This is not a complicated legal issue. Modern American Indians are heirs to the parties injured by government sanctioned acts, and to the lawful compensations for injuries stemming from those acts. Concepts which, beginning late in the 19th Century, the American government has upheld by honoring Indian treaties and dealing in good faith to compensate Indians, and their heirs. Moreover, just as the American government recognizes and upholds the legal status of corporations, which are dear to conservative hearts, it also recognizes and upholds the legal status of Indian tribes. Again, it would be a message trickling down to all other Americans, signaling an end to democracy in America as such a lesson would teach us all that the government is really a criminal organization.
Nobody wants that.
So, no matter how you look at it, whether it's about treaties or absolutely equal treatment under the law, it boils down to inheritance and protecting citizen's rights. To take them away from Indians is to take them away from everybody else. And that's un-American. The social disintegration of America None of this is about blame. Nor is it even remotely similar to the African American Reparations issue.