Abstract: (Excerpt from Introduction)
It is a historical fact that American law has dominated Indian people (Pommersheim, 1995). Legal scholar Vine Deloria Jr. states that from its humble beginnings the U.S. federal government stole some two billion acres of land from the Indians and continues to take what it can without arousing the ire of the ignorant public. Deloria also contends that America has always been a militantly imperialistic world power eagerly grasping for economic control over weaker nations (Deloria, 1969). Historian Michael Lawson states that increasingly in the twentieth century the United States has used its power of eminent domain to seize large parcels of Indian land for public works projects (Lawson, 1982).