Editor’s Note: This article is part of Native News Online’s America 250: A Republic Built on Native Land initiative.
As American 250 celebrations get underway across the country, we reached out to Indian Country to ask: What grade would you give America when it comes to the ideal of all men created equal, A, B, C, D, E, or F?
Here is what Indian Country said.
Tracy Stanhoff (Potawatomi), Former Chairperson of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation
Grade: C
I had an Olympic-level swim coach who used to say, “All men are not created equal; the U.S. Constitution made it so.”
What he was referring to was that we, as individuals, have to put in the effort to get better based on our physical abilities, and some may have to put in more work than others.
As I reflect on this statement as a tribal leader, successful business owner and a tribally-enrolled Native person in a federally-recognized Tribe, based on my experiences in the United States — and I am very fortunate — we have to continue to push for this ideal with purposeful and great intention to monitor the creation of equity for our people and provide a vehicle for all of us to access equity in our daily lives.
Unfortunately, with the rise of anti-inclusion rhetoric, we are taking major steps away from providing a safe space for all of us to demonstrate our capabilities to the utmost. Civility in discussing the basic principles on which America was founded has been terribly dimmed. Our Native American communities are no strangers to not being served by this U.S Constitutional value. As Native people, we need to keep pushing to be seen and vigilant on our inclusion at all levels
Aaron Payment, Former Chairperson of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe and current Council Member
Grade: C-
If you asked me in the 1970s how well I thought the US was living up to the obligations contained in the treaties and enshrined in the Constitution, I would say higher, but complacency for disadvantaged populations and the illusion that we long passed certain thresholds has put us on our guard. When Obama was President, many unaffected imagined we were past the Jim Crow days.
I give the US a grade of C- because despite our potential, we are barely passing. Barely passing is not good enough.
Worse, I fear we are going in the opposite direction by dismantling the safeguards our forebears fought to achieve. It’s time for all Americans to open their eyes and participate in the democratic process. I always say, if poor or disadvantaged people voted, we’d see a much more compassionate world with a safety net to catch all people when they need it, rather than relegating those who need our help as “welfare queens.”
We are at a turning point. Which direction we go is up to you, me, and us.
Richard Trudell (Santee Sioux), Founder of the American Indian Lawyer Training Program
Grade: D
I would give America a D because it hasn’t lived up to the laws it has enacted.
Tribes must navigate political and legal landscapes with states and the federal government, and they may have conflicts. Tribes are doing a good job now, but racism is still alive in economic, cultural, religious, and government spaces, so they must move through and around these dark forces. Some improvements have been made, but some improvements will not be successful.
The United Nations really can’t help much because very few countries are part of it. We did get the Indigenous rights of Mother Earth recognized, and we have had tribal members speaking at NGO’s (Non-governmental organizations), but it is still up to each tribe to work individually and with the rest of Indian Country to demand rights.
I have witnessed and experienced much in my life. There have been more Native Americans who have served in the military than any other group in the US, yet we have still been denied more than any other group. Now they still want to mine for coal, uranium, titanium, and dump radioactive materials on our land, dump oil that has been found and exploited through fracking processes, or send it through pipelines through our tribal lands, killing our people and destroying the limited aqueducts under tribal lands.
We don’t have enough reclaimed land given back to the tribes.
Mark Trahant (Shoshone-Bannock Tribes), Author, Former Editor of Indian Country Today
Grade: C
There’s only one way to grade, and that’s on a curve set by the outlines of the government’s own documents. The United States falls short of its own aspirations. We cannot have consent of the governed when the structures of elections are limited by politicians trying to preserve their jobs. Then that’s always been true.
The United States has never figured out what it really wants to be, the aspirational nation or just one built around greed. In a way, the mission of the Declaration of Independence was the greedy promise to take our lands for the settler state. That’s the F part of the grade. The better grade came in 1789 when the Constitution codified treaties as the supreme law of the land.
Joseph Yracheta (P’urhepecha y Raramuri), Executive Director of NativeBio
Grade: C
To answer the question below, I guess it depends on what you mean by equal. If you mean by assimilationist, then maybe a C.
But if you mean respecting treaties, sovereignty, and restorative justice as a moral restitution for invasion, then they get an F. I say an F because not only did they leave the relationship in the 1960s when AIM and other people fought for the 1975 self-determination act, but there was another period in 2003 when the human genome was mapped, and all of a sudden, we became super interesting.
Mark Charles (Diné), Author, Former Presidential Candidate
Grade: F
I would give us an F. We are consistent. First of all, we’ve never abolished slavery. The 13th Amendment doesn’t abolish slavery — it redefines and codifies it under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist.”
As recently as 2005, we cited the doctrine of discovery as the legal precedent for land titles in Supreme Court cases. In the 2024 election, Donald Trump ran for president, explicitly stating what he thought about people of color, especially from the countries in South America and south of us, as well as countries from Africa, and a majority of US voters voted for him and said, “Yeah, that’s what we want.”
It’s hard to believe now, but ten years ago we were finishing the second term of this nation’s first Black president, and now we’re in the second term — not consecutive, but the second term — of a man who is clearly racist and sexist.
In our movement to build a nation where “we the people” means all the people, we’re not even close. We don’t even want to do that anymore. When Donald Trump ran for president, he said he did not want to do that. That was not his goal; that was not what he was working toward, and the majority of US voters voted for him. We have never made it very far, but now we’ve even taken steps backward.
When I was running for president, the goal of my campaign was to have a national dialogue on race, gender, and class — a conversation I would have put on par with the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions that happened in South Africa, Rwanda, and Canada. But I wouldn’t have called ours Truth and Reconciliation, because reconciliation implies we had a previous harmony; I would have called ours Truth and Conciliation. That was one of the primary planks of my platform. I can’t even advocate for that today. Why? Because you can’t have truth and conciliation while you’re still actively doing harm — and we are actively doing harm now as a nation, not only here in the US, but on a global scale. And so I would have to give our country an F for our work to build a nation where all people are created equal.
Chuck Hoskin Jr, (Cherokee) Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation
Grade: C
Well, that’s a really tough one. It can’t be an A in a country in which we still have the impacts of racism going on, affecting people socially and economically. We can’t have an A grade when we have the legacy of broken treaty promises, the impact and the legacy of federal Indian policies, including boarding schools, including the dismantling — in some cases permanently, but in many cases almost irreparably — of tribal governing functions.
I always figured if I was getting a C in class, I had a shot at getting that grade up, something that my parents would be proud of, and I could be proud of. That’s the way I feel about America. I think we’re right in the middle, but I think we are poised to get that A. But we gotta keep working, we gotta be thoughtful. We can’t bury our heads in the sand and pretend like we don’t have that C and just hope it works out. We have to, as Americans, be active and understand that democracy is an action word, and for tribes, tribal sovereignty is an action word. So let’s put that into action, help this country realize its potential. Her potential’s an A+; we’re just not there yet. But that’s the beauty of America, that we all have a voice and we can make this country better. I’m an optimist in that regard.
Anton Treuer (Ojibwe), Author and Professor of American Indian Studies
Grade: C-
I would go with the C-minus. There is so much more to be done. Indigenous people don’t live as long as everyone else, and don’t have as much access to opportunity. You can look at the data on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives, and so many other things that are unconscionable and must be addressed. You can look at just the legal foundations of this country, which are so paternalistic — the idea that Native people have an aboriginal occupancy rather than ownership of the land from the get-go. The United States bought land from France in the Louisiana Purchase, and neither France nor the United States asked permission of any Native people.
There are so many problematic things that need to be addressed, and at the same time, I can’t completely eradicate a flickering flame of hope, because in spite of all the barriers, there is an opening in which Native people can exert agency — not just as individuals who are part of this American system, but as nations who can self-determine more and more effectively. Although it’s tempting to give an F based on human rights records, when you look at comparative terms around the world, there is possibility, hope, and potential, in spite of all these problems. I can see the problems and the potential, and I have an idea of where we should be going.
Shannon Holsey (Stockbridge Munsee), President of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community
Grade: C–
A C- is not failure — but it is not enough.
At 250, America has the opportunity to move from aspiration to action. That requires more than celebration. It requires courage — the courage to confront hard truths, to repair broken commitments, and to build a future where equality is not selective.
For Tribal Nations, that future is clear. It is sovereignty recognized. It is treaties honored. It is self-determination that is respected. If the United States truly wants to live up to the words it declared 250 years ago, then the path forward is not complicated. Honor your promises. Respect our governments. And recognize that there is no equality without sovereignty.
