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This isn't really the United States.
This map—while it may display the technical, internationally recognized borders of the
country—just is not fully accurate.
It should look more like this.
That’s because the 89 thousand square miles or 230 thousand square kilometers now missing
from this map are filled by 326 Indian reservations, and the Native American Tribes that manage
these lands are recognized by the US Federal Government as sovereigns.
That’s to say, while these may not be countries, they are, by most measures, independent, sovereign
nations.
Collectively, reservations account for 2.5% of the US’ total landmass, and together
would represent the 12th physically largest state—between Michigan and Minnesota.
Truly the only commonality between each of the reservations is the system through which
they are recognized by the US Federal Government.
They range dramatically is size, system, and function.
The smallest, for example, is the Likely Rancheria in Northern California.
At just 1.32 acres, it’s physically similar in size to many suburban home plots, and is
used as the cemetery of the Pit River Tribe.
There are also plenty of larger Reservations without any permanent population.
For example, the Ontonagon Indian Reservation in Michigans’ Upper Peninsula is mainly
used by a branch of the Lake Superior Chippewa Tribe as hunting and fishing land and the
small Snoqualmie Reservation is almost entirely composed of the tribe’s casino.
But of course, a majority of reservations are inhabited by anywhere between one and
174,000 people.
At the upper end of that spectrum, there’s the physically largest, most populous, and—by
many measures—most politically developed Indian Reservation—the Navajo Nation.
Centered around northeastern Arizona, but passing into Utah and New Mexico as well,
the Navajo nation is physically larger than ten US states, and has a population greater
than that of 18 UN-recognized countries.
Now, according to the US, the Navajo Nation is sovereign, but it’s certainly not a country,
so what is it?
Now, like all Indian Reservations, the story of how the Navajo Nation came to be is complex
and tragic.
Its Diné people have inhabited the Southwest since their migration from Arctic America
around the 15th century AD, but the path that directly led to the establishment of the reservation
began with the Long Walk.
After years of conflict between European Americans and the Diné, the US Federal Government directed
the Army to end what was, in their eyes, the “Navajo problem.”
Soldiers descended on Navajo land, destroyed much of their civilization, and one by one
forced bands of Diné to walk 400 miles or 650 kilometers from their homelands to Fort
Sumner, in New Mexico, where they were imprisoned on cramped, unproductive land.
Hundreds died during the walk, and thousands more while imprisoned.
After a few years, though, the government recognized that they had made a mistake—the
camp was costly to run due to its low agricultural yields, and they realized that the land from
which the Diné had come was not what the US would consider “useful” for its settlers.
In exchange for a number of provisions aimed at assimilation, the Navajo and the US signed
the Treaty of Bosque Redondo—ending the internment, and effectively establishing the
Navajo’s reservation around their homelands.
Still, though, in the decades that followed, the reservation looked little like the nation
of today.
Change accelerated in 1921, though, when the Aztec Oil Syndicate struck oil one mile south
of the town of Aztec, New Mexico.
This would go on to be developed into the first commercial well in the region—attracting
considerable attention nationwide.
While this first site was outside the reservation, large oil companies soon recognized that there
were almost certainly productive sites within Navajo borders.
US Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall, who was quite friendly with the oil
and gas industry—and later would become the first presidential cabinet member in history
to go to jail after accepting bribes from the industry—recognized that further oil
and gas development in the region would require the Navajo’s system of governance to look
a little more like the US’.
At the time, the reservation was administered through a decentralized, somewhat informal,
traditional form of governance which made negotiations with big American companies difficult.
Therefore, Fall organized a Navajo business council, with three positions filled by three
of his appointees—all of whom were Navajo, but also friends of Fall or the industry.
However, Bureau of Indian Affairs Commissioner Charles H Burke recognized that this was far
from a democratic process—an unelected council making decisions on behalf of all the Diné
people—so he worked to set up an elected tribal council—the new core of the Nation’s
legislative system.
Still today, that council serves the same purpose, but its establishment snowballed
the Navajo government into something far more formal, sprawling, and western.
The sovereignty of the Navajo Nation is best examined through its capital—Window Rock.
Its streets are lined with offices of all the agencies and organizations running the
government functions that the Navajo Nation handles itself: the Division of Public Safety,
the Window Rock Police Department, the Office of Community Development, the Navajo Nation
Veterans Administration, the Navajo Housing Authority, the Navajo Nation Telecommunications
and Utility Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Department, the Heritage and Historic Preservation
Office, the Tribal Courts, the Supreme Court, the Office of Vital Records, the Council Chambers,
and the Navajo Nation Office of the President and Vice President.
Many similarly-named structures could also be found in county, state, and national capitals
across the US and world, but there are some missing.
Also dotting the landscape of Window Rock are features like a branch of the United States
Postal Service; an office of the Arizona Motor Vehicle Department; Arizona State Route 264,
maintained by the Arizona Department of Transportation; and an airport administered and regulated
by the American FAA.
Adding to that, one sees many of the chain services and stores of the United States—Aflac,
H&R Block, Ace Hardware, Wells Fargo, Chevron, Bank of America, Quality Inn, McDonald’s,
and more.
However, there is also a small, unique business landscape.
There are Navajo Petroleum gas stations, owned by the Navajo oil and gas company of the same
name; Bashas’ Diné Market which, while owned and operated by the region-wide Bashas’
brand, is a unique sub-brand carrying goods especially in-demand by Diné like Blue Bird
flour and mutton; and there’s the Navajo Times which, while originally ran by the government,
is now a for-profit, financially independent newspaper.
So, the government and economy of the Navajo Nation is an amalgamation of Navajo and American
features so, considering that, can it be considered truly independent?
Independence is defined by a lack of dependence, so the answer to that revolves around their
relationship with the US.
The Federal Government’s official terminology as to what tribal reservations are is “domestic
dependent nations.”
While that term originates from a 1831 Supreme Court Case, it’s never used elsewhere to
define what any other geopolitical entity is, either in the US or internationally, so
it’s rather ill-defined.
Therefore, for all intents and purposes, “domestic dependent nation” is essentially interchangeable
with the term “Indian Reservation.”
While what an American state is is well understood and defined, what an Indian Reservation is
is defined by a patchwork of decisions, guidelines, legislation, and treaties.
For example, the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 made it so that all remaining indigenous
people living in the US not already a citizen would be granted such status, meaning, functionally,
that all those living on tribal nations are obligated to pay taxes to the US Federal Government—as
the US, uniquely, taxes on citizenship and not residency.
However, when members of tribes live on tribal land, they do not pay taxes to the states
that that land is also a part of.
Window Rock, for example, is technically part of both Arizona and the Navajo Nation, but
its residents only pay taxes to the latter.
The tribes themselves, and therefore the reservations, do not pay taxes to either state or federal
governments—much like individual American states themselves.
Unlike states, however, tribal nations have something similar to a citizenship system.
Each tribe has the power to define who can become members and what the process of enrollment
looks like.
For example, in the case of the Navajo Nation, members need to be at least 1/4th Diné, by
lineage, and not a member of any other tribe.
Building on that, private property is essentially nonexistent on tribal nations—the land is
held in trust by the US Federal Government, and then managed by the tribal governments.
Therefore, most residents either live in homes rented out by the tribal housing authority,
or in mobile homes on public land.
That's because banks won’t give loans to build housing within reservations as the land
upon which they’d be built is publicly owned, so it’d be impossible to repossess the homes
if payments fell behind.
They will loan for mobile homes, since they can be repossessed more easily, but altogether,
the policy of public land ownership effectively means tribal nations have immigration control—you
can only live in the Navajo Nation, for example, if you qualify for government housing, and
you only qualify for government housing if you're either Diné or working in the nation.
Adding to this, during the COVID pandemic, the Navajo Nation enacted some of the strictest
border restrictions in the United States—essentially prohibiting access to all non-residents, except
when passing through on state highways—and received no strong legal opposition to such
action.
So, altogether, the Navajo and other tribal nations have a level of power over who can
live and visit their territory that eclipses that of individual US states.
However, there are other ways in which these nations parallel states.
For example, the US Federal Government instructs its agencies to treat any interaction with
tribal nations as “government-to-government.”
Also, like states, tribal nations cannot engage in formal relations with foreign governments,
enter into a state of war, or issue currency—all key differentiators between nation-hood and
country-hood.
However, somewhat unlike states, the Navajo Nation has this: a Washington office.
This functions somewhat like the offices of different state representatives in DC, however
the Navajo Nation Washington Office is closer to an embassy than these as it exclusively
serves to represent the nation through non-voting means to the US government and its agencies.
The Navajo Nation wasn’t the first to attempt to represent itself in Washington.
In 1995, the Chickasaw Nation, of Oklahoma, appointed Charles W. Blackwell as the first
Tribal Ambassador to the US.
In addition, they opened, what they called, a Chickasaw Nation embassy in DC.
Now, neither the ambassador nor the embassy had the diplomatic protections of those of
foreign nations, so it’s unclear how legitimate they were, but there were no challenges to
the nation setting up such a representative system.
The Cherokee Nation, also of Oklahoma, is now going a step further, as they believe
they have a legal right to formal representation in Washington.
An 1835 treaty with the US gave the Cherokee nation the power to send a non-voting representative
to the US Congress—similar to those appointed by the District of Columbia and US territories.
Until 2019, the Cherokee never appointed such a representative, but now decided to exercise
their rights when they appointed Kimberly Teehee to fill the position.
However, as of June 2021, she has yet to be seated by Congress, meaning her power is not
yet formalized.
While it appears the nation has every legal right to take such action, its a potentially
messy situation as the people of the Cherokee tribe already have representation in Congress.
While DC and the territories do not receive voting congressional representation, the Cherokee
do as they live in Oklahoma, which, as a state, has voting members in Congress.
Having people represented twice in Congress would be unprecedented.
It’s unclear as of now whether Teehee will be seated, but the reality is that this situation
is like many involving tribal powers in the US—they don’t know what they can do until
they try.
In fact, that was exactly what happened in the 1970s when Russell and Helen Bryan, of
the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, received a property tax bill for around $200 from a county government
despite the fact they were living on tribal land.
Having never received such a bill before, and not believing they were required to pay
it, they brought it to a local lawyer, who brought their case to the state courts.
They lost that case, and they then lost their appeal in the Minnesota Supreme Court, but
then they brought it to the United States Supreme Court.
Their decision said that not only do states lack the power to tax tribal members on their
reservations, but that states don’t have the power to regulate any tribal activity
on their nations.
This was huge, and ideas soon arose as to how to profit from this decision.
Quite quickly, small-scale gambling operations sprung up on reservations, and within years,
large tribal casinos started opening.
Today, these casinos generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue for tribal nations annually—especially
for those lucky enough to be located near major metro areas where gambling is illegal
such as the Chippewa Nation, which operates the largest Casino in America just 90 minutes
from Dallas.
Others, such as the Navajo Nation, are less lucky.
Located far from economic opportunity, their unemployment rate is 49%, their average household
income is $8,000, their poverty rate is 36%, and one third of their households lack access
to running water.
Tribal reservations in the US exist in a sort of in-between state—some sovereign powers
are greater than those of states, but they lack the true level of self-determination
reserved for countries.
However, being in such a lonely club, these reservations don’t receive the attention
necessary to reform a system that, in many cases, works against them.
For example, the system of public ownership of land means that it’s essentially impossible
for those living on reservations to own their own home.
That means they can’t build up wealth through home ownership and pass it on to the next
generation.
Reservations are located in some of the most rural areas of the US—in places already
experiencing the effects of a deep rural-urban economic divide—but being isolated from
the system of states, and ignored by the federal government due to their political irrelevance,
they perpetually fall into the category of “not my problem.”
While there is opportunity in sovereignty, it cannot be realized without trying, and
trying new things is effectively impossible for places so deeply entrenched in a cycle
of poverty.
So, the answer to what the Navajo Nation or any Native American reservation is is that
nobody knows.
They’re what the federal government lets them be, and so far, there hasn't been enough
time or money for them to explore their boundaries.
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