Federal Indian Trust Responsibility

In exchange for vast land cessions in treaties, the United States promised tribes protection, services, and permanent homelands. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia in 1831, Chief Justice John Marshall described the tribes' relationship to the United States as resembling that of a ward to a guardian, and courts have since recognized a federal trust responsibility. In Seminole Nation v. United States in 1942 the Supreme Court said the government has charged itself with moral obligations of the highest responsibility and trust, to be judged by the most exacting fiduciary standards.

In practice, the federal government holds about 56 million acres of land in trust for tribes and individual Indians, manages leases and revenues from that land, and provides health care, education, housing, and law enforcement through agencies such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service. Mismanagement of individual trust accounts led to the Cobell v. Salazar class action, settled for $3.4 billion in 2010. Federal policy has swung from allotment, which broke up reservations after 1887, to reorganization in 1934, to termination of some tribes in the 1950s, to self-determination since 1970.

Courts have limited what tribes can enforce. In Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock in 1903 the Court described Congress's power over Indian affairs as plenary, and in Arizona v. Navajo Nation in 2023 it held 5 to 4 that an 1868 treaty did not require the government to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Navajo Nation. Tribes and advocates argue that chronic underfunding of programs such as the Indian Health Service violates the trust obligation, while others note that the scope of enforceable duties depends on specific statutes and treaties. The responsibility shapes debates over land, water, energy, and federal budgets.