June 18, 1934 — that was the day they passed the Indian Reorganization Act. Some call it the IRA. To them, it was a course correction. To us, it was another chapter in a long and complicated story — one where the government tried to repair a house it had spent centuries burning down.
They said the IRA was a reversal of assimilation. They said it was about restoring self-governance and protecting what little remained of our lands and cultures. And yes, for the first time in generations, the United States admitted that we are Nations — not wards, not relics, not vanishing people, but Nations. That mattered.
But let’s not forget — the foundation was still theirs.
The IRA told us we could govern ourselves — but only if we wrote our constitutions to look like theirs. Only if we voted in ways they understood. Only if we fit sovereignty into a colonial mold. And so many of our Nations were forced to set aside the governance systems that had guided us since time immemorial — our clan mothers, our councils of fire, our sacred laws of balance and kinship.
And still, we endured.
Some of our Nations used that narrow window to rebuild what we could. Others rejected it entirely. But all of us — all of us — kept carrying forward the memory of who we were before paper laws tried to define us.
Today, the checkerboard of land ownership they left behind still challenges us. The “trust” system they created still keeps the federal government in control of what should be sovereign land. And yet, despite all that — we are still here.
Because our sovereignty was never granted by an Act of Congress.
It was gifted to us by the land itself. It was sung into our bones by our ancestors. It is written in the stars, the rivers, the language of the drum and the heartbeat of the earth.
We continue to reorganize — but not according to their blueprints. We are reorganizing in the image of our ancestors. We are remembering what it means to lead with humility, to govern with the wisdom of our old ones, to live with laws older than colonial time.
So let June 18 be more than a date in history. Let it be a reminder that the path forward is not about fitting into their systems — it’s about reclaiming our own.
We are not rebuilding what was lost.
We are reawakening what was never meant to die.
Tapwe
—Kanipawit Maskwa
John Gonzalez
Standing Bear Network
National Archives
