activists argue that reservation poverty —a term that refers to the poverty Native Americans suffer on Indian reservations due to a combination of their isolated locations, the separation of tribal communities from larger communities, as well as the depressed economies around them—is in no small way linked to the government’s failures to keep its promises to Indian tribes.
Respect
Another aspect of this same problem is that Broken Treaties represent the government’s failure to honor and respect Indian tribes. As you can imagine, if you make an agreement with a friend and your friend makes all sorts of plans on the promise that you will come through on your end of the bargain, all sorts of things can go awry if you do not hold to your word. On a much more dramatic scale, this is the situation that many tribes finds themselves in today.
Sovereignty
Another reason why broken treaties are important to Native people today is the extent to which treaties, and in all too many cases the federal government’s refusal to honor them, limit tribe’s abilities to run their internal affairs. Under many Indian treaties, the federal government promised to recognize the inherent sovereignty of Indian tribes. Inherently sovereignty is a complicated legal term. More or less, it means that the US agrees that tribes are legitimate nations that exist independently of the US government and are capable of entering into agreements and running their internal affairs without US government intervention.