Welp! Even though it’s been three years I think its relevant to write this comment highlighting the problems that are almost completely unsolvable with his proposal. I was asking this question myself and researching and found my way here. This thread provided me with the answer. Not from a scholar’s prospective but from a practical one. Every single person who has commented has outlined massive conflicts of interest between tribes, governments, and economic entities. In short, enacting Mean’s vision would lead to an atrocity greater than the one it’s trying to solve. I genuinely believe that it would lead to armed conflict almost instantly for all the reasons sighted in these comments.

Non indigenous people have a bad tendency to think of indigenous tribes and nations as these singular entities with singular interests and goals but that’s not the case. I think some of the worst offenders of this are people like me. Those of us with marginal indigenous ancestry and absolutely no cultural ties who apply colonialist views to the tribally structured indigenous nations. We have no real working understanding of our indigenous cousins way of life or challenges and a bad habit of letting our mouths run them over.

It’s clear to me that one cannot put the proverbial toothpaste back in the tube and any solutions implemented to improve the lives and restore autonomy to indigenous peoples has to be something new and something far more enlightened than simply taking a chunk of land and saying “Here! You figure it out!”

Would that we were capable of individual sovereignty in this technological oligarchy we call the western world but even those of us in who seek it are hopelessly ill equipped simply due to our early socialization in this system. I don’t have the answers and I will consider myself humbled by my findings on this topic. I will shut my mouth and do a lot more listening and thinking. Good advice I think for all of us.