In May, the Department of Homeland Security informed the Tohono O’odham Nation, the largest Native nation located along an international border, that it was beginning construction on a border wall that would cut through its reservation. But DHS failed to ask the Tohono O’odham’s authorization to cut through its lands, which include present-day Arizona and the northwest Mexican state of Sonora. The nation sued the Trump administration in June, seeking a preliminary injunction to block border wall construction on its lands. The border wall “would have devastating effects on the Nation’s lands and its people,” according to the complaint.

Experts say DHS’s failure to seek the tribe’s consent fits into a long history of the United States failing to honor tribal sovereignty, especially when that sovereignty conflicts with the US’s own plans. Any time the federal government tries to interfere with the borders of a Native nation, it is inherently “threatening the territorial sovereignty of a tribal nation,” said Dr. Keith Richotte, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and law professor at the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona.

Since its inception, the United States has frequently flip-flopped on its understanding of tribal sovereignty. Former Justice Antonin Scalia reportedly once said the nation’s highest court was “just making it up” when it came to Indian law. It’s a remark that, years later, still best sums up the US government’s attitude toward tribal sovereignty—and DHS’s border wall plans are just the latest example.

Native nations are sovereign governments with nation-to-nation relationships with the federal government. Their sovereignty pre-dates the United States, and though Indigenous people were granted US citizenship under the Indian........

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