Indian Trust Reform: Hearing Before the Committee on Indian Affairs, United States Senate, One Hundred Ninth Congress, First Session, on Views of the Administration and Indian Country of how the System of Indian Trust Management, Management of Funds and Natural Resources, Might be Reformed, March 9, 2005, Washington, DC.

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Page 191 - Indians are acknowledged to have an unquestionable, and, heretofore unquestioned, right to the lands they occupy, until that right shall be extinguished by a voluntary cession to our government; yet it may well be doubted, whether those tribes which reside within the acknowledged boundaries of the United States can, with strict accuracy, be denominated foreign nations. They may, more correctly, perhaps, be denominated domestic dependent nations.
Page 195 - We the people of the United States do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America...
Page 197 - Notwithstanding the provisions of any enabling Act for the admission of a State, the consent of the United States is hereby given to the people of any State to amend, where necessary, their State constitution or existing statutes, as the case may be...
Page 57 - The cardinal principle of statutory construction is to save and not to destroy. We have repeatedly held that as between two possible interpretations of a statute, by one of which it would be unconstitutional and by the other valid, our plain duty is to adopt that which will save the act. Even to avoid a serious doubt the rule is the same.
Page 192 - The Cherokee nation, then, is a distinct community, occupying its own territory, with boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force, and which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter, but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves, or in conformity with treaties, and with the acts of Congress.
Page 192 - managing all their affairs," into a surrender of self-government, would be, we think, a perversion of their necessary meaning, and a departure from the construction which has been uniformly put on them. The great subject of the article is the Indian trade. The influence it gave made it desirable that congress should possess it. The commissioners brought forward the claim with the profession that their motive was " the benefit and comfort of the Indians, and the prevention of injuries or oppressions.
Page 183 - Like the miner's canary, the Indian marks the shifts from fresh air to poison gas in our political atmosphere; and our treatment of Indians, even more than our treatment of other minorities, reflects the rise and fall in our democratic faith.— Felix S.
Page 45 - account" for "the daily and annual balance of all funds held in trust by the United States for the benefit of an Indian Tribe or an individual Indian which are deposited or invested pursuant to the Act of June 24, 1938.
Page 96 - Behind the sham protection, which operated largely as a blind to publicity, have been at all times great wealth in the form of Indian funds to be subverted; valuable lands, mines, oil fields, and other natural resources to be despoiled or appropriated to the use of the trader ; and large profits to be made by those dealing with trustees who were animated by motives of gain. This has been the situation in which the Indian Service has been for more than a century — the Indian during all this time...
Page 108 - On behalf of the members of the National Congress of American Indians, I would like to express our appreciation to this committee for its commitment to Indian people and to upholding the trust and treaty responsibilities of the federal government.

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