The Worst Trickster Story Ever Told: Native America, the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Constitution

Indigenous Peoples and Policy Program director Richotte (law, Univ. of Arizona; Federal Indian Law and Policy) presents an astute, irreverent analysis of the U.S. government’s claim to complete lawmaking authority over Indigenous communities. Richotte, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and the chief justice of the Spirit Lake Appellate Court, argues that racism and paternalism motivated this doctrine of plenary power. In the 1800s, the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress treated Indigenous peoples as wards of the nation and incapable of exercising true sovereignty. In the 1900s, the Supreme Court sustained plenary power by invoking the Commerce Clause, which authorized Congress to regulate interstate commerce. To replace it, Richotte calls for a consent-based relationship between Indigenous peoples and the United States, in the spirit of treaty-making. He proposes that Congress continue to pass laws, but that tribes must agree to those laws before they take effect. Throughout the book, he uses a trickster story he crafted as a framing device.