Paul Cook feigned a smile. His face wore the same weary look of consternation it had featured for hours. The Republican Representative, from California’s 8th District, didn’t know what else to say.

“This story here is the one you hear over and over and over again,” he sighed.

Cook is the GOP leader on the House Subcommittee for the Indigenous People of the United States and among one of the best friends Indian Country has on the conservative side of the aisle. And on Wednesday afternoon, after having listened to five Native leaders relay the same message to the subcommittee in their testimonies and responses, he was at a loss for words.

The hearing was for two bills, H.R. 1128 and H.R. 1135, both of which aim to right one of the most foundational evils still plaguing the United States—the near-annual breaking of treaties with the sovereign tribal nations within its borders. As a condition of the scores of treaties the United States signed with the tribes in the 19th and 20th centuries, the federal government, in exchange for land and the atrocities of forced removal, agreed to provide the tribes healthcare and educational services, among others. The exchange was not remotely equal, but it meant survival for a people staring down the barrel of state-induced genocide.

Over a century removed from the inking of the majority of these treaties, the United States government is still failing to hold up its end of the bargain.

