Chapter 8 focuses on the imperial state level to examine the legal and political logic informing the final adjudication of the case in 1799, a decision that constituted a shift in the decisions the Council of the Indies and colonial tribunals had been taking in the 1780s. The chapter examines the political reasons related to mining utility and security that informed the shift and the juridical basis imperial jurists used to ground the case’s outcome. Ultimately, the Bourbon Crown ruled in favor of the cobreros but attached caveats related to Indian law to their collective freedom. The chapter ventures into the immediate aftermath of the Freedom Edict of 1800 to examine the challenges that emerged in the colony regarding the actualization of the decreed emancipation. It also interrogates the possibility of compensation or reparations to the cobreros for their wrongful enslavement.

Beyond Indian Law: documents the Rehnquist Court’s shift away from jurisprudence that permitted a sovereign people to control their own territory, and the people within it, and toward a ‘subjectivist approach’ that allows the Supreme Court to determine what Indian law ought to be. It places this shift within a broader narrative of the Court deviating from well-established interpretive principles. Getches ultimately critiques the signals the Rehnquist Court has sent in its existing jurisprudence and warns that future cases will see state interests prevail in their control of the reservation, attempts to protect Indians as sovereigns will fail, and that mainstream values will be protected.

Dependent Sovereigns: examines the tension between tribal and federal sovereigns each competing to be independent from the other. Unlike states, Indian tribes have never ceded their sovereignty but appear to have lost much of it anyway, slowly eroded by the decisions of the federal judiciary. Resnik utilizes a federal courts perspective to argue that there is space in American jurisprudence to accommodate tribes as part of the interdependence of sovereigns in the American system.

It is imperative that the Navajo Nation engage in meaningful land reform. This chapter highlights the challenges Dinē families face when seeking permission to use tribal trust land. Beginning with an exploration of the motivation behind the Navajo Nation’s recent effort to reform the process for obtaining a homesite lease, the chapter describes how it can be hard to find useable land even on the largest reservation. As the chapter notes, there are many reasons, including the need to find an alternative tax base now that extractive industries such as coal are leaving the reservation, that the central government should be interested in land reform. But hitting the right spot, the amount of paperwork and required fees, when it comes to formalizing use rights is hard. The Navajo Nation faces real difficulties resolving the how much control and what sort of control the central government should exercise over Dinē life, especially as it relates to the home.