AIUI, Federal authority over relations with the Indian tribes comes from Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which gives Congress the authority “To regula

AIUI, Federal authority over relations with the Indian tribes comes from Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which gives Congress the authority “To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes”. (The idea that the Founding Fathers were concerned about defending those tribes’ “culture, identity, and rights” is very sweet; actually, King George III tried to defend Indians’ rights by not letting settlers expand further into their territory.) The term “domestic nations” came about to describe the tribes’ twilight-zone status of not exactly independent sovereign states and not exactly subject to the laws of the states in which their reservations existed either. Tevis’s theory is that a bunch of people who are (a) not indigenous Americans, (b) not related to each other, and (c) not possessing anything resembling the semi-sovereign territories that Indian tribes used to have... that these people can get together, declare themselves to be a “domestic nation”, and have the same legal status of Indian tribes. I can’t see how one could construe the Constitution to get away with this. More importantly, I can’t see how state governments would stand for a law giving people such an easy escape hatch away from their own jurisdiction.