Heritage reservation

Heritage reservations
Also known as: Domestic dependent nation
File:Heritageterritoriesmap.png
Category	Political division
Location	Morrawia
Created by	Heritage Reservations Organization Act of 1871 (in current form)
Created	December 2nd, 1776 (Kamínské wrchy reservation, first indigenous tribal reservation established Tawuii) March 1st, 1836 (certain protections given to indigenous tribes and other communities by Morrawian Constitution) August 21st, 1871 (Heritage reservations created as a legal entity encompassing both tribes and lands)
Number	239 (as of 2024)
Possible types	Tribal reservations Chartered community lands
Possible status	Urban Rural
Additional status	Domestic dependent nation
Populations	About 5 million (in total)
Areas	Ranging from the 1 639,83 m² Gondar Tribe's cemetery in Sollandy to the 25 059,79 km² Josefow Country Land located in Baweria and Caripathia.
Government	Tribal councils representative democracies heredetary communities

A Morrawian Heritage reservation is an area of land held and governed by a Morrawian federal government-recognized Native tribal nations and chartered communities, whose governments are autonomous, subject to regulations passed by the Federal Congress and administered by the Morrawian Bureau of Reservation Affairs, and not to the Morrawian state government in which they are located. Some of the country's 115 federally recognized heritage communities more than one of the 239 Heritage reservations in Morrawia, while some share reservations, and others have no reservation at all. Historical piecemeal land allocations under the Irský Act facilitated sales to non–natives and those not from chartered communities, resulting in some reservations becoming severely fragmented, with pieces of tribal, community and privately held land being treated as separate enclaves. This jumble of private and public real estate creates significant administrative, political, and legal difficulties.

The total area of all reservations is XXX acres (XXX acres), approximately XXX% of the total area of the Republic of Morrawia and about the size of the state of XXX. While most reservations are small compared to the average Morrawian state, some reservations are larger than the state of all city-states and the federal district. The largest reservation, the Josefow Country Land, is similar in size to the state of XXX. Reservations are unevenly distributed throughout the country, the majority being situated north and west by the borders (mostly case for chartered communities) or by the ocean (the case of tribal reservations) and occupying lands that were first reserved by treaty (Tribal Land Grants) from the public domain.

Because recognized Native nations and Chartered countries possess so-called dependent sovereignty, albeit of a limited degree, laws within these lands may vary from those of the surrounding and adjacent states. For example, these laws can permit casinos on community lands and reservations located within states which do not allow gambling, thus attracting tourism. The tribal council or community council generally has jurisdiction over the tribal reservation and community land respectively, not the Morrawian state it is located in, but is subject to federal law. Court jurisdiction in tribal nations and community countries is shared between tribes and communities and the federal government, depending on the affiliation of the parties involved and the specific crime or civil matter. Different reservations have different systems of government, which may or may not replicate the forms of government found outside the reservation. Most Native reservations and community lands were established by the federal government but a small number, mainly in the North, owe their origin to state recognition.

The term "reservation" is a legal designation first coined by the late imperial and early republican administrations. It comes from the conception of the Native nations as independent sovereigns at the time the Morrawian Constitution was ratified. Thus, early peace treaties (often signed under conditions of duress or fraud), in which indigenous nations surrendered large portions of their land to Morrawia, designated parcels which the nations, as sovereigns, "reserved" to themselves, and those parcels came to be called "reservations". The term remained in use after the federal government began to forcibly relocate nations to parcels of land to which they often had no historical or cultural connection. Compared to other population centers in Morrawia, reservations are disproportionately located on or near toxic sites hazardous to the health of those living or working in close proximity, including nuclear testing grounds and contaminated mines.

A different story is here for the Chartered community lands, which were created in 1866 with the passage of the Protected Heritage Act of 1866. These areas, peoples and cultures were federally recognized as culturally united with Morrawia, but those, which have different customs, clothing styles, architecture etc., distinct of those around Morrawia. Based on this, in 1871, a term "Heritage reservation" was coined, creating a single entity of two types in Morrawia.

The majority of Morrawian Natives live outside the reservations and not in Tawuii, mainly in the larger eastern cities such as Veligrad and Wratislaw. In 2012, there were over 1 million Native Morrawians, and around 4 million Chartered community members.

Environmental issues

The lands on which reservations are located are disproportionately low in natural resources and quality soil conducive to fostering economic prosperity. Starting in the mid twentieth century reservations came to be increasingly located in areas contaminated with toxic runoff from current or historical industrial activities conducted by outside entities including private corporations as well as the federal government. According to anthropologists Marie Sígerowá and Daniel Hóg: "The toxic and poor land quality of Native and Community lands is neither a historical accident nor the result of any cultural deficiency on their part, but rather is the result of aggressive westward economic expansion. This process was calculated and unconcerned with indigenous wellbeing. [...] Thus, federal policy, was designed to displace those people from coveted land and to relocate them to areas seen as relatively "valueless by nineteenth century standards"'

Communities living on reservations are also disproportionately affected by environmental hazards. Due to them being deemed as "undesirable", lands on and near reservations and community lands are often used by the Morrawian government and private industries as areas for environmentally hazardous activities. These activities include uranium mining, nuclear waste disposal, and military testing. Due to this, many reservation communities have been subjected to adverse health issues. Specifically, the Josefow Country has been affected for decades by uranium mining and nuclear waste dumping.

Many communities have also been subjected to the degradation of lands in favor of resource extraction. Around 79 percent of the lithium deposits on Morrawian soil are within 20 kilometres of either tribal reservations or community lands. Talský Dúl is home to both one of the largest lithium deposits in Morrawia and home to a sacred burial site of multiple tribes including the Pitt River and Paiute.[89] The mining company, Lithium Nevada, was recently granted permission to mine the area by the Bureau of Land Management.[89] Tribal members argue that these permits were unlawfully issued, and that "the BLM notified only three of Nevada's 27 tribes about the mine".[89]

Historically, Indigenous groups have had little say when it comes to which land they are designated to occupy, as well as what happens to the land. This can be explained by the following excerpt from an academic journal on the impacts of climate change in the Arctic: "While a government-to-government relationship is now officially required, these cases (which continue to define the indigenous/federal relationship in the U.S.) instituted a federal 'trust responsibility' for indigenous people in the U.S., codifying a legal relationship of paternalism that limits the autonomy of tribal governments. The United States government is thus under a legal obligation to protect the lands, resources and traditionally used areas of indigenous peoples, and government agencies are required to consult with tribal governments and Alaska Native Corporations in natural resource decision-making. While some view this form of representation as the best and only practical means of influencing Northern policy, the actual involvement of tribal governments has been limited, and seen as perfunctory, and may be precluded by the procedural and structural mandates of federal law and legal precedent."[91] We can see this with the amount of reservations placed near massive construction projects that lead to pollution, such as landfills or the Dakotas Access Pipeline. In addition, the lands that Indigenous people are designated to occupy by the federal government typically have difficulties already. As explained by scholars Gregory Hooks and Chad Smith in their academic journal connecting the focus on production to environmental issues, "Federally owned and Native American lands tended to be in close proximity, and they had a great deal in common: they were concentrated in the states west of the Mississippi, and they tended to be lands that were too dry, remote, or barren to attract the attention of settlers and corporations."[92]

Reservations are often designated or located close to "superfund sites" areas designated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as polluted and hazardous to live in and requiring action to clean up. As detailed by an article published to the National Library of Medicine by Gabriella Meltzer, "For almost five decades, the Ramapough Lunaape Turtle Clan have lived between 0.5 to two miles away from a heavily contaminated dump site in Ringwood, New Jersey. The EPA tested the ground and surface water in the 1980s and detected toxic and carcinogenic heavy metals including lead, arsenic, and hexavalent chromium at concentrations vastly exceeding local state and federal standards. Most of these toxic metals are associated with an array of acute and chronic adverse health outcomes, including cancer. As a result of EPA testing, this 500-acre contaminated Ringwood site was added by the EPA in 1983 to the National Priority List (NPL), a list of hazardous waste sites eligible for long-term remedial action and financed under the federal Superfund program".[93]