Students will write two or three paragraphs about, how the Aboriginal people are similar to African-Americans.

The most fundamental similarity between the African-American

and Native-American experiences was the lack of humanity that the

white establishment presumed each group to possess.8 Church officials, lawmakers, and legal minds intensely debated the relative humanity of each group. The fundamental philosophical and religious

question was whether African Americans and Indians were human beings, entitled to human rights protections like Euro-Americans, or inactively pursuing federal recognition, over fifty tribes have state recognition, and several

groups have been terminated by congressional enactment. See id. at 20-23.

5 See generally id. at 41-62 (discussing tribes' unique status as sovereign nations, as

opposed to minority groups, and the features that accompany this status).

6 See generally VINE DELORIA, JR. & RAYMOND J. DEMALLIE, 2 DOCUMENTS OF AMERICAN

INDIAN DIPLOMACY: TREATIES, AGREEMENTS, AND CONVEN-nONS, 1775-1979, at 745-49,

1018-19, 1084-86 (1999) (containing a brilliant cross-section of the diplomatic accords

negotiated and providing a detailed narrative accompanying these important documents).

7 See U.S. CONST. art. I, § 8, cl. 3 (stating that the Congress shall have the power "To

regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and the Indian

Tribes").

8 This lack of humanity is easily identifiable in the African-American experience, as

their ancestors were first imported as slaves.

historical experiences of African Americans and Native Americans,

but history, law, politics, and culture suggest even greater substantive

differences between these two groups. The first and most obvious difference is that Native Americans are the indigenous inhabitants of the

United States. Of what significance is this obvious observation? The

preexistence and the nationhood that tribal nations, qua nations, possessed underlies the distinctive sovereign-to-sovereign relationships

that Native Americans still share with state and federal governments. 5

'

Unlike African individuals who involuntarily arrived as slaves, Native

Americans were present in America, inhabiting bounded homelands

with economic, cultural, and governing infrastructures, for millennia.

Thus, Native Americans continue to perceive themselves not only as

pre-constitutional polities, but as continuing extraconstitutional nations who deal with state and federal governments on a governmentto-government basis.

Second, the distinct sovereign status of tribal nations necessitated

the practice of negotiating treaties, political compacts, accords, and

alliances, first with one another, then with the various competing European states, and later with the United states.

                        from text book of cornell law review

But the peoples of these continents had many things in common. Many considered themselves stewards of their ancestral homelands. African and Native groups also held similar ideas about animal spirits, the guiding presence of ancestors, oral traditions, a living world, and extended family relationships.

Explanation:

states began imposing duties on each other's goods. congress had no way to raise money for an army to expel them.