by
Ryan McMaken
My articles My booksMy videos
Follow on:TwitterLinkedIN

Within a day of the inauguration, the Biden administration issues a bevy of new executive orders designed to please a variety of the Democratic Party’s core special-interest groups. Among these was an executive order curtailing oil and gas leasing on federal and tribal lands.

But a problem quickly presented itself: many tribes earn a significant amount of income through oil and gas drilling on their lands. These operations also provide jobs for tribal members. The administration’s new orders would curtail tribal control and instead place decision-making authority over these drilling operations on a handful of federal officials.

Not surprisingly, at least one tribe reacted with alarm to these new federal limits. Reuters reports:

An oil-producing Native American tribe on Friday asked the U.S. Interior Department for an exemption from the recent temporary suspension of oil and gas leasing and permitting on federal and tribal lands, saying the move would hit its economy and sovereignty.

The pushback from the Ute Indian Tribe reflects the financial strain some communities will face from a freeze of the government’s fossil fuel leasing program. The new administration of President Joe Biden announced the move this week as part of a raft of measures intended to combat global climate change.

In a letter from the Ute Indian Tribe in Utah (i.e., the Uintah and Ouray Reservation), the head of the tribe’s business committee demanded the federal government exclude tribes from the new orders:

The Ute Indian Tribe and other energy producing tribes rely on energy development to fund our governments and provide services to our members….Your order is a direct attack on our economy, sovereignty, and our right to self-determination. Indian lands are not federal public lands. Any actions on our lands and interests can only be taken after effective tribal consultation.

The order’s broad nature clearly presents a political problem for the administration. The Democratic Party claims to be responsive to tribal interests. Yet the party also has declared war against fossil fuel extraction—and indeed most forms of mining, drilling, and resource extraction in general—in the name of opposing “climate change.” Nonetheless, for purposes of keeping up appearances, the administration quickly took steps to exempt tribes.

But this only kicks the can down the road.

It’s a fairly safe bet that, in the final calculation, wealthy white environmentalists are more important to the party than tribal interests. After all, environmentalists have more money and are more numerous than voters from tribes that rely on drilling. How much longer will tribes be able to drill on their own lands without aggressive pushback from federal legislators? It depends on how successful the “climate change” faction within the Democratic Party’s coalition is.

It is helpful to recall that environmentalists are not exactly known for their respect for tribal needs. As noted last December in Indian Country Today, “The history of conservation in the United States began with human rights violations, including the displacement, massacre, and assimilation of tribal peoples to make way for the first National Parks: Yellowstone and Yosemite.”

Today, tribes theoretically enjoy some level of sovereignty—and thus immunity from federal edicts—but environmentalists have never had much patience for that sort of thing.

Tribal Sovereignty Is Important

The whole affair illustrates, yet again, why tribal sovereignty should be respected and promoted as an important check on federal power.

Indeed, tribal sovereignty should only be expanded. After all, the current state of tribal independence falls far short of what was promised by federal officials as they were offering treaties and reservation lands to tribes. Tribes were supposed to enjoy local decision-making powers over a wide variety of issues, from criminal justice to land-use regulations.

Over time, the tribes were gradually stripped of their treaty rights, and tribes came to be fully under the jurisdiction of the US government. Congress even claimed the power to completely abolish and abrogate old treaty conditions based on unilateral federal legislation. What had been deceptively called “treaties” by American agents quickly became nothing more than acts of Congress. We have seen a similar trend with US states. What were supposed to be “sovereign states” in the US degenerated over the twentieth century into a group of de facto provinces subject to countless federal diktats.

Fortunately, over time, courts have slowly begun to limit both state and federal jurisdiction over tribes with the effect of providing more autonomy to tribes. Perhaps most famous among these decisions is the 1987 case California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians in which the court determined that state governments could not prevent tribes from offering legal gambling within their own borders (in most cases).

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of more tribal sovereignty with McGirt v. Oklahoma, in which the court paved the way for more tribal control over local criminal prosecutions.

Tribes are still a long way from true sovereignty, although things have arguably improved since the 1940s, when the federal government shamelessly stole income-producing grazing lands from the Hidatsas, Mandans, and Arikaras to dam up yet another lake.

But no matter how minor recent tribal gains in these areas may be, each victory is a reminder that the federal government doesn’t get to do whatever it wants to anybody it wants.

Those concerned about local control and self-determination as an important principle ought to see the implications here for other peoples and jurisdictions within the United States. Conservative US senator Mike Lee perhaps saw this when he cheered the tribal exemption and declared “The rest of America should get this exemption too.”

I don’t know if Lee has supported tribal sovereignty in other contexts, but if not, he ought to learn from this situation and start doing so.

It would be a welcome shift. American conservatives, after all—for reasons often spanning from shortsighted to petty—have long opposed efforts by tribes to assert local control over their own lands and resources.

Yet tribal sovereignty is an important tool in opposing untrammeled federal power and forcing limits on federal powers into local matters. Just as tribes ought to exercise far more control over their natural resources, criminal justice, and other local matters, the same is true of every American state and municipality.

You Might Also Like

The Fed’s Latest Lie: It Can Make Everything Go Back to Normal

2020-09-05

The Fed Emperor’s New Clothes Show is a continuous comedy without laughter. The latest act, the virtual Jackson Hole conference (August 27), was dreadful. The show’s audiences are accustomed to the Fed chair and his board delivering solemn pronouncements about their aims—low inflation, high employment, and financial stability.

The EU’s Drive toward Political Centralization Will Doom Its Economy

2020-09-10

In the wake of the economically disastrous covid-19 shutdowns, the political class has desperately tried to save the failing euro system. On July 21 European leaders agreed on what they called a "historic" deal. It was nothing more than a multitrillion euro stimulus package.

The Evidence Keeps Piling up: Lockdowns Don’t Work

2020-09-17

Extraordinary measures require extraordinary evidence. Have the advocates for lockdowns made their case? The data suggests they have not.

This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Michael Stack.
Original Article: "The Evidence Keeps Piling up: Lockdowns Don’t Work".

The Saving Problem in America: Alternatives and Reforms

2020-09-18

Since before covid-19 and the lockdown, I have written articles that touch on the purpose and importance of personal savings, and more importantly, why the lack of personal savings was going to make an economic crisis in the year 2020 potentially tragic for most Americans.
As a result, I have been interviewed a couple of times specifically on the topic of personal savings. These interactions have indicated to me that people do not understand the importance of savings and rather believe the demonization of savings as a “leakage” from the economic system and that hoarding money is one of the greatest threats to the economy.
Even more importantly, I discussed the reasons why Americans save so little and the related dangers, and I discussed how you can get around those government interventions

The Second Act Will Be Worse Than the First: Lockdowns Are Not the Answer

2020-10-10

In the first presidential “debate” (I use that word creatively), Joe Biden hinted that he would order a national lockdown in order to “defeat” the covid-19 virus, and there certainly seems to be a consensus in the media and among political elites that if there is another “outbreak” of covid, then the “shelter in place” order will be the law of the land.

A Critique of the Labor Theory of Value

2020-10-13

Before proceeding, we should be clear on what an economic theory of value is supposed to do: its task is simply to explain the exchange value of particular goods and services. That is, an economic theory of value must explain why someone selling good X can receive x berries in exchange for it, whereas someone selling good Y will only find someone willing to give up y berries in exchange for his good (where y

Why There’s So Much Confusion over What “Inflation” Means

2020-10-17

Understood properly,  inflation is not a general increase in prices but is an increase in the money supply "out of thin air" which brings about the impoverishment of wealth generators. When inflation is seen as a general increase in prices, then anything that contributes to price increases is called inflationary.

Was Rothbard a Populist?

2020-10-29

Why did Murray Rothbard embrace populism and why did he think it could work to limit the power of the state? In short, Rothbard believed that a small elite had seized the power of the state to fleece and oppress the majority. Rothbard was in part basing his ideas on the historical narrative of the Democratic populists of the nineteenth century who formed the party of sound money, low taxes, and decentralized power. This laissez-faire party also managed to win a lot of elections.

Be sure to follow Radio Rothbard at Mises.org/RadioRothbard.