Well are they? and if they are, could somebody annex them?
For instance, let’s say there is a reservation in Nevada and some American Militia types decide to storm it one day and declare themselves rulers of the nation?
I don’t really know, I do remember going through Nevada towards the Grand Canyon last summer and there were signs saying “Entering Navajo Nation.” They even had their own police with Navajo Nation on the side of the cars.
“The idea of a walk-in closet sounds frightening. If I’m ever sittin’ at home and a closet walks in, I’m gettin’ outta there.” ~George Carlin
It is my understanding that reservations are under the protectant of the federal goverment. Local and state authorities (i.e. police, game wardens, dog catchers ect…) have no jurisdiction there. The federal goverment maintains the Office of Indian Affairs to provide them services and policing.
Indian land is not subject to local building codes but that doesn’t mean that they can ignore national codes ,such as the National Electric Code.
Indians can also possess certain animal things that other citizens cannot, such as eagle feathers and can take addition wild game over local limits. All in the name of religious tradition.
So don’t try to invade a reservation these days, if they don’t kick your butt and throw you into one of thier own jails , they will sue your ass in federal court. Or BOTH.
Well, if I didn’t violate any federal laws, then I would probably be all right.
Try annexing the white house if you desire federal jurisdiction.It could use a new owner!
Good idea. We’d call it Berkeley Annex. Free speech – all lies being valid within the Beltway.
Ray (in Berkeley, CA)
This is a big question here in upstate NY where the Oneida Indian nation is fighting for settlement of a land claim that dates back over a century. You can work your way back to the main page and read more about them and the land claim. Right now the price tag is around half a billion. Actually the claim is pretty much seperate from the sovereign issue but one of the complaints by the locals is that the Oneidas aren’t paying local property taxes on the land that they acquire. Here is their view on the sovereign issue.
http://oneida-nation.net/sov/sovdoc.html
The answer to the OP is “yes and no”.
But, then again, states are ‘sovereign’, subject to their restrictions under the US Constitution.
Indians have a historically tortured existence legally in the United States. Much of this is summarized in this article from Compton’s Online Encyclopedia: http://www.optonline.com/comptons/ceo/02375_A.html#080 . Read way down where they talk about the history of US - Native American affairs. 
As DSYOUNG noted, the answer is “yes” and “no,” and the issue is a very complicated one. For a lay-person, however, I’ve always thought it best to think that the answer is “yes” for this reason:
The Tribes have a special status in relation to our government and members of the Tribes sometimes are not bound by the laws that bind the rest of us. This can bug non-native Americans, who perceive it as “favoritism” towards the Tribes that is somehow granted to them by the government. In reality, the Tribes (the organized Tribes who occupy Indian Country) are sovereign entities, and the rights and lands that they have and occupy are their own by virtue of them having been here first. These rights and lands were not “granted” to them by the government; they were retained by the Tribes who, after all, were here first.
A good example of the interplay between the rights that the Tribes inherently posess and the constraints put upon them by Congress might be situation on Indian gambling here in Montana. One particular tribe wanted to begin a level of gambling (so-called Class III gambling) not allowed under statute in the State of Montana. Because of the statute, the State refused to issue gambling licenses for the reservation. The Montana Supreme Court held that (1) the State’s gambling statutes were not applicable because they were pre-empted by the Federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act; but (2) the IGRA demanded an agreement or “compact” between the Tribe and the state as a prerequisite to the Class III gambling proposed. The State and the Tribe did not have (and, to date, do not have) such an agreement. Therefore, no Class III gambling. See Larson, et al., v. Montana Dept. of Justice, 912 P.2d 783 (1996).
The short but greatly over-simplified answer to the OP is the states cannot generally tell the Tribes what to do, but Congress can.
Jodi
Fiat Justitia
If they can be annexed, then OK. If they can’t, it doesn’t seem quite fair that they enjoy all of the benefits of citizenship whithout paying taxes. What a tough thing to work out.
Don’t begrudge them the tax break. They have a long history of getting the shitty end of the stick. The lastest is that they are not seeing much benefit from the current economic boom. Their unemployment rates, alcoholism rate, suicide rates, etc. are atrocious. A lot of places have little or none of the infrastructure that we take for granted. We took their land from them, broke many promises to them, and shuffled them off to nowheresville. So if some of them get filthy rich from a legal loophole, I can’t get to excited about it.
I’m part Cherokee, and I get really peeved when white folks get all huffy about Indian shellfish and hunting and land rights. The bottom line, folks, is that we (or at least the quarter of me that qualifies) were here first. Not to mention the fact that the wholesale continent-wide genocide of indigenous peoples makes the 20th-century Nazi horror look like a tea party. Just putting things in perspective, next time you think about our country’s history in comparison to the current insanity in the Balkans, or about some seemingly obscure century-old treaty negotiation out in the boondocks. Possession may be nine-tenths of the law, but evil is still evil. The breaks the Indians get are small potatoes next to what they went through to get here.
And with regard to the OP, the answer is, as covered above, “yes, sort of.”
American Indians (belonging to federally recognized tribes and living on reservations) DO pay federal income tax, do they not? Isn’t it only state taxes they are exempt from?
I’ve been to Arizona, and I can tell you that one law the Navajo Nation gets to ignore is the littering laws. The roads around their reservation look like a dumpsite!
–It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
I think you have to take it on a tribe by tribe basis. I am part Iriquois, and my anscestors sided with the Brits against the colonies. If you play, you pay.
But I don’t begrudge anyone who lives on a reservation. From what I understand, they are not exactly lavish. And if stupid palefaces feel like emptying their pockets at indian casinos, that is their own damn fault (the paleface’s fault I mean).
I do get irked about the land battle going on in New York, but that is a different topic.
“The robbed that smile,
Steal something from the thief.” —WS, Othello I.III.204