JD: Do Indigenous people think total sovereignty is too extreme? Is the current situation working, where many reservations are de facto welfare state wards? Is there a better answer to the question of “stolen land” than giving it back? I suspect many tribes would benefit financially and create a better standard of living for tribal members without too much upheaval.

https://mises.org/wire/nations-within-nation-real-sovereignty-american-indians

Jeff Deist

Pipeline Observer Magazine recently interviewed Jeff Deist on the subject of tribal land and sovereignty in North America. Interview by Clayton Reeder, originally published in May 2019.

Pipeline Observer: The Ludwig von Mises institute in Alabama is the world’s most popular free market think tank, promoting the “Austrian School” of economics.

Writing on the website mises.org, Jeff Deist recently added a novel perspective to the endless debate about fair treatment of Indigenous people in North America.

Deist proposed addressing the “stolen land” issue by abandoning the reservation system and ceding vast tracts of federal land to Indigenous tribes and giving them complete sovereignty. This would create “nations within a nation.” Tribes could keep, use, sell, or develop the land as they wished.

This would mean no state or provincial or federal taxes or regulations. Government agencies would have no jurisdiction there at all. Armies of bureaucrats would no longer administer resource rights and land use. The bands would have full ownership and control within their own territory.

We asked Deist to elaborate on these ideas so that we might consider them in relation to our own country’s divided interests, especially about oil and pipelines.

PO: Ludwig von Mises said democracy means “self-determination, self-government, self-rule.” Do you think Indigenous North Americans have democracy in this sense?

Jeff Deist: Mises elevated self-determination to an ordering principle of liberalism. In other words, without a healthy degree of self-determination, no society can be truly liberal in the right sense of the word. [Indigenous people] in the U.S. and Canada certainly do not enjoy a healthy degree of self-determination, despite all of the political rhetoric. With their relatively small numbers, [Indigenous people] are not a political force either as a voting bloc or lobby, at least at the federal level—so what good is democracy to a tiny minority? Tribal sovereignty—real sovereignty in the Misesean sense, the right to organize politically outside the jurisdiction of any federal, state, or provincial government—should be acknowledged sooner rather than later. Otherwise all the talk about North America as stolen land is empty.

PO: When it comes to Indigenous North Americans, many people understand that there are problems with the status quo. Naturally, conservatives and the left tend to see the issue differently. For example, many conservatives support abolishing the reserve system and having Indigenous people be more like “regular” citizens. The left often sees themselves as the real advocates for Indigenous people, saying they need more fiscal support from the state in order to have more autonomy. Your idea is quite different. Why are your suggestions better?

JD: Should [Indigenous people] trust the governments of Canada and the U.S.? It’s absurd on its face. Tribes should be free to form nations within nations, and those nations can be as connected or disconnected from the rest of North America as those tribes see fit. Certainly, there should be trade, travel, diplomacy, and communication between these tribal nations and the rest of the world, including North America. Certainly, tribal members should have a say in determining the degree of connection and should be granted U.S. and Canadian citizenship to live outside tribal lands as “regular” Americans or Canadians if they choose. And, of course, the tribes themselves should issue passports and control their own borders. It’s bizarre to give so much lip service to tribal history, traditions, and practices while simultaneously pushing either assimilation or dependency….

JD: Do Indigenous people think total sovereignty is too extreme? Is the current situation working, where many reservations are de facto welfare state wards? Is there a better answer to the question of “stolen land” than giving it back? I suspect many tribes would benefit financially and create a better standard of living for tribal members without too much upheaval. Many might wish to remain closely engaged with the U.S. or Canadian government and accept continued regulation and transfer payments (i.e. welfare becomes foreign aid). Others might become radically independent and create true nations within a nation. But either way, if we believe in self-determination—if we really believe in a liberal ordering of society—we should stop trying to “fix” [Indigenous] problems and simply grant tribes sovereignty and land.

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