Tribal Lands and Their Resources essays

Tribal Lands and Their Resources essays Many of the Native American tribal lands in the United States own a wealth of natural resources, but most tribes have always faced pressure to give up their lands, and in many cases, their lands were simply stripped from them without thought or compensation. In the nineteenth century, tribes were simply herded onto reservations, as this writer noted. In the nineteenth century, Americans looked out upon the vast West and its abundant natural resources and saw the possibility of great wealth and opportunity. One obstacle presented itself to national aspirations: the Indian tribes. [] Federal Indian policy was characterized by one primary goal: pushing aside Indian tribes to facilitate the exploitation of the West's bountiful natural resources" Many tribes never had the opportunity to gain any kind of financial aid from the natural resources they had taken for granted for hundreds of years, but were suddenly in great demand by a growing nation, and today, some of those tribes are fighting back with lawsuits and reclamation In Idaho, the Coeur d'Alene Tribe's ancient tribal lands were overrun with silver mines in the nineteenth century, and when the mines played out, all that remained was the environmental damage, as this writer notes. "Over a one-hundred year period, the mining industry in northern Idaho's Silver Valley wiped out most natural life in the Coeur d'Alene River Basin by dumping seventy-two million tons of mining waste into the Coeur d'Alene watershed (Althouse, 2001, p. 721). In 1991, the tribe began their own restoration project, and also filed a lawsuit against several mining companies which resulted in the largest ever natural resource damage suit in U.S. history. The Coeur d'Alene are also fighting about who controls the waters and the water quality of Lake C ...