ABSTRACT
IN 1903, THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT OPINED THAT, AS A RACIAL GROUP, American Indians, like minor children and those deemed mentally deficient or deranged, should be viewed as legally incompetent to manage our own assets and affairs. Indians were therefore to be understood as perpetual “wards” of the federal government, the high court held, the government our permanent “trustee.” With a deft circularity of reasoning, the justices then proceeded to assert that, since it was Indians’ intrinsic incompetence which had led to our being placed under trust supervision, we should by the same definition be construed as having no standing from which to challenge the exercise of our trustee’s authority over us.1
