Indigenous Self-Governance and Development on American Indian Reservations

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People promotes self-governance as a matter of justice rather than economics. How will self-governance affect the incomes of indigenous people? To gain insight, we compare long-run income growth on American Indian reservations with and without federal oversight through the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. Reservations with more autonomy had 12-15 percent higher income per capita in 2016, even conditional on 1930s income. However, these more autonomous reservations also experienced wider income variance with more downside risk. The findings are consistent with theory emphasizing the development trade-offs between local and centralized governance.

The Constitution

Chapter seven details the adoption of the superintendent’s constitution, the various groups vying for power at the time, and the community’s reaction and decision on the Indian Reorganization Act. By the early 1930’s the people of Turtle Mountain had been pursuing a claim against the federal government for decades. At the end of the Allotment Era, the federal government presented the community with a constitution that functioned less a governing document and more a tool to perpetuate control over tribal governance through the federal government. While many in the community recognized the deficiencies in the proposed constitution they nonetheless were led to believe that the constitution was a mandatory step toward a claim. Choosing the claim more than the constitution itself, Turtle Mountain ratified the proposed document. When the Indian Reorganization Act presented an alternative, the people of Turtle Mountain rejected it in fear of the consequences for the claim.

Claiming Turtle Mountain's Constitution

Claiming Turtle Mountain’s Constitution examines the formation and adoption of the first constitution of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians through the eyes of the tribal members who voted to adopt it. Focusing on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this work of legal and social history describes the seminal moment in which the people of Turtle Mountain chose their constitution as a means to accomplish a much larger political goal: beginning a lawsuit against the federal government. By decentering the federal government, the federal actors of the time, and federal legislation such as the Indian Reorganization Act, Claiming Turtle Mountain’s Constitution reorients the tribal citizens who made this important decision at the heart of their own governance and legal, political, and social history. The Plains Ojibwe and Métis who merged together – within the vise of settler colonialism – to become the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians were distressed at the federal government’s disruption of their leadership structure, their treaty, and their reservation and for decades sought a lawsuit against the federal government to rectify these wrongs. The tribal nation adopted a constitution in 1932 that many recognized as deficient and limiting in the hopes that it would lead toward a lawsuit. Tribal citizens have lived with the consequences of this difficult choice ever since. Claiming Turtle Mountain’s Constitution argues that understanding the origins of tribal constitutions from the tribal nation’s perspective is crucial to understanding both historical and contemporary tribal governance and American constitutionalism more broadly.