In 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act, gave indigenous Americans automatic citizenship if born within the territorial limits of the USA. This did not detract from 'tribal sovereignty' nor did it change the status of 'reservations' as 'domestic dependent nations' where the Federal Government could act as a guardian does towards his ward.
Mahmood Mamdani, father of NYC Mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, writes in his latest book-
...the system known euphemistically as tribal sovereignty;
No euphemism is involved. The US has 'dual sovereignty' and also 'tribal sovereignty'. The former operates at the level of the States making up the Union. The latter applies to tribal land designated as such.
its principal manifestations are the reservations and the second-class citizenship of their inhabitants.
It may be, de facto, that tribal people living on reservations are treated worse or have lower access to constitutional remedies. But, de jure, this is not the case. The same point may be made about a mentally impaired person living in a crack-house in a big City. Though, de jure, they have all the rights of a Harvard Law Professor, in practice, they lack effective remedies for violations of their constitutional rights.
Americans have heard of reservations, but few realize that their Indian residents have no constitutional rights.
This is false. Since 1924, indigenous people are birth-right citizens with the same rights as other Americans on non-tribal land. On tribal-land, their rights would be superior. However, 'tribal sovereignty'- just like 'State's rights'- may limit what the Federal Government can mandate.
Their citizenship and civil rights are specified only in federal statutes revocable by congressional decree.
That is a justiciable matter. Will, SCOTUS uphold suits brought against Trump's recent initiatives regarding Birth Right Citizenship? I don't know.
Indians are omitted from the Constitution’s protections by virtue of the document’s explicit language, and federal Indian statutes do not replicate the full range of these protections, even in revocable form.
Because of Tribal Sovereignty. Similarly 'States Rights' can abridge certain rights- e.g. abortion- in one State by reason of a decision of its Legislature.
America did not have to choose a two-state solution, with a majority state for settlers and a minority protectorate for natives.
The US saw massive European immigration and high fertility and territorial expansion of this immigrant population. On the one hand there was military conflict or criminal violence, but there was also 'demographic replacement'.
For decades, certain whites and Indians envisioned a single state. These visions took various forms, but all involved the assimilation of the natives as equal citizens, at least at some distant time.
Charles Curtius, Herbert Hoover's Vice President, was a prominent Native American politician of this description.
Instead, across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the three branches of the federal government together rendered American Indians wards of the Congress, hemmed into lands “granted” them from the larger realms stolen. The two-state solution has only solidified over the years; American Indians are more completely colonized today than they were in 1789 or 1924, when they were allowed their second-class citizenship.
Sadly, people like the Mamdanis keep settling in the US thus increasing 'demographic replacement' of Americans by birth. Hopefully, Zohran will endorse Trump and voluntarily deport himself to Kampala. Otherwise, he is complicit in the colonization of 'Turtle Island'.
The United States is not the world’s only colonial state, but it is unique in its failure to recognize itself in the mirror.
Is that why Mamdanis have settled there? If Trump sets up a big mirror and the US recognizes itself as whatever this nutter claims it is, will he and his son fuck off back to Uganda?
Perhaps what is needed, then, is a new mirror: a new story of what America is, written through careful attention both to what happened and to the ways in which these events have been narrated and interpreted.
Zohran's degree is in 'Africana studies'. No doubt he learned such 'stories' in College. Is this desirable in a Democratic candidate for Mayor of New York?
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