Honoring treaty obligations more complex than just words

When he roared through South Dakota on a three-stop tour this month, Bernie Sanders made a point of extolling Indian Country. Indeed, one of his stops included Pine Ridge.

During this visit, Sanders repeatedly called on the United States government to honor its treaty obligations with the tribes. He’s not the only politician to say the same thing: Last week Sen. John Thune took to the Senate floor to charge the very same government that he and Sanders work for (they work in the Senate widget department) of failing to honor its treaty obligation of providing health care to Native Americans. In case you missed it, one part of the federal government (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) has accused another part of the federal government (Indian Health Services) of gross incompetence.

All of this treaty talk got us to wondering: If we aren’t honoring our obligation to provide health care, what else are we failing to provide that our ancestors promised indigenous peoples while swindling them out of their land?

There’s not necessarily an easy answer. There isn’t one treaty, made with all the tribes. Instead, there are numerous treaties with numerous tribes. But for our purposes in South Dakota, the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 was negotiated with “the different bands of the Sioux Nation of Indians, by their chiefs and headmen,” and is most appropriate.

So if he wins – and he honors his commitment to uphold treaty obligations – this is what a President Bernie Sanders will restore:

First, the reservation lands would be a lot bigger: Encompassing everything west of the Missouri River, including the Black Hills. But you probably already know that. It’s a well-publicized point of contention that shortly after we gave the Sioux the Black Hills, we stole it from them.

But what you probably don’t know is that the treaty requires the U.S. government to furnish a “physician, teachers, carpenter, miller, engineer, farmer and blacksmiths.” So not only are we failing to provide health care, we are failing to provide blacksmiths.

Of course, this treaty obligation also contained an opt-out provision. After 10 years, the U.S. federal government could withdraw the “physician, farmer, blacksmith, carpenter, engineer and miller,” but would then have to provide $10,000 a year for education.

There were also other provisions of the treaty that had built-in expirations, and it’s unclear if a Sanders presidency would resume the provisions. Here are some:

For each male over 14, “a suit of good substantial woolen clothing, consisting of coat, pantaloons, flannel shirt, hat and a pair of home-made socks.”

And for each female over 12, “a flannel shirt, or the goods necessary to make it, a pair of woolen hose, 12 yards of calico and 12 yards of cotton domestics.”

Of course, the treaty was negotiated in a different era, and we probably don’t even have any “cotton domestics” or “good substantial woolen clothing,” so we would need to buy that stuff from China.

There were also requirements for bestowing tillable land to families as well as “one good American cow, and one good well-broken pair of American oxen,” as the U.S. government hoped to persuade the tribes to take up agriculture.

Of course, Congress abrogated the treaty with the 1889 Sioux Agreement, which shrunk the size of Great Sioux Reservation into what we have today, which also limited the amount of “tillable land” available to tribal members.

Which is a roundabout way of saying, don’t ever make a deal with the government. You won’t win.