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The Changing Scope Of The United States' Trust Duties To American Indian Tribes: Navajo Nation V. United States, Kimberly C. Perdue

University of Colorado Law Review

The mineral wealth beneath Native American lands has been an enduring source of controversy with respect to treaty relations between Indian Tribes and the United States government and the contours of the United States' trust duties to the Tribes. Whereas in past years the process by which minerals like coal have been converted to capital amounted to blatant exploitation of America's indigenous populations, Indian governments have acquired more control over the extraction of their minerals throughout the twentieth century. That this control remains severely limited both by federal regulations and the United States government's complicity with powerful representatives of the …