'A Poor Type of Sovereignty' 

Editor:

Good job on "To Celebrate Our Sovereignty" about Ray Matz and the Yurok Tribe, which was published June 8. However, there is one statement in the article which I believe is not true. Here's that statement:

"The ruling paved the way for so much of what has followed, from other rulings upholding the tribe's fishing rights to the passage of the Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act, which paved the way for the Yurok Tribe adopting its constitution in 1993, formalizing its traditional form of government."

The Yurok Tribe does not have a "traditional form of government" and, indeed, as far as anyone knows, never did have such an institution. The villages were politically independent. Like almost every other federal tribe (the Pit River Tribe is the only exception I know of), federal tribal governments are organized according to the U.S. federal model as prescribed in the federal Indian Reorganization and Self-Determination Acts.

What this means is that the federal government continues to dominate and control federal tribes, mainly via the control and doling out of federal funding. It also tells us that "tribal sovereignty" in the U.S. is, at best, a poor type of sovereignty, one not really worthy of the name. Ironically, the myth of tribal sovereignty is an integral part of how the feds control tribal governments.

Federal tribes have and continue to help Indigenous Native peoples and their cultures survive. That is a very good thing. But they also are a tool the federal government uses to keep tribes within bounds demarcated by the federal government and federal law. And that's why "tribal sovereignty" is a poor example of true sovereignty.  

Felice Pace, Klamath