You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation, and so long as the hoop was unbroken, the people flourished. The flowering tree was the living center of the hoop, and the circle of the four quarters nourished it. The east gave peace and light, the south gave warmth, the west gave rain, and the north with its cold and mighty wind gave strength and endurance. This knowledge came to us from the outer world with our religion. Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same, and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.

-Black Elk

“Wayne Ducheneaux, president of the National Congress of American Indians, testified before Congress on the matter in 1968:

Before all this came about we had our own method of dealing with law-breakers and in settling disputes between members. That all changed when Crow Dog killed Spotted Tail. Of course, our method of dealing with that was Crow Dog should go take care of Spotted Tail’s family, and if he didn’t do that we’d banish him from the tribe. But that was considered too barbaric, and thought perhaps we should hang him like civilized people do, so they passed the Major Crimes Act that said we don’t know how to handle murderers and they were going to show us.”

In 2007, the U.N. adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (“The Declaration”), despite the United States abstaining from the vote along with Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. In 2010, President Barack Obama revisited The Declaration and adopted it on behalf of the U.S. However, as recently as 2015, the Gold King Mine contaminated three million gallons of water in the Colorado River which serves as drinking water for the Navajo and Hopi downstream. The federal E.P.A. appropriated $156,000 in reparations for Gold King Mine, while the Flint, Michigan water crisis in 2014 received $80 million in federal funds.

Living in proximity to high levels of pollution or industrial facilities has been linked to serious short-term and long-term health impacts. In what is perhaps the most negative use of Native American lands, the federal government has used reservations for nuclear testing and nuclear waste disposal. Uranium mining, uranium conversion and enrichment, and nuclear weapons testing have all occurred on reservation lands in the past century. After creating the Nevada Test Site on Western Shoshone lands in Nevada, the federal government tested over one thousand atomic weapons on Western Shoshone land between the 1950-90s. The Western Shoshone people call themselves the “most bombed nation on the planet.” Similar activities happened on Paiute Shoshone lands as well.