Be careful what you pledge to do.

Presidential candidate John Kerry doesn't realize it, but he may have just given away huge chunks of the land comprising our United States.

John Kerry pledged at an intertribal Indian powwow Sunday evening to honor treaties and consult on national issues like health care.

"When I take the oath of office as president of the United States," he told an estimated 5,000 people at Red Rock State Park, "I will uphold the law of the land, and that includes treaties and the special relationship that exists between the United States and the Indian nations."

If Kerry intended to literally do what he suggests in that quote, he better break out a great big map of the US. If all of the treaties legally written and agreed to by both parties were enforced, a lot of we Americans would find ourselves living in other countries. A series of treaties enacted between tribes and Congress during the 1800s were later unilaterally altered by our government to suit its needs. Given the tribes were all regarded early in the history of our republic as possessing sovereignty, the US could not legally alter treaties without the consent of the other parties, which it failed to seek.

In other words, if you live anywhere in the larger central part of the US, strictly speaking, you do not own the land upon which you live. The town or city you live in is no longer within the borders of the Untied States, and US law does not apply to you. Your taxes will now go to the tribes, and tribal custom will determine whther or not you even get a say what happens to your tax dollars. You could be pushed off your land without compensation, rounded up and put into camps, or force marched a coule of thousand miles to the least productive land and told to get farming or starve.

Sound familiar?

Obviously, Kerry meant to indicate he is sensitive to issues affecting Native America, but were he better versed in those issues, he might have spoken a wee bit more carefully. :)