1 CHAPTER 1: AMERICAN INDIAN SELF-DETERMINATION AND ...

Such sovereignty was often recognized by the United
States through treaties and trust-protected lands.
Throughout the late eighteenth and much of the nineteenth
century, the United States entered into treaties with many
Native peoples. The treaties--which usually involved Indians
ceding land or agreeing to maintain peaceful relations with
the United States--recognized that American Indian peoples
had sovereignty. Certain court decisions, executive orders,
and laws have also recognized inherent sovereignty. The
classification of most reservation lands as "trust
protected"--that is, occupied and used by the tribes but held
"in trust" by the federal government--served to protect
Native sovereignty. On the trust lands of the reservations,
Indian nations and the federal government have jurisdiction;
generally, states have no authority over Indian reservations,
even those within a state's boundaries. (There have been and
are some exceptions.) The trust relationship between tribes
and the federal government also served to help preserve the
Indians' lands by restricting the ability to sell, lease, or
mortgage tribal territory. 10 The goal of the trust status
was and is to prevent tribal lands and their resources from
being taken or misused by non-Indian individuals or groups,
10 AIPRC, Final Report, vol. 1, 126; Bennett, "Workshop on
Tribal Government," 8 December 1959; Hall, Federal-Indian
Trust Relationship, 2-3; Donald L. Fixico, The Invasion of
Indian Country in the Twentieth Century: American Capitalism
and Tribal Natural Resources (Niwot: University of Colorado
Press, 1998), 177-178; Prucha, American Indian Treaties, 2-9.
7