USA TODAY reports:

Wes Martel, of Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho heritage, sits with a plate of hash browns and fried eggs in front of him. At 74, he’s been active in tribal politics, buffalo restoration, environmental protection, and the fight for water rights. He thinks that Native Americans still live under the same legal constraints as they did a century ago.

He points to the Doctrine of Discovery, enacted by the Pope in the 15th century, which gave control of land to settlers who “discovered” it. The Vatican renounced the Doctrine, but it was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court as recently as 2005.

He also takes issue with the authority the U.S. government holds over Native Americans, known as “plenary power,” defined as “complete or absolute authority granted to a governing body…without limitations.” In Martel’s words, Congress “can do whatever the hell they want.”

All this makes Martel question the equality of Native American citizenship.

“It’s 2024, as a tribal member, I can’t own land,” Martel says. The Bureau of Indian Affairs “has to hold it in a trust for me.”

Martel points out that tribal nations along the Colorado River are reclaiming water rights and says that a brighter future is possible when Indigenous communities fight back.

“If you’re just going to give me some more Christianized, colonized attorneys, I don’t want no part of it,” Martel says. “We need some pit bulls for treaty law, constitutional law, and to fight this plenary power bullshit.”

Martel sips his coffee and talks about the history of Wind River. An 1863 treaty had the territory of the Eastern Shoshones stretching as far as present-day Utah and Colorado. Laws and treaties cut the reservation’s size by 95 percent. The U.S. government moved the Northern Arapaho Tribal Nation to Wind River in 1878.

At the turn of the 20th century, allotment and leasing acts opened up land to white settlers. Their descendants own property today, making Wind River a checkerboard of Indigenous and settler “discovered” land.

Sitting at his dining table in a maroon Arizona Diamondbacks shirt, Clarence Thomas, 60, questions the borders that define modern sovereignty – not just Wind River. Thomas descends from the Onk Akimel O’odham (Pima) tribal nation near today’s U.S.-Mexico border and moved to Wind River for his wife, who is Eastern Shoshone.

Thomas’ ancestors historically roamed throughout the Southwest. Thomas says that “tribal cousins” now live across the U.S.-Mexico border. He prickles at the idea of closing it.

“This whole country is full of those who immigrated here. And we as Indigenous people, we just watch them come and go,” Thomas says. “But yet they are the ones who always will say, “let’s stop the immigrants.”” [Continue reading…]