James Giago Davies: It can’t all be Uncle Sam's way

Monday, September 2, 2019

By James Giago Davies

Native Sun News Today Contributing Editor

nativesunnews.today

Defining consultation is easy, and if you ask the BIA bureaucrats for a definition, they will gladly give you this definition: the act or process of formally discussing and collaborating on something.

Agreeing to that definition puts them on the operational high ground, but they arrive at scheduled and mandatory consultations with piles of already decided policy documents. The consultation is a formality, and although they may fine tune policy based upon input from tribes, the policy will proceed with its original intent, all tribes be damned.

How did the government get this power? They took it. The tribes came to the consultations and spewed aspirational rhetoric instead of savvy nuts and bolts counter proposals, and tribes let the government rake them over the consultation coals.

James Giago Davies. Photo courtesy Native Sun News Today

It is still not too late for tribes to band together, demanding every consultation be genuine, in good faith, and they should openly assert that they are equal sovereign partners in any consultation and not there to be dictated to by a superior authority. There can be no actual sovereignty where one side retains the power to arbitrary ignore the other side.

They only have this power over tribes, if tribes allow it. If every tribe stood up, in a united front with all other tribes, and demanded actual consultation on policy critical to the fate of Indian Country, the government would have kittens. Because they well know genuine consultation undermines every selfish interest they protect when it comes to tribal policy.

Beyond the despicable corruption rife on most reservations, and the wretched heap big chiefs that wallow in it, while they posture themselves as great leaders protecting tribal interest and honor, there is genuine treaty language, a genuine tribe, and there are a people and culture to be protected and nurtured, and the battle has to start some place.