Nation, State or County?

The sovereignty of Native American nations in the United States presents a complicated set of issues, wrapped in various viewpoints and interwoven with the past, present and future. However, this entry doesn’t discuss the historical or political situation, it points to current geography. Please excuse me as I sidestep the sensitivities while focusing on boundaries determined by people of European descent. I’m hoping to present this in a neutral fashion. Comments are always welcome.


Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Photo by Jmmy Emerson, DVM; (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Nation?

Native Americans managed themselves just fine in Pre-Columbian times. They may not have been organized in accordance with European governance but so what. They formed into sovereign and independent units as tribes, confederations and other arrangements. Many advocates for Native Americans maintain that this sovereignty continues to exist today, that the Nations exist as literal nations, even though a dominant power refuses to accept that.

State?

The United States government presents a confusing view. It says it recognizes tribal sovereignty but not on an international level. The interaction takes place primarily through the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs. The United States ceased forming treaties with the Native American nations in 1871 and granted citizenship to all members (those who had not already attained citizenship) in 1924. The Federal government views the Native Americans nations within its boundaries as integral but subordinate to the Federal government.

The United States retains title to the reservation lands within its boundaries and holds it in trust on behalf of its Native American occupants. To them it forms just another parcel of U.S. government land like a military base or a national park, albeit with a special purpose. This land comprises more than 55 million acres held on behalf of 562 recognized tribal governments.

The Federal government allows Indian reservations to preserve a level of self-government. While a reservation forms part of the surrounding state(s) that it occupies territorially, it retains an exemption from state encroachments unless specified by Federal law. Thus, reservations do not generally pay state taxes. Tribal governments can also possess significant authorities including systems of laws with police power and courts to enforce them. Many of them levy taxes, license motor vehicles, provide social services and perform a wide variety of functions one would normally expect from a state. But they are not states.

The interrelationship between the Native American nations and the various levels of government in the U.S. can be extremely complicated. The FAQ on the BIA website does help sort out some of the more common issues from a U.S. Government perspective.

County?

One more level of complexity exists. This one fascinates me most of all because I have no idea how it might work in practice. Sometimes a reservation completely overlaps a county, ordinarily the third level of government. It doesn’t happen frequently. Counties in the eastern United States generally cover smaller areas, but settlers forced Native Americans from those areas primarily during the Colonial era. Many more reservations exist out west but few reservations can cover one of those huge counties completely. Thus, we need need to look towards the middle of the country, where Native Americans retained a foothold but where the counties still remain relatively compact.

I found several. However, this may not be the complete list of county-reservation combos. A quick examination uncovered these first. Nonetheless, I’ll add more if I find them.


Menominee County, Wisconsin

This particular example got me thinking about the subject originally. I’ve spent a lot of time traveling in Wisconsin and I noticed a map of Menominee County. It struck me that the entire county carried the label of the Menominee Indian Reservation, the home of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. The two were conterminous, that is, they shared the exact same borders. The county is the reservation and the reservation is the county.

I did a little research and discovered that wasn’t exactly the case. The county came into being in 1959 in anticipation of the disestablishment of the reservation. Indeed, that happen in 1961. However authorities subsequently reestablished the reservation a few years later, in 1973. Non-Indian peoples purchased some of the land during that brief window so that 1.14% of Menominee County actually passed into private hands and does not form part of the reservation.


Osage County, Oklahoma

Osage County is the largest in Oklahoma. Also, it overlaps the Osage Indian Reservation, the home of the Osage Nation. This one bumps right up to the northwest corner of Tulsa. In fact, the map seems to show that the Tulsa Country Club falls within the reservation boundaries.


Todd County, South Dakota

Indian Reservations completely cover five counties in South Dakota, by far the most of any state.

The first is Todd County which is conterminous with the main Rosebud Indian Reservation (other lands are held outside of this as well). The reservation provides a home to the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. Interestingly, this county does not include a county seat. An administrative center in neighboring Tripp County handles those functions.


Oglala Lakota Shannon County, South Dakota

[UPDATE: Shannon County became Oglala Lakota in May 2015]

The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home of Oglala Sioux Tribe, engulfs the entirety of Oglala Lakota within its extensive borders. Like Todd County, Oglala Lakota does not include a county seat. Instead, neighboring Fall River County performs those functions.


Dewey and Ziebach Counties, South Dakota

I found an interesting situation. The Cheyenne River Indian Reservation of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe is almost conterminous with Dewey and Ziebach Counties. However an extremely narrow strip at the northern edge of both counties falls outside of the reservation. Rather, that forms part of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. So the entirety of both counties could be considered Indian Country but with an unusual twist.


Corson County, South Dakota and Sioux County, North Dakota

Speaking of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, adjoining counties on opposite sides of state borders, Corson County in South Dakota and Sioux County in North Dakota form the final instance I observed. This reservation serves as the home of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. It covers about a million acres. The portion in North Dakota includes about a third of the reservation with the balance south of the state line.

Comments

5 responses to “Nation, State or County?”

  1. Jesse Avatar

    Interesting subject! This got me wondering whether the enormous Navajo nation had any counties completely inside of it. It doesn’t, though it occupies more than 60% of several counties in Arizona and New Mexico.

    The county seats for all of those counties appear to be outside of the reservations. Their demographics (according to Wikipedia) are fairly striking, e.g. Apache County in Arizona has more than 75% Native population, but the county seat, St. John’s, is less than 7% Native American.

    That might suggest something about the role of those counties in relation to the reservation in those cases. But it does make me curious as well about the practical role of county governments in cases where the county and the reservation are coterminous or the county is entirely inside the reservation.

  2. pfly Avatar

    There’s a good–if a bit dry–book on the odd nature of American Indian Treaties and their history. It’s called “American Indian Treaties: The History of a Political Anomaly”, by Francis Paul Prucha. It doesn’t get into the county-issues you raise, as far as I know. It does get into how and why treaties between the federal government and Indian tribes/nations/whatever were conducted as if they were international treaties, but fully within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States. In early times, if I have it right, Indian nations were treated (‘treated’->treaty) as sovereign bodies. But one of the key rights reserved by colonial era powers (eg, the early USA, Britain, Spain, France, etc), was that within the domain recognized as under the jurisdiction of a particular colonial power only that power could negotiate treaties with the Indians. It was messier in earlier colonial times, when the borders between colonial powers were not yet nailed down, and the powers depended upon Indians to do much of the fighting in proxy. By the middle 19th century the long tradition of treating Indians as sovereign states requiring federal international-like treaties had become rather anachronistic, especially as the power relation between the USA and the various tribes fell far out of balance.

    I have wondered about how counties operate when they are wholly within a reservation. Post more if you learn more. I’ve long suspected that although reservations are usually mapped as solid blocks they are usually, perhaps always more accurately a patchwork of parcels, some part of the reservation, some not, with many shades of gray between. At least, in the Pacific Northwest that is often the case. Maps will show solid blocks of reservation land, but if you get down to the parcel level you’ll find the actual lands under reservation jurisdiction may be less than 50%.

  3. Jesse Avatar

    I just came across a map that takes all the fun out of looking for these overlaps:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bia-map-indian-reservations-usa.png

    Looks like there’s at least one more case where a county is entirely contained in a reservation (in Montana), as well as several near-misses across the mountain West.

  4. Anton Sherwood Avatar

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