Land Claim and non native families

Dr. Bruce Clark's letter in regards to Bear island case. Private communication. 2005.



U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who reputedly is a leading candidate for next Chief Justice of that Court said on April 19, 2004, in the case of Lara v. U.S., 541 US (2004) said:

"In my view, the tribes either are or are not separate sovereigns, and our federal Indian law cases untenably hold both positions simultaneously..

In 1871, Congress enacted a statute that pur-ported to prohibit entering into treaties with the "Indian nation[s] or tribe[s]." 16 Stat. 566, codi-fied at 25 usc §71. Although this Act is constitu-tionally suspect (the Constitution vests in the President both the power to make treaties, Art. ii, §2, cl. 2, and to recognize foreign governments, Art. ii, §3; see, e.g., United States v. Pink, 315 us 203, 228-230 (1942)), it nevertheless reflects the view of the political branches that the tribes had become a purely domestic matter. To be sure, this does not quite suffice to demon-strate that the tribes lost their sovereignty.

Federal Indian policy is, to say the least, schizophrenic. And this confusion continues to infuse federal Indian law and our cases.

(note 4).this is precisely the confusion that I have identi-fied and that I hope the Court begins to resolve..

I believe we must examine more critically our tribal sovereignty case law. Both the Court and the dissent, however, compound the confusion by fail-ing to undertake the necessary rigorous constitu-tional analysis. I would begin by carefully follow-ing our assumptions to their logical conclusions and by identifying the potential sources of federal power to modify tribal sovereignty..

I do, however, agree that this case raises important constitutional questions that the Court does not begin to answer. The Court utterly fails to find any provision of the Constitution that gives Congress enumerated power to alter tribal sovereignty.and I would be willing to revisit the question..

The Federal Government cannot simultaneously claim power to regulate virtually every aspect of the tribes through ordinary domestic legislation and also maintain the tribes possess anything re-sembling "sovereignty."

The Court should admit that it has failed in its quest to find a source of congressional power to adjust tribal sovereignty. Such an acknowledge-ment might allow the Court to ask the logically an-tecedent question whether Congress (as opposed to the President) has this power. A cogent answer would serve as the foundation for the analysis of the sovereignty issues posed by this case. We might find that the Federal Government cannot regulate the tribes through ordinary domestic legislation and simultaneously maintain that the tribes are sovereigns in any meaningful sense. But until we begin to analyze these questions honestly and rig-orously, the confusion that I have identified will continue to haunt our cases.
In the USA the unconstitutional Federal Statute was named the Appropriations Act, 1871. In Canada the same thing happened under the Indian Act, 1876. Ever since the 1780s in both countries the legal establishment (lawyers, judges and police) has stonewalled the aforesaid constitutional question. You will recognize as it, perhaps, as being the same basic "Indian sovereignty" question as your People raised back in 1973 when they registered put the Land Caution. The question was dropped from your proceedings upon the change of solicitors from me to Borden & Elliot. I continued to raise it other contexts until I was disbarred for persisting. Now that a presiding U.S. Supreme Court Justice has raised the same question it may be less possible for the legal establishment to put a lid on the truth.

The reason some Indians collaborate is the same reason people all around the world collaborate in the unconstitutional genocide ("serious bodily or mental harm" Art. 2(b) Genocide Convention) of their own People. It pays.

Yours,
Bruce