Reservations within the United States serve as homelands for more than 550 tribes. The lands owned by these tribes are considered sovereign nations. This means that tribes can make laws and provide services to meet the needs of their people. A writer in Indian Country Today notes that sovereignty is a concept with which Native Americans have long been familiar. "When the first settlers landed on North America they 'discovered' a continent that was already home to a host of sovereign governments. These tribal nations, in existence for thousands of years, were self-governing and self-sufficient."

Sovereignty was something the writers of the U.S. Constitution believed was an inherent right of all tribes. As sovereign nations, tribes have a government-to-government relationship with the U.S. government. Tribal governments, therefore, can make treaties and pacts with both federal and state governments. In...