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"Reservations are sovereign nations"

This is only partly true. Yes, tribal governments can make their own laws, have their own police force where the police of the American state in which the reservation resides has no jurisdiction, but yet federal police (FBI) does have that. Yes, some tribes even make their own coins as sovereign nations and I've heard of a tribe in Oregon that allows for gay marriage while this is not legal in Oregon itself. But if they would be true sovereign nations, how come there are still Indian agents, how come there is a Bureau of Indian Affairs? And how come that decisions made by tribal governments can be overruled by Washington? And let's not forget that back in the 19th century, when the BIA was erected, that tribal sovereignty did not even exist. The reservations were first rules by the US military, when they

The BIA seal

weren't called reservations yet, but prisoner of war camps as at the time Indians were not American citizens but enemy combatons much like those people now held in Guantimo Bay. Army forts saw to it that Indians didn't leave the reservations because the reservations were designed to contain Indians so that gold diggers could dig for gold undisturbed. After that they were run by christians and today by the BIA. All of them interfering extensively into the lives of Indian people. The word reservation came into being as a supposed avoiding Indians to "go extinct" while that's kind of comparing them to endangered species of animals and therefore very much offensive. We have to understand that that's what white people were like in those days.

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