After extensive travel and interviews, author A. R. Eguiguren found that the
common perception of our country as "one nation" is instead a misperception. In
spite of the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantees of "the equal protection of the
laws," Indian and non-Indian reservation citizens are being treated differently.
After two hundred years of constitutional existence, federal Indian policy is
creating hundreds of separate "nations" with a confusing array of race based
laws.
Since
the early 1970s, powerful movements have used concepts like "tribal sovereignty"
and "Indian self-determination" to push a radical strategy. Their agenda is to
fragment our nation along racial lines and establish hundreds of growing
apartheid Indian "nations" within our country. Federal Indian policy and
activist court decisions are helping this movement reach its separatist goals.
This
book tracks one significant court decision that raises broad questions. As a
country, do we really want to be divided by race into hundreds of separate
homelands? Former U. S. Senator David F. Durenberger says "This book explains
the significance of a landmark 5-4 U. S. Supreme Court decision, and it
challenges law makers, enforcers, and interpreters to reassess the role of law
in defining the equal rights of American citizens and it does it in a thoughtful
provocative way." This book challenges each of us to think about what Indian
policy is doing to our country.