During the first half of the 1970s, the American Indian Movement (AIM) came to the forefront of a drive to realize the rights of treaty-guaranteed national sovereignty on behalf of North America's indigenous peoples. For the government and major corporate interests of the United States, this liberatory challenge represented a considerable threat. On the one hand, Indians possess clear legal and moral rights to the full exercise of self-determination; on the other hand, their reserved land base contains substantial quantities of critical mineral resources. More than half of all known "domestic" U.S. uranium reserves lie within the boundaries of present- day Indian reservations, as do as much as a quarter of the high grade low sulphur coal, a fifth of the oil and natural gas, and major deposits of copper and other metals.' Loss of internal colonial control over these items would confront U.S. 6lites with significant strategic and economic problems.
"DEATH SQUADS IN THE UNITED STATES: CONFESSIONS OF A GOVERNMENT TERRORIST,"
Yale Journal of Law and Liberation: Vol. 3
, Article 6.
Available at: http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjll/vol3/iss1/6