On 2/2/2016 11:30 PM, Greg Chalik wrote:
Joseph,

It is entirely possible that those treaties may be arguable in court today.

Cheers

Greg


      
    

    Arguments today need to overcome two centuries of SCOTUS decisions
    and legal practices that treat the natives as children unfit to
    arrange their own affairs.  

    

    Take for instance the decision by SCOTUS in Johnson v McIntosh : 

    
"The issue of
      the extent and limits of tribal sovereignty
      came before the U.S. Supreme Court in Johnson v. McIntosh,
      21 U.S. (8 Wheat.)
      543, 5 L. Ed. 681 (1823). Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John
        Marshall described the effects of European incursion
      on native tribes,
      writing that although the Indians were " admitted to be the
      rightful occupants
      of the soil …
      their rights to
      complete sovereignty,
      as independent nations,
      were necessarily
      diminished, and
      their power to
      dispose of the
      soil, at their
      own will, to whomsoever they pleased, was denied by the original fundamental
      principle, that
      discovery gave
      exclusive title
      to those who made it." The European nations that had "discovered" North America, Marshall ruled, had "the sole right of acquiring the soil from the natives." "

        

        This created the situation in which the Tribes could only
        legally sell their land to the Federal government creating a
        monopsony that insured the government would be able to acquire
        Tribal land at the lowest price possible. A side issue of this
        case is that it turns out that there was no merit to the
        complaint to begin with and may have been concocted just to get
        a ruling favorable to the United States. Even knowing that it is
        still cited several times a year by lower courts.. 

        

        As primer on how to screw the native sophonts the US history is
        pretty good. 

        

        But the bottom line is that you labor under the misguided idea
        that a contract is A) something that will protect the rights and
        interests of all parties and B) will be able to be enforced as
        needed. The truth is that contracts are often a tool or even a
        weapon used to get what one wants. It can be used to prey upon
        others as when companies signed workers to contracts that kept
        them broke and in debt to the company and enforcement is often
        readily available to the rich and powerful and not so much to
        the poor and weak. It can certainly be used to bind sophonts as
        yet unborn to laws or actions inimical to their own well being.

        

        In my own space opera I will be putting together some colonial
        trouble pulling from just such precedents as Johnson v McIntosh.
        That ought to produce some adventuring opportunities.

    


        Cheers,

        Joseph Paul