Native American People Chapter Summaries

The relationship between the United States and the Native American tribes has never been a supportive one, challenging at best. In the past 200 years the relationship between the two has put pressure on Congress’ claim of a world power over tribes and tribal nation’s natural sovereignty, one that is even older than that of the United States of America. This tension, which comes from a sense of where the status of the Tribe fits into the United States Constitution, is creating a slippery slope for the Native American people.

But in the book, the biggest question Pommersheim raises in the introduction is: can the modern Indian people escape their federally forced dependence, to become truly self-defining? He responds with a definite “yes.” Pommersheim’s projected course of action for the Native American Peoples is brave and daring. He states (page 6) that, with his projected course of action of “legitimate reform” Native American sovereignty will succeed because of the new reform. He concludes (page 7) that without his proposed reform the Native American People’s current ways of “helping” themselves to achieve self-resolve are not likely to flourish in the field of Native

Within the legal history, Pommersheim finds the unconstitutional influences in the Supreme Court, Native American law, decisions from the very first Caucasian settler interaction to modern times. He establishes how the federal government, from the Congressional power over the tribe’s sovereignty has been overlooked when it is politically convenient for them to do so. The Supreme Court has failed over and over again to stop what Congress was doing, instead of what it is supposed to be doing by making fair laws for the United States, by depriving the Tribes of their sovereignty leaving them