Native nations governed themselves for thousands of years before European arrival, and the United States made hundreds of treaties with them as sovereigns. The Constitution mentions tribes in the Commerce Clause, alongside foreign nations and states. Federal policy has swung between recognizing tribal sovereignty and trying to eliminate it, and tribal governments today run services from police and courts to schools, health care, and businesses.
This guide explains what tribal sovereignty means, how it developed, and how it works in practice.
Tribes fund governments through businesses, natural resources, and federal programs. After California v. Cabazon Band in 1987 held that states could not regulate tribal gaming, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, and tribal gaming now generates more than 40 billion dollars a year, though many tribes have no casinos. In Haaland v. Brackeen in 2023 the Supreme Court upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act, which gives tribes a role in custody cases involving Native children. Many reservations still face high poverty and limited infrastructure.
Through treaties in which tribes ceded vast lands, the federal government assumed a trust responsibility to protect tribal lands, resources, and self-government and to provide services. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, in the Interior Department, manages about 56 million acres held in trust, and the Indian Health Service provides health care. Mismanagement of trust funds led to the Cobell lawsuit, settled in 2009 for 3.4 billion dollars. Many tribes now operate federal programs themselves under self-governance agreements.
Tribal leaders and many scholars argue that sovereignty and self-determination have produced better results than federal control and that treaty obligations, including funding for health care and education, are legal duties rather than charity. States and some residents of reservation areas raise concerns about jurisdictional gaps, taxation, and regulation of non-Indians. Disputes continue over land into trust, water rights, sacred sites, energy development, and federal funding levels, including cuts proposed and made in 2025.
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced tribes from the Southeast, including on the Trail of Tears. The Dawes Act of 1887 broke up reservations into individual allotments, and tribal landholdings fell by about two-thirds. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 made Native Americans U.S. citizens, and the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 ended allotment. In the 1950s Congress terminated federal recognition of more than 100 tribes, a policy later reversed. Since the Indian Self-Determination Act of 1975, federal policy has supported tribes running their own programs.
Criminal jurisdiction on reservations depends on whether the accused and the victim are Native and the seriousness of the crime. Under the Major Crimes Act, the federal government prosecutes serious crimes by Indians, and in Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe in 1978 the Supreme Court held that tribes lack criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians, a limit Congress partly reversed for domestic violence in 2013 and 2022. In some states, a 1953 law gave states jurisdiction. In McGirt v. Oklahoma in 2020, the Court held that much of eastern Oklahoma remains reservation land, though Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta in 2022 allowed states to prosecute non-Indians for crimes against Indians.
In a trio of cases in the 1820s and 1830s, Chief Justice John Marshall set the foundations of federal Indian law. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia in 1831 described tribes as domestic dependent nations, and Worcester v. Georgia in 1832 held that state laws had no force within Cherokee territory. Tribes today have inherent powers to form governments, determine their citizenship, make and enforce laws, tax, and regulate their lands, except where Congress has limited them. The federal government recognizes 574 tribes, many of which have written constitutions and elected councils.
See how states fit into the system in federalism explained, compare other places outside the states in U.S. territories explained, or see how policing is divided in who polices America.