In April, tribal elders of Northern California s Round Valley Nation became fed up with chronic poverty and social problems. Fearing that the tribe was straying from tradition, the elders disbanded their allegedly corrupt tribal council and demanded a referendum on a new constitution. We re standing up for our rights, one Mescalaro dissident told the Albuquerque Journal. We re dealing with dictatorships, pockets of dictatorship, in the United States, and the U.S. government is allowing this to continue. While dictatorship is too strong an indictment for some, many observers, even in the tribes, agree that one fundamental problem with the IRA constitutions adopted by more than 170 tribes since 1934 is that they are unicameral, vesting far too much power in a tribal council and providing no checks and balances against that power.
Councils often serve both legislative and executive functions.
Any existing judicial branch tends to be beholden to the councils. Often the tribal police also answer to the tribal councils. So it is not hard to draw a direct connection between this unchecked power and the official corruption and gross mismanagement suffered by so many tribes. The biggest abusers and exploiters of Indians are other Indian people, Lawrence has said, and reservations won t become more democratic as long as tribal officials can hide behind the claim of immunity. You have to pierce the veil of sovereign immunity, says Lawrence, because tribal councils that exercise absolute control on many reservations have been hiding their criminal conduct behind it for years.