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Comment by fermienrico | Hacker News Reader

Can someone explain why America has reservations? From what I know, Native Indians had this land almost 2+ centuries ago. Why have a special, looks like an autonomous, region and special treatment to people that are a few generations down from when this happened?

How far back into the history should we go?

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> Can someone explain why America has reservations?

Because we signed treaties with the tribes, which are now semi-sovereign entities as a result.

And because, after our shameful history of ignoring those treaties whenever we felt like it, it might not hurt to actually keep one for once.

Keep one? Aren't there hundreds of reservations across the US?

Keep a treaty. We've a long history of breaking them when we feel like it.

Likewise, there are hundreds of treaties still in existence.

I think "keep one for once" was intended to be idiomatic and not literally mean "one", but "on this occasion"

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/for+once

Alright I’ll stop being so pedantic.

Fair point. But I'd say that we kept them when we thought it was convenient to do so - when the land that it gave them wasn't land that we decided we wanted. So my point was, not that we never kept them, but that we should keep this one now, even if we decided it was inconvenient.

That's not 'why', that's 'how'.

I'm not American, so don't know the topic in details. I have found this online:

"The main goals of Indian reservations were to bring Native Americans under U.S. government control, minimize conflict between Indians and settlers and encourage Native Americans to take on the ways of the white man." [1]

[1] https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/india...

It's both.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Dancing_Rabbit_Creek

> Lands (in what is now Oklahoma) west of the Mississippi River to be conveyed to the Choctaw Nation. Lands east of the Mississippi River to be ceded and removal to begin in 1831 and end in 1833.

A treaty is a tool, it's 'how' to achieve something, not 'why' achieve something.

The reasons are as per my previous comments, and also as a tool to displace native population (in effect ethnic cleansing) and to grab land, as is for example the case of the treaty you mention.

Arguably, the treaties are not only "how" but also "why" us modern Americans, detached from the times in which those reservations were established, should uphold them, as they are lawful.

We could certainly look at why the treaties were signed, but the original comment basically asked why we, modernly, should care.

The treaties, as legal instruments, partly explain why reservations still exist, yes, but a treaty only survives if it isn't an impediment. I think it's key to understand why they were created in the first place because that also explains why they still exist: IMHO they still serve their purpose.

Because in many cases we signed legally binding treaties with what were sovereign people at the time (and ostensibly are today but in practice not actually). We have either used loopholes or outright reneged on the treaties to further take their land away. I don't know if the time passed is relevant, when we pass treaties and sign agreements in general they have to mean something if we intend to be a nation of laws.

Can someone explain why America has reservations?

As I understand it, it's not "special" status and more a result of the laws that were put into place when the land was "obtained" from Native Americans. Renegading on those treaties would be no different than the government repossessing your generations-owned land because "you shouldn't get special treatment because your great grandfather bought this land for $3".

The government does 'reposess' the land to some extent through property taxes.

Also, the verb you wanted is "reneging" from "renege" - to go back on a promise, as in when playing cards to go back on a promise to follow suit.

A reservation is not just land. A reservation is Tribal Land of a sovereign nation. This is touched upon in the article.

It's complicated. Tribes, much like (capital S) States, are semi-sovereign, sovereign in some things but not in others. Much like States, reservations are still part of the United States.

The US government signed treaties (Legal documents) with Native American tribes. This decision rests on the fact those are, indeed, binding documents. Congress can explicitly modify these treaties, but that is an explicit legislative duty.

It really isn't that hard of a question to answer. If I legally own land, how far back in history should it go? Well, probably as far back as the entity that enforces legality says.

The court has never ruled the president can't unilaterally tear up treaties too though, so it may not require Congress. When Bush unilaterally ended the ballistic missile treaty the court refused to hear the case.

This is an interesting and important fact I wasn't aware of, thanks!

These rights existing because the US government signed treaties with independent foreign nations. Those treaties are valid law until the Congress withdraws from them.

Did the US government ever acknowledge them as independent foreign nations? The War of Independence was partly fought to get away from the British proclamation of 1763 that said you couldn't settle west of the Appalachians without a treaty.

Oklahoma was part of the Louisiana purchase, the US considered it their land for that reason.

The US signed treaties with the indigeneous population in an attempt to secure peace, not out of any sort of acknowledgement that they had to.

The US signed a formal treaty, which remains law.

>The US signed treaties with the indigeneous population

and by doing so, acknowledged that those indigenous populations were soveriegn nations. It doesn't matter why they signed those treaties, the only thing that matters is that they did.

You don't get to cancel a treaty just because the other party used to have leverage over you and doesn't anymore.

> Did the US government ever acknowledge them as independent foreign nations?

Yes. That's why we had to write treaties with them, to gain proper title to the land. Even if we treated those who signed the treaties as having more authority than they actually did, and if we treated the treaties as mere scraps of paper, those treaties were still seen as treaties with legitimate sovereign nations.

Because we systematically killed the majority of their race, culture, land, and way of life. So we’ve given them 1% of that back as penance.

You can go as far back as you want and it’s still native Americans / native North Americans.

>Because we systematically killed the majority of their race

Vast majority of Native Americans, and estimated 90% died to disease. It was no more systemic killing than the plague in Europe, or coronavirus today.

>You can go as far back as you want and it’s still native Americans / native North Americans.

Go far enough back and you have empty land and Asian settlers.

I think like most things, reservations weren't a solution to all things all native peoples for all time. It was more of a point in time act for specific reasons.

In this case the US was engaged in very specific legal deals with these groups. Reservations grew out of that process.

It's contracts between nations (the US federal government and the the tribes). Native American tribes are numerous (the federal government recognized 550 distinct tribes when I last checked) and have agreements with the government that were to guarantee their sovereignty.

The US government was making treaties with Native American tribes as recently as 1871. One hundred and fifty years ago isn’t long at all. It’s two lifetimes. It’s recent enough for someone to have known someone who was alive then.

> The US government was making treaties with Native American tribes as recently as 1871.

Even later than that I think? The government was fighting Geronimo in the 1880s, and my understanding is there was some intermittent fighting as late as the 1920s. I'm not sure about treaties specifically though.

Think of it like this:

You own quite a bit of fenced-land and have built some dwellings on it, a main home, a couple outbuildings, a barn, etc... you and your family farm it, raise livestock, hunt, fish, etc... and live quite well off the land without ever needing to leave or venture beyond the fence.

One day you see some strangers outside your fence, looking quite haggard, and ill setting up a camp using nothing but the meager supplies left in their vehicles, and what looks to be parts of the vehicles themselves...

Feeling compassion you attempt to help them, you open your gate and land to them, your home even, providing food, additional shelter, and even teaching them some basic things about your land and how to harvest, hunt, fish and generally live off it...

Fast forward a couple centuries, and now your "guests" have double-crossed you... taken all your land by force, persecuted your family while committing countless crimes including rapes, murders, and basically genocide on a continental scale.

In an act of "graciousness" during one of countless "treaties" you've been forced into accepting under duress - so that your entire family wasn't completely wiped from the face of the earth... you were "allowed" some small areas of undesireable land by your new masters where you be confined and kept out of the way without constantly needing to be harrased and supervised into submission... that was until those same people found out there was oil and other commodities buried underneath your newly constucted hovels... at which point they just pushed you into smaller and smaller areas, and took what they wanted from you and yours at-will anyway... I mean who could you complain to? their bought-and-paid for system of goverment and courts? the same that were used to persecute your family and steal your lands and heritage?

Now apparently some judges have decided to interpret the law as written, instead of posing for pictures in black gowns with pretty little wooden hammers...

This analogy falls apart some since there was never a concept of land ownership (to my knowledge) amongst the various North American tribes, so there wouldn't have been "fenced-land" semi-permanent dwellings to take over to begin with. Also, not all of them were welcoming in the romanticized way you present and many of them were very brutal to rival indigenous groups.

In short, it's a little more complicated than that. Certainly there was much evil committed towards indigenous peoples in many places, though. However, the Aztecs weren't very nice to their neighbors and the fact that they were betrayed by the Spanish seemed like an apt comeuppance for a group led by bloodthirsty warmongering maniacs.

Most reservations are not great places to live. A google search shows there's lots of crime, depression, and poverty. I think these people should realize its difficult to live in relative isolation these days and move forward. Let them keep this land but don't attempt autonomous independence. Pick your source. An oversimplification: white-guilt. You're being downvoted because people assume this comment is racist when I think you're just asking for information.

I don’t know about the downvotes, but the previous poster seems to be asking rhetorically to make an argument, not request information.

You can literally say the same thing about say, Alabama. It's full of crime, depression and poverty. How about we let them keep their land, but remove their statehood?

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