Tribes continue to endure constraints on their sovereignty because relatively few people understand what a tribe is. For example, most people believe tribes are a racial minority with special privileges, when in reality, tribes are separate, sovereign governments. This stems from a lack of knowledge about tribal history. Schools do not teach Indian history; hence, people do not learn about the history of tribal governance and treaties. Learning about Indian history can enrich the school curriculum and help people understand why tribes exist. Additionally, great tribal leaders, such as Chief Standing Bear, can inspire students to fight for justice. At the very least, law students should be taught federal Indian law. Tribes are part of the United States constitutional order. They influenced its structure and were vital to its ratification. Plus, ignorance of Indian law’s history enables outmoded, colonial ideology to continue as the basis of contemporary federal Indian law. Knowledge of Indian law’s outmoded concepts will raise questions about the ethics of relying on nineteenth-century stereotypes to limit tribal sovereignty in the twenty-first century.

Native Americans have fought to protect their land and water resources from oil and gas extraction and from pipelines and fossil fuel export terminals that traverse their reservation lands, off-reservation lands and public lands to which they hold historical and cultural ties. The Trump administration reversed tribes’ hard-won successes and exacerbated centuries of prior injustices. Trump asserted disputed presidential powers to permit the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, to shrink national monuments, including the Bears Ears National Monument, the first national monument proposed and co-managed by Native American tribes, and to open former monument lands to drilling. In their fight against these decisions, tribes advanced legal arguments based on federal laws, including environmental laws, and asserted their rights to reservation lands and their treaty hunting, fishing and gathering rights on off-reservation lands. Within reservations, tribes, like other Americans, are grappling with whether to rely on fossil fuels or to transition to renewable energy. The appointment of Representative Debra Haaland, who led Congress’s efforts to protect Native American lands and public lands, as the first Native American secretary of the Interior offers hope for a reset in US government relations with the first sovereign nations.

Connecting what happens on Indian reservations with challenges facing the United States, Chapter 1 highlights the significance of what happens in Indian country to those living in neighboring and even distant communities. Chapter 1 also presents in brief the major themes of the book—the heavy federal role in reservation development and resource exploitation, the importance of improving tribal self-governance, and the ways in which land use decisions shape reservation life—and emphasizes the centrality of both history and institutional development in understanding Indian nations today.