Treaties are the supreme law of the land. Honor them.

Article VI of the Constitution makes treaties — including treaties between the United States and tribal nations — part of the supreme law of the land. The federal government has signed hundreds of treaties with tribal nations, most in the 19th century, establishing reservation boundaries, hunting and fishing rights, water rights, and trust obligations. Compliance has been incomplete since the treaties were signed. Treaty-rights litigation in federal courts, particularly through the Pacific Northwest fishing-rights cases of the 1970s (Boldt decision), has produced incremental enforcement, but the federal-government honoring of its treaty obligations has rarely been treated as a binding policy constraint at the political level. Reform options: meaningful federal staffing of the Office of Special Trustee for American Indians and Bureau of Indian Affairs; statutory codification of consultation rights that cross-reference treaty obligations; structural reforms within the executive branch to ensure treaty obligations are evaluated alongside other federal commitments rather than after them; and continued robust support for tribes' use of federal courts to enforce treaty rights.

The Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 (ISDEAA) created the framework for tribes to contract and compact for the federal services BIA and IHS would otherwise provide directly. Under contracting (Title I) and compacting (Title V) authorities, tribes operate their own healthcare systems, education programs, social services, and other federal-funded activities — with funding that follows the population they serve. The empirical record on self-determination is strong: tribes operating their own programs consistently produce better outcomes than direct federal service delivery, with tighter community fit, higher accountability, and more efficient administration. The constraint is funding. Tribally operated programs receive the same per-capita appropriation as federally operated ones, which means underfunding at the federal level cascades to underfunding at the tribal level. Reform priorities: substantial increases in IHS and BIA appropriations (which then flow to tribally operated programs proportionally); contract support cost reform (the indirect costs of running tribal programs are chronically underfunded relative to actual cost); expanded tribal authority to access additional federal funding streams (the 2023 PROGRESS Act and similar proposals address this incrementally).

The Indian Health Service is the federal agency responsible for healthcare for federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribal members. Its mandate stems from treaty obligations and federal law dating to the 19th century. Its funding has been chronically inadequate. Per-capita IHS spending has historically been less than half of per-capita Medicare or VA spending — and the ratio shifts depending on counting methodology, but is consistently far below comparable federal health programs. The funding gap has measurable health consequences: Native Americans face among the worst chronic-disease outcomes in the developed world, with diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and substance-use disorders at rates that the IHS system is structurally underfunded to address. Reform options: making IHS funding mandatory rather than discretionary (proposals to do so have advanced periodically; the 2018 advance appropriation provision was a partial step); appropriations increases targeted to bring per-capita funding closer to parity with comparable programs; expanded Medicaid third-party billing in Indian Country (which provides additional revenue without offsetting IHS appropriations); and structural integration of IHS with the broader federal healthcare landscape so that uncompensated care doesn't fall entirely on tribal facilities.

The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 was enacted in response to the systematic removal of Native children from their families and tribes — a pattern that had been federal policy in various forms for over a century. ICWA establishes substantive and procedural protections for Native children in state child custody proceedings, including placement preferences favoring extended family and tribal members. The 2023 Supreme Court ruling in Haaland v. Brackeen rejected a constitutional challenge that would have invalidated ICWA, with the Court ruling 7-2 in favor of the law's continued application. The ruling preserved ICWA but did not foreclose all future challenges; subsequent litigation continues to test specific provisions and applications. Beyond ICWA, federal Indian law has been under sustained legal pressure — challenges to the Indian Commerce Clause's scope, to the political (rather than racial) classification of tribal members, and to specific tribal-government authorities have advanced in federal courts. Defense of the legal architecture requires continued robust federal support for tribal sovereignty, careful litigation strategy, and statutory reinforcement where Court rulings open gaps.

Federal consultation requirements with tribal governments — under Executive Order 13175 and various statutes — are extensive on paper. Implementation has been uneven. Federal agencies often consult late in decision-making processes, with limited authority to affect outcomes; consultation can become a procedural box-check rather than meaningful engagement. Reform options: statutory codification of the executive-order requirements, with clear standards for timing, scope, and authority; expanded tribal liaison capacity within federal agencies; and meaningful enforcement mechanisms when consultation requirements are not met. Separately but relatedly, the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) crisis is among the most documented gaps in US criminal-justice infrastructure. Native women face homicide rates dramatically higher than the national average, with case-investigation, data, and jurisdictional fragmentation compounding the harm. Federal action — Savanna's Act and the Not Invisible Act, both enacted in 2020 — created reporting requirements and coordination structures. Implementation remains in progress; data infrastructure is improving but inadequate; case investigation across federal, state, tribal, and (in some cases) bordering-country jurisdictions remains structurally fragmented.