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The Festering Problem of Indian
Sovereignty: The Supreme Court ducks. Congress sleeps. Indians rule.
September 2004
By Jan Golab
The American Enterprise
1150 17th Street N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036
888-295-9007 or 202-862-5887
Fax: 202-862-5867
To submit a Letter to the Editor: tae@aei.org
Foxwoods, the King Kong of casinos, was brought to Connecticut
with dreams of untold riches. Now, locals are trying to kill the
beast. Foxwoods and its sister institution, Mohegan Sun, (the
world’s two most profitable casinos), pay host state Connecticut
a hefty $400 million a year -- one fourth of the take.
Yet in 2003, Connecticut became the first state in
the country to pass legislation designed to halt any future casino
development. The measure passed unanimously, not exactly a ringing
endorsement for Indian gambling institutions.
“Another gambling palace anywhere in the state would be
disastrous,” the Hartford Courant warned in an editorial.
“The state must stop this slot-machine tsunami.”
Jeff Benedict is president of the Connecticut Alliance Against Casino
Expansion, and the author of Without Reservation, a book about the
Mashantucket Pequot Indians and their Foxwoods casino. “Casino money
costs us a lot more than it’s worth,” Benedict argues.
He recites a litany of woes: Casinos have a negative impact on roads,
water and land consumption, fire, police, ambulance service, air
pollution, and traffic. Local school systems are flooded with the
children of low-income casino workers, who also create a shortage of
affordable housing.
And there are social costs -- increased bankruptcies, foreclosures,
divorces, child abuse, and crime.
“The closer a community gets to a casino, the higher those numbers
are,” says Benedict. “Who pays for that? The local and state
governments.”
Casinos cause property devaluation and lost taxes when businesses and
lands are taken over by tax-exempt tribes. While casino owners argue
that they create jobs and help neighboring businesses, the casinos
(which, as Indian enterprises, do not have to pay the same taxes or
abide by the same laws as other establishments) actually damage
competing businesses nearby -- restaurants, bars, hotels, retail
outlets.
“When the Indian casino comes to town, nobody else does well,”
says Benedict.
Except for the lawyers. The Pequots have subjected their host state
and local governments to a decade of legal battles over tribal land
annexation, environmental and land-use regulations, and sovereign
immunity from lawsuits and police jurisdiction.
Local communities have spent millions litigating against further
casino expansion. Twelve more would-be “tribes” are petitioning
the Bureau of Indian Affairs for federal tribal status, and new land
claims threaten over one third of Connecticut’s real estate.
Another book on Foxwoods, Hitting the Jackpot, by Wall Street reporter
Brett Fromson, explains how a “tribe” that disappeared 300 years
ago resurrected itself and won a gambling monopoly now worth $1.2
billion a year.
Like Benedict, Fromson concludes that the re-created Pequot tribe is
illegitimate, a political contrivance based on sympathy and political
correctness, not reality or common sense -- “the greatest legal
scam.”
The Supreme Court ducks. Congress sleeps. Indians rule.
Next door in New York, the situation is even worse.
The Empire State approved the Oneida Nation’s Turning Stone Casino
near Oneida ten years ago, without first obtaining any agreement for
the Nation to share its revenues ($232 million in 2001) with the
state, or any agreement to settle the tribe’s claim to 250,000 acres
of central New York land.
Subsequent casino compacts with other tribes have been haphazard and
subject to ongoing renegotiation, with New York
collecting money from some, not from others.
The Oneidas have used their casino cash machine to buy 16,000 acres of
land and businesses, including nearly all of the area’s gasoline and
convenience stores. Once they are Indian owned, the land and
businesses go off the tax rolls. The business impact and loss of
property and sales taxes has some local communities teetering on
bankruptcy.
“The tribes hurt us in a number of ways,” explains Scott Peterman,
president of Upstate Citizens for Equality. “They buy a property and
refuse to pay property tax because they say they are re-acquiring
their ancient reservation. Then they open a business on that property
and refuse to collect sales tax.”
By undercutting all non-Indian businesses that collect taxes, tribal
sales of gasoline and cigarettes alone cost New York state millions of
dollars in annual taxes. The Supreme Court ruled in 1994 that states
could tax tribal sales to non-native customers, but so far, New
York has failed to enforce this over Indian resistance.
One tribe, the Onondaga, sells an estimated 20,000 cartons of
cigarettes every week, or $26 million worth a year. Governor George
Pataki tried to collect in 1997, but he backed down when Indian
protestors blocked the New York State Thruway.
Last year, the state legislature ordered Pataki to begin collecting
the taxes, which it conservatively estimated would amount to $165
million in 2003 and $330 million in 2004. The Syracuse Post-Standard
reported: “Indian Cigarette Sales cost New York $436M.”
Another study estimated that New York tribes cost the
state a total of $895 million last year. Still, the tab remains open.
The state with the most tribal casinos -- 82 -- is Oklahoma,
where tribes rake in as much as $1.2 billion a year -- and the state
doesn't get a cent. Oklahoma Indians, who comprise 7
percent of the state population, have become the most powerful
political force there.
Meanwhile, officials estimate that Oklahoma’s 39 tribes cost the
state $500 million a year -- in lost property taxes, lost revenues on
tax-free cigarettes, and lost excise taxes and tag fees from cars sold
by reservation dealerships.
That’s nearly the equivalent of the state’s 2003 budgetary
shortfall, enough to pay for 17,000 teachers.
Meanwhile, the state’s billion-dollar racetrack industry, which does
pay taxes, is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and communities are
mired in litigation with cash-flush tribes over land and water rights.
As Connecticut, New York, and Oklahoma
wrestle to control their Indian casinos, California’s
casinos are rapidly expanding, and many other states, like
Pennsylvania and Maryland, are just gearing up.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s legacy will largely be a matter of
whether or not he allows the Golden State to become 'the new Nevada'.
With their state monopoly on gambling, California
Indians could eventually become the richest people on earth. Their 54
casinos are already raking in $5 billion a year, which isn't far
behind the entire Las Vegas area ($7.7 billion), and they are pushing
for more.
With 107 federally recognized Indian reservations and rancherias --
more than anywhere else in the country -- California
could easily surpass Nevada as the nation’s gambling capital in the
next few years.
Yet tribal chairmen blast the California governor for
suggesting that they “pay their fair share.” They insist that:
“Governments cannot tax other governments!”
They insist they are “sovereign.”
“Sovereign” usually means “independent.”
American Indians, however, are completely dependent on their
host governments -- for roads, power, water, fire and police
protection, schools, universities, hospitals, and health care
facilities. “
The technical term for Indian reservations is ‘domestic
dependent nations,’” explains one legislative analyst.
“They are not foreign governments. They have no foreign policy
powers. They are not allowed to sell their land to anyone outside the
U.S. and they are not allowed to maintain relations with any foreign
nation. To regard them as being like foreign nations inside our nation
is very problematic. How can Congress create a government within a
state, with powers that Congress itself could never possess?”
The notion that American Indian tribes should be treated like
Canada or France, as some tribal leaders assert, offends common sense.
"A nation within the nation” is what they claim to be, but
it is not even close to a reality. If they are independent nations,
why have Indians been allowed to donate over $150 million to U.S.
political campaigns and become our nation’s most influential
political special interest group?
Californians have already shown their disgust for the
“pay-to-play” politics that linked Indians to ousted governor Gray
Davis and his lieutenant governor Cruz Bustamante, who did the
Indians’ bidding while taking $12 million of their cash.
Experts say that is only the tip of the iceberg.
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California) and Representatives George Miller
(D-Richmond), Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs), Hilda Solis (D-East L.A.),
and Joe Baca (D-San Bernardino) have long served as legislative
activists to expand tribal sovereignty.
They have pushed through legislation to recognize “tribes”
so they can avoid a lengthy and complicated federal recognition
process that includes oversight by the governor and secretary of the
interior.
This form of “reservation shopping” via sympathetic legislation is
responsible for many new gambling resorts.
How can Congress create a government within a state, with powers that
Congress itself could never possess?
Senator [Barbara] Boxer pushed a bill through Congress
granting federal recognition to the Federated Coast Miwoks of Graton
Rancheria, a small landless “tribe,” after receiving assurances
they would not open a casino.
But then the tribe hired a team of advisers -- including
Boxer’s son Doug -- and announced plans for a massive
$100 million Nevada-financed casino and resort in California’s wine
country.
Four city council members in Rohnert Park, the proposed site
of the resort, are now facing a grassroots recall for selling out to
the Indians.
Another small tribe, the 70-member Ione Band of Miwok Indians, had no
interest in pursuing a casino until the tribe was hijacked by
officials from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
These agents, in a move not uncommon in the murky world of Indian
politics, opened the tribe’s membership rolls against the
wishes of the tribal leadership and added 450 new members, including
the BIA officials themselves and their families.
These new “tribal members” then called for an election and
overthrew the existing tribal leadership. The BIA officials not only
made themselves members of a tribe they were administering, they took
it over -- for the purpose of promoting (and profiting from) a
$100 million casino in Plymouth, California. Four
members of Congress have called for an investigation into the Ione
Miwok takeover.
Corruption like this seems the inevitable consequence so long
as Indians are allowed to operate outside American law under a claim
of tribal sovereignty.
A coalition of 18 attorneys general from western states recently
identified “corruption on tribal lands” as their number
one concern, even over international terrorism.
Many federally identified “high intensity drug trafficking
areas” are located on tribal lands.
Immigrant smuggling is also a serious problem on reservations
that adjoin our international borders with Canada and Mexico.
Authorities are also concerned that Indian casino cash makes a
tempting target for international terrorists who need to launder
money.
With revenues of $14 billion last year, Indian gaming is a prime
target for money cleaners of all sorts.
When gambling isn't properly regulated it attracts money laundering,
loan sharking, drugs, and organized crime. Investigators with the
federal Indian Gaming Commission are able to make only occasional
visits to the more than 241 Indian gaming operations across
the country.
The Commission has only two investigators and one auditor for
the entire West Coast.
John Hensley, the chairman of the California Gambling Control
Commission under Governor Davis, resigned in frustration due to a lack
of funds (and his outrage over Davis’s promise that if he was not
recalled as governor he would allow the tribes to pick two new members
for the Commission).
This lack of oversight is a recipe for disaster. “We certainly would
not let private casinos in Nevada self-regulate,” notes Whittier Law
School professor and national gambling expert Nelson Rose.
Since 1980, more than 130 state and local officials have been drawn
into gambling corruption scandals, according to a paper prepared by
the Library of Congress. A variety of scandals has already touched
tribes throughout the country, and law enforcement insiders predict
that worse is yet to come. Concerns are heightened due to the
industry’s newfound political influence.
Some tribal leaders have already been indicted for engineering illegal
campaign contributions.
Investors in a Rincon tribe operation in San Diego County were accused
of plotting to launder more than $2 million for a Pittsburgh crime
family. Seventeen people were indicted, including a member of the
Rincon tribal council. Ten people associated with Chicago crime boss
John DiFonzo and a San Diego mobster were convicted of racketeering
and extortion in another attempt to take over a tribal gambling hall.
Members of the New York Seneca Nation are facing a RICO indictment for
smuggling untaxed cigarettes.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs says illegal drugs have deeply
infiltrated Indian communities. In southern Arizona, $1.8 million in
marijuana was seized in a single incident on the Tohono O’odham
reservation.
An estimated 1,500 illegal Mexican immigrants a day also cross the
border into that 2.8 million-acre reservation.
The Akwesasne Reservation on the U.S.-Canadian border,
according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, is “a major
smuggling hub for goods illegally transported in and out of Canada
from the U.S., or vice versa -- including narcotics, firearms,
alcohol, tobacco, and illegal aliens.”
The movement of aliens there and in Arizona is
considered a threat to homeland security. New York’s Mohawk tribe
was charged in 1999 with smuggling drugs, guns, and illegal aliens --
including associates of Osama bin Laden -- for as much as $47,000 a
head. These sorts of problems will recur with increasing frequency in
the future unless their true root -- the non-applicability of standing
U.S. laws on Indian lands due to claims of Native American sovereignty
-- is challenged.
“The debate over Indian sovereignty may seem abstract,” explains
one analyst, “but it gets very concrete when a state suddenly loses
authority over a major portion of its land.
Reservation shopping basically gives wealthy gambling tribes the
ability to shrink counties and states” -- and to place important
personal actions and economic transactions beyond the reach of
American law.
Throughout the nation, whenever U.S. citizens battle tribes over
problems with land, water, zoning disputes, personal injuries,
firings, broken contracts, or other issues, the claim of tribal
sovereignty often intervenes. As tribal governments expand, local
governments lose their political power to protect their citizens, some
of whom find themselves ruined by tribal sovereignty claims -- like
the rancher who lost all his water to a new tribal golf course and
resort.
The Citizens Equal Rights Alliance and United Property Owners,
umbrella organizations encompassing hundreds of grassroots groups
affected by Indian sovereignty claims, represent some 3.5 million
citizens and business and property owners affected by America’s
550-plus Indian reservations.
There are also independent organizations in 22 states,
like One Nation in Oklahoma, Upstate Citizens for Equality in New
York, and Stand Up for California.
Activists in this rapidly growing anti-sovereignty movement feel
betrayed by their elected leaders.
Indian sovereignty, they say, is a profoundly flawed special body of
federal law -- some say an outright scam -- that creates bogus tribes,
legalizes race-based monopolies, creates a special class of
super citizens immune to the laws that govern others, and
Balkanizes America.
“Sovereign rights based on race for a few American citizens is not,
and will never be, reconcilable with the equality and civil rights
guaranteed by the United States Constitution to all citizens,” says
Scott Peterman, of Upstate Citizens for Equality. “The concepts of
equal rights, equal opportunities, equality under the law, and equal
responsibilities for all citizens should not be bargained away by our
politicians.”
Many say that sovereignty is a concept from another age that no longer
works today.
“It goes back a century to when native populations had been
dispossessed,” explains former California senator Pete Wilson, “to
when the U.S. was largely an agricultural nation and we did not have
the kind of economy we have today.”
Wilson says that when the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) was
enacted in 1988, it didn't get nearly the attention it deserved.
“A lot of people [in Congress] voted for it thinking that it
amounted to little more than Bingo on reservations….They didn't see
it as a commercial enterprise that would transform reservations and
their surrounding communities.”
Most analysts concur that IGRA is a terrible law -- vague, fuzzy, and
unclear. “Congress should have spelled out much more clearly what
the tribes are allowed to do,” explains one analyst.
“IGRA has subsequently been interpreted by the courts to mean that a
state can pass a ballot initiative granting a lucrative monopoly on
gambling, based solely on race, within a state that does not otherwise
allow gambling. It defies the basic principles of equal protection,
and gives cause to wonder: Should we give Hispanics the liquor
industry? Should blacks get cigarettes?
What about the Asian boat people?”
IGRA became a mechanism for the gambling industry to enter states
where gambling had been illegal for more than a century, allowing it
to operate outside the legal jurisdiction of the state governments. It
pitted tribes against tribes, and tribal leaders against their own
members, and created impossible entanglements of governance and
jurisdiction. IGRA essentially created an attractive investment
opportunity for the gaming industry, much as minority-contracting
rules created an industry out of finding black and Hispanic figurehead
partners with which to pursue government contracts. The potential
gambling revenues made it attractive for marginal groups to seek
tribal status, specifically for the purpose of opening a gaming
franchise.
“The groups in some cases are so marginal it’s almost laughable,
“says one legislative analyst. “Often they are subdivisions of
actual tribes -- the left-fork wing of the old river Indian tribe.
It’s not about tribal identity.What they really want is a casino.”
Experts contend that Congress never intended sovereign status for
every parcel of land granted to Indians. The small California
rancherias, for example, were meant to host housing projects for
landless Indians.
One such group of federal housing recipients-turned-Indian-tribe, the
Auburns, have used their new sovereign status to open the massive
Thunder Valley casino near Sacramento.
The Auburns are descendants of 40 Indians who were set up on a few
dozen acres of public housing in 1910.
“Do you really think Congress intended for them to be a sovereign
nation over which state law would have no force?” asks one
legislative analyst who specializes in Indian law.
Scott Peterman says the Indian sovereignty problem will ultimately
have to be solved by Congress, a sentiment echoed by many other
observers across the nation. “They are the ones who created the
mess,” says Peterman.
He believes Congress should terminate tribal sovereignty definitively.
“The irony is, the tribes claim they need sovereignty to preserve
their culture, but they use it to build casinos. They talk about
‘mother earth,’ but they are more than willing to trade land for
slot machines. Many tribal governments are so corrupt they are a
bigger enemy to Indian culture than anybody. The Amish,
Quakers, and Mennonites preserve their culture better than any Indian
tribe, and they do it while paying taxes. Indians don't need
sovereignty -- or a whole federal bureau -- to maintain
their culture.”
For many years, the Supreme Court avoided the big questions and made
up Indian law by carving off issues piecemeal. In 1998, the Court
concluded that the doctrine of tribal sovereign immunity was outdated,
but it also concluded that Congress, not the courts, needed to fix it.
President Bush has at least moved to halt the march toward expanded
sovereignty. Several tribes pushed President Clinton to enact
more-liberal rules that would have made it even easier for tribes to
reservation shop. President Bush withdrew those relaxed rules. Tom
Grey, director of the National Coalition Against Gambling Expansion,
advised President Bush in a 2003 letter that “if pending approval of
more than 200 self-described ‘Indian Tribes’ is not denied, there
will be a veritable explosion of gambling emporiums throughout
America, threatening local economies, increasing addiction and
concomitant criminality, and disrupting social and political
stability.”
When it comes to sovereignty, everyone seems to agree that Congress
will eventually have to “mend it or end it.”
Congress has the power to shape and reshape the relevant laws as it
sees fit. The problem is a lack of will, due largely to ignorance or
fear of the fast-growing political clout of tiny gambling-enriched
tribes who have shown a great willingness to use their lucre for
political donations.
Currently, nearly all Indian legislation is controlled by pro-tribal
forces, particularly in the Senate.
Hawaiian Daniel Inouye, the ranking minority member of the Senate
Indian Affairs Committee, and Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado,
chairman of that committee, along with Daniel Akaka from Hawaii and
Arizona’s John McCain, have virtual veto power over any
Indian-related bill.
“I believe we are headed for a reconsideration of tribal
sovereignty,” states one public official who asked not to be
identified, “but it won't happen until Senators Inouye and Campbell
are no longer in office.”
And while many in Congress are having second thoughts about tribal
sovereignty, others continue to work to expand it, sometimes with the
enticement of ample campaign donations.
Senator Elizabeth Dole has a bill calling for recognition of the
Lumbee Nation of North Carolina, and fellow
Republican, Senator George Allen, is backing a measure to recognize
six new tribes in Virginia.
The Native Hawaiian Bill would grant tribal status to some 400,000
Hawaiians, creating the biggest tribe in the country and virtual
apartheid in the fiftieth state. “Tribal sovereignty is going to be
a hard thing to beat because the politicians are ignorant,” says
Scott Peterman.
“They think sovereignty is good for the Indians, but it isn't.
It’s good for the tribal governments, not for individual Indians.”
In 1993, Bill Clinton’s head of the BIA, Aida Deer, decreed that
every one of Alaska’s 231 native villages was a tribe, thereby
doubling the state’s tribes with the stroke of a pen.
Sovereignty advocates now want each village to be fully recognized as
a sovereign nation. “
That course of action cannot succeed,” Alaska
Senator Ted Stevens told the Alaska Federation of Natives at its
annual convention in 2003.
“If those villages are recognized as sovereign nations, the future
of Alaska as a state is in jeopardy: Alaska would ultimately encompass
a huge collection of independent tribal nations, unconnected by a
state government and unprotected by the federal system.”
Stevens, who championed Alaskan statehood back in the 1950s and became
a senator in 1968, added a rejoinder to opponents who called him a
bigot for defending that line of argument.
“There are reasonable differences of opinion. But to be called a
racist after more than 50 years of dedicated service to Alaskans,
particularly Alaskan natives, is something I will not forget. It is a
stain on my soul.”
Despite Arnold Schwarzenegger’s success in standing up to the Indian
tribes of California, most elected officials are afraid to address the
issue of sovereignty.
Like Social Security and illegal immigration, some view it as a
“third rail” issue -- touch it and you die.
Some Indians insist that sovereignty is the essence of being an
American Indian, so they respond to any questioning of sovereignty as
a personal attack on Indians.
Those who question sovereignty are frequently denounced as racist.
Former Washington senator Slade Gorton was actually a
defender of tribal sovereignty except when it trampled on non-Indian
rights, and for even that mild reservation, he was branded “The
Indian Fighter” and demagogued as racist, which contributed to his
narrow defeat in 2000 by Maria Cantwell.
Because of the volatility of the sovereignty issue, more than a dozen
senators and congressmen declined to be interviewed for this story.
Many of their aides, who did talk, asked not to be identified.
“Politicians are afraid to speak out and have their views seen in
print,” explains one activist, “because then tribes will spend big
money to get them unelected.”
Indeed, Indian tribes now spend more on elections than any
other interest group in America.
“Tribal gaming has created a terrific inequality between tribes, and
the people who have benefited are only a tiny percentage of American
Indians,” says one government official who asked not to be
identified.
“If you're a bogus six-member tribe with a fabulous location for a
casino, all six of you get tremendously wealthy. But if you're a
genuine, historic tribe in a remote location, like the Standing Rock
Sioux of North Dakota, you accrue little or no benefit.”
Indeed, almost half of the nation’s Indian population lives
in five states -- Montana, Nevada,
North Dakota, South Dakota, and Oklahoma
-- that account for only a small percentage of Indian gaming
revenues.
The same official is skeptical that any politician will have the guts
to stand up to the Indians until everyday Americans are up in arms.
He even bets that Governor Schwarzenegger will go belly-up on the
issue. “I've seen too many elected officials challenge the tribes,
then gradually work their way back to an accommodation. At the end of
the day, he'll be a blood brother.”
Not everyone is so cynical, or afraid. Representatives Frank Wolf
(R-VA) and Christopher Shays (R-CT) have long championed legislation
to halt the headlong expansion of Indian gambling.
Last February, they introduced a bill that would require all new
gambling casinos to be approved by state legislatures.Wolf admits that
the bill’s chances right now are not good.
“That’s because many of our leaders still don't know there is a
problem,” he says. “That probably won't change until there is a
great public outcry from communities around the country.... The media
also needs to pick this up. Indians are being exploited by gambling
interests.”
Another outspoken Congressman on the issue is Republican Ernest Istook
of Oklahoma. “We have certainly reached a point
where something needs to be done,” he says. “But that’s not the
same as the point where people recognize that need, or are prepared to
act on it.”
Istook has noticed a concerted effort by Indian interests to convince
the public that the issue is beyond the reach of the democratic
process. “There is often a misconception that nothing can be done.
That’s inaccurate. It is very clear that Congress has broad and
unfettered authority to deal with these issues, and could do so if it
were willing. Tribal sovereignty is subject to the
jurisdiction of the Congress -- which could change it, or even undo it
altogether.”
“The challenge is that sovereignty means different things to
different people. What we need to do is follow the
Constitutional standards of equal protection, for tribes and
non-tribes. You will not solve the problems of Indian tribes by giving
them a legal status different from everybody else. Secondly,
we need to allow tribes to have control of their own assets so they
have less temptation to resort to special treatment. Feelings of
mistreatment often lead them to take unfair advantage with regard to
sovereignty. And we need to create more economic opportunities that
are not dependent on special status and treatment.”
We are headed for more conflict, even disaster, says Istook, if we
don't soon address this basic violation of fundamental American
principles: In our recent dealings with Indians, Istook says, “we've
created a system where some people have more rights than others, and
that directly conflicts with American traditions and history. It not
only attacks the principle of equal rights, it attacks the root of
democratic governance. We need to use something stronger than guilt to
resolve these issues.”
Many experts believe it will take years before the inevitable day of
reckoning on sovereignty finally reaches the halls of Congress. But
the public mood is changing rapidly in certain places. Some observers
believe this subject could mature into a
bonafide political issue much sooner.
As executive director of United Property Owners and a national
spokesperson for One Nation, Barb Lindsay represents more than 300,000
property owners, scores of grassroots community groups, dozens of
local governments, and thousands of small businesses.
Part Indian herself, Lindsay has been lobbying in Washington for ten
years. She has emerged as one of the leading voices in the growing
national movement challenging tribal sovereignty.
“Five years ago, people didn't know anything about tribal
sovereignty,” Lindsay explains. “Indian gaming has really elevated
the issue in terms of public awareness, and with elected officials and
their staffs. A few years ago they were not very sympathetic to our
cause, because all they knew was tribal positions.
But with growing problems in states like Connecticut,
California, Wisconsin, New
York, Oregon, Washington,
and Oklahoma, more Congressmen are having problems in
their own districts.
They see tribes running roughshod over local citizens, ignoring
environment laws and land-use codes and water rights. Instead of the
Dances with Wolves Hollywood mythology they've been sold, they are now
facing the reality of dealing with a group of people who believe they
are somehow above the law.”
The true meaning of sovereignty, Lindsay says, is tax evasion.
“It is no coincidence that the states now facing the biggest budget
deficits are also the states with the largest number of tax-exempt
Indian casinos and tax-evading tribal businesses. It is widely
recognized that IGRA is being abused and Indian casino reservation
shopping is undermining local, county, and state tax bases and
changing community character and quality of life, while simultaneously
denying local citizens a voice in how the future of their community
will be shaped.”
Others concur that America’s tribes need to practice sovereignty in
a way that is responsibly congruent with the laws of their “host
nations” (state and local governments). If Indians choose the
endless warpath, some observers say, they will eventually lose the
war, and “sovereignty.”
This is difficult for some tribes to accept, because they have
achieved their current success and financial bonanzas through two
decades of aggressive court battles and relentless warfare with the
states. But that war is over and they have won. They now need a new,
cooperative strategy, or they may awaken resistance in their
neighbors.
Many groups have been mistreated in history -- blacks, Jews, Asians,
Poles, the Irish. “Should each of these groups be given a sovereign
land within the United States and allowed to govern as they choose,
free from taxes that must be paid by others, and free to engage in
activities denied to others?” asks Henry Lamb, chairman of
Sovereignty International.
“Americans are defined not by color, religion, or ethnicity, but by
a belief in, and dedication to, the principles of freedom, as defined
in our founding documents. As a nation, we seem to have forgotten this
fundamental principle.”
If Indians choose the
endless warpath, some observers say, they will eventually lose the
war, and “sovereignty.”
Copyright 2004 TheAmericanEnterprise.com
California reporter Jan Golab has written about Indian issues since
1983. His earlier in-depth exploration of Indian gambling appeared in
the January/February 2004 issue of The American Enterprise.
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