Wampum

Recently I visited the New York Public Library. I was meeting one of the several indigenous triblets claiming to own, or at least represent, Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, to see if my company, operating under a charter granted by the Canton of Geneva, in the Swiss Federation, could assist one, or several of these warring, grasping-at-foreigners-for-help tribelets, bring a credible bid to the City's Department of Informtation Technology and Telecommunications, to operate .nyc -- a top-level domain. I was facinated by the Library's Hudson exhibit.

So, before anything else, I recommend anyone who reads this, and who can, or who can cause others to do so, to spend an hour or so walking through the Library's Hudson exhibit. It is not a graded exercise, but it is as close to the real thing as one can get to for an equivalent expenditure of temporal and intellectual wampum. The English were not here first.

Before the English there was the Dutch. Before the English there was the French. Before the Dutch there was the Spanish. Before the Spanish there was the Basques. The layers of Europeans in the Americas, even Europeans in Dawn Land, is richer than a lasagna, closer to mille feuille.

We count at Verizano, who my wife's people mooned in 1524, after he worked his vessel up the Sound, because they already knew that European and their vessels were better kept offshore. We count again at 1616, when we all die, when the plague comes to Dawn Land. Before Hudson there are layers, of Spanish, of Basques. After Hudson there are layers, of French, of Swedish, and the English. Followed by the surviving loosers of the consolidation of power West of the Channel, the Scots the Irish, and surviving loosers of the end of the Wars of Religion, both West of the Channel, and East of it.

The history of the European experience in the Western North and Mid-Atlantic settlements, their interactions with the Late Woodlands Culture, the Algonquins, and later the Iroquoians, like the study of Europe itself before, and during the Contact Period, is too serious to be left to Europeans. It is also too serious to be left to Euro-Americans. The central narrative is not that the English came, and here we are, it is that many Europeans came, and of them, the English dominated the Eastern North Atlantic, and therefore the Western North Atlantic.

So there is our starting point. We moderns. We Indian moderns. The study of Europe, the study of Europeans, the study of the European Expansions, belongs to us, is as natural to us, as the study of the Pre-Columbian Americas, the study of Indians, the study of the Indigenous Contractions, which also belongs to us, and is not the monopoly of European and Euro-American academics and the Conquest Narrative they produce and reproduce and reproduce.

Having been invited to address a gathering "held by The Collegiate Church of New York, the oldest surviving institution of the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam, and the Lenape, [] who met the Dutch settlers arriving here in the wake of Henry Hudson’s discovery of Manhattan, to talk about the significance of this long-overdue reconciliation, the current state of Native American integration within the broader framework of American culture, and the need for continued discussion about the history and legacy of Native Americans", our starting point as Native Intellectuals, as Wampum's bloggers, is that we see beyond the grey water to the East, past the curve of the Georges to the Henrys, and west to the Mississippians. That is, we stand outside of the box constructed by Europeans and Euro-Americans in which they comfortably occupy the clear center. From our perspective, most Euro-Americans could also stand outside that box, and some do -- that is the basis of modern Democratic minority coalition politics in the US, in which Tribes participate.

We also stand in the present, a moment in which, in Canada, the Van der Peet trilogy, R. v. Van der Peet, R. v. N.T.C. Smokehouse Ltd. and R. v. Gladstone, defines Treaty Right as a static moment in the Ethnographic Contact. This has the amusing anomoly that Siksika (Treaty 9) are the mounted non-agricultural raiders of the plains -- on horses that are a trade good arising out of the actual culturally transforming contact two hundred years before journal keeping Europeans arrived at the western edge of the prarrie. That construction of Indian creates a kind of primate, a species, which has not developed culturally in two and three hundred years, as well as overlooking the experience of the Siksika as semi-settled agrarians, interacting in both Woodlands and Mississipian trade, as well as Range and Basin trade. Of course the point is to prevent the Plains Tribes out of the commercial cereals business, and Coastal Tribes from commercial fishing, the real purpose of CJ Lamar's curious construct.

In this present in which we stand, in this moment, in the United States, a State may use a historical document as old as the Massachusets Bay Colony Charter, as evidence to gain an island and its payroll tax base in Federal Court, and an Indian Tribe may not use a historical document half as old, of equal gravity and provenence, as evidence to recover land with facially unsettled aboriginal title, because "too much time has passed". The place of Heathens in Christian Courts, enslaved and barred absolutely by the Bull Romanus Pontifex of 1455 and again by the Bull Inter caetera of 1493, is the present condition. The reversal contained in the Bull Sublimus Dei of 1537, which ended enslavement as a practice protected by religion, allowed free Heathens access to Christian Courts of Law, has been lost since the Marshall Trilogy. Christian States may offer facts into evidence. Heathen Tribes may not offer facts into evidence. For this we thank Justices Rehnquist and Ginsberg, joined in common antipathy towards limitations on settler rights.

The customary production of an invitation such as this is an authentic, culturally appropriate, exercise of wisdom. As Indians who blog, for as long as there has been a blog ethos of writing, we propose to our readers only that they read, and not that they read standards usually consumed as authentic, culturally appropriate, exercises of wisdom, but that they read the simple, unnuanced texts that teach the English were here first, so that that fiction is read as fiction.

Back to the fantastic cliams of a couple of people armed with an incomplete 501(c)(3) application and little else, the "Connecting New York, Inc." pair of bridge partners, and a couple of people armed with speculator cash, the "Dot NYC" pair of bridge partners, it is slightly amusing that either could consider themselves capable of effectively serving, or effectively selling, the public resource of all internet identifiers ending in ".nyc", and all internet identifiers used by residential and business access network operators serving the Five Boroughs. From the deck of the "Halve Maen", whether flying a Dutch, or Swiss flag, both camps appear to be little more than a couple of Chiefs lacking Indians, unlikely to thrive in the demanding environment of ICANN regsitry and registrar competition.

They are offering us pretty glass beads and mirrors to entice us to give them what they lack -- a registry -- a system that took hundreds of thousands to build. My inclination is to sail on, the Pueblos of Los Angeles and San Franciso offer better terms, starting with reciprocity, the only real currency, whether measured in fathoms of wampum, or contracts.

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Some of us know there is a Wheeler-Howard Act issue at Hopi. Chris Clarke writes about the momentary Hopi Tribal Council vs Sierra Club thing here.

Yes, there is the Burns National Parks thing on PBS, and as a personal note, in 1969 the NPS burned down the cabins of the Ahwahnee still living on 10 acres of unsectioned land in Yosemite Valley, a half mile west of Yosemite Village, and told the Ahwahnee families to relocate outside of the National Park. That village was built during the NRA, and as a kid I played there under the eye of an Auntie when my mom was off walking. The NPS plan of record was that area from then on would be protected as an environmental restoration area.

Fundamentally, its about Crown Trees, and Dorothy van der Peet's $50 of fish (footnote to Crown Trees post).

Its about European pastoralism and the rediscovery of using fire to manage common land, for deer and agriculture.

Those with copies of Emily Benedek's The Wind Won't Know Me: A History of the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute are encouraged to open the hymn book to where the book breaks first.

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One of the oddities of Federal Indian Law is whether the US Bankruptcy Code applies to Tribes and their economic creations. The Mashentucket Pequots came within hours of needing to know today, as they apparently just made a bond payment.

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The Buffalo New has State drops collection of taxes on Indian cigarettes: Writes off revenue from reservation sales. Buried midway in the copy, after the enraged reaction quotes is this gem:

During an interview on an unrelated topic, Robert Megna, the governor's budget director, revealed to The Buffalo News that the state is backing away from the projection of $65 million from the potential revenue source.

We learn from Russell Sciandra, who directs the "Center for a Tobacco Free New York" that:

It's embarrassing, and it's outrageous that the Empire State can't seem to figure out how to collect this tax when just about every other state does.

But what is the real situation? The State vs Seneca Nation contest is neither new, nor likely to be settled in the State's favor, at least not by April 1st, when the budget year begins. So the State removed $65 million in revenue it shouldn't have "anticipated" in the first place, any more than it should have anticipated the sale of Ellis Island, a 53 acre parcel worth approximately $2,300 per square foot. This was, as Matt Anderson clarified, the figure deleted from the budget "to prudently address potential risks to our receipts forecast."

Apparently Robert Megna, the governor's budget director, thought it prudent to clarify to Mr. Precious that imagined revenue might not materialize within a statutory budget period. However, Mr. Precious ran with the story -- outraged quotes, no balanced comment from any FIL practitioner, and a heap of hot, Injun-Hatin' comments.

Journamalism.

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For Immediate Release: (Revised) Lead Plaintiff Comments on Court Ruling

WASHINGTON, July 24 -- Today’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in the Indian Trust case makes clear that the government’s duty to account continues and that the government “cannot simply throw up its hands and stop the accounting,” Lead Plaintiff Ms. Elouise Cobell said.

She expressed appreciation for the court not freeing the government from its burden to render an accounting.

For hundreds of thousands of Indians, including children, the elderly, and the infirm who depend upon their trust funds for food, clothing, shelter, and health care, this ruling means that many more years will pass before they can hope to secure trust funds that the government has withheld unconscionably and in breach of trust duties that it has owed for generations.

The appellate court reversed the trial court’s $455.6 million award in restitution, stating that the district court may not relieve the government of an accounting duty as a matter of law.

Despite the fact that today’s decision may prolong the ultimate resolution of the case, Ms. Cobell affirmed the commitment of the plaintiffs to pursue the case: “We will continue to seek justice, no matter how long that takes. Tens of thousands of beneficiaries have died while this case has been pending without ever receiving an accounting of their trust assets.”

Accordingly, unless there is a fair settlement, plaintiffs will seek further review and request the appointment of a receiver to ensure that individual Indian trust beneficiaries finally receive the protection they are owed under the law.

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On the hour I turned off the horrible Pimsler German III cds and tuned to Radio Canada. The balloting for the successor to Phil Fontaine as national chief of the Assembly of First Nations has been exciting. It went to eight rounds before Shawn Atleo got to the 60% threshold.

I was glad the culture candidate prevailed over the economic candidate, and I've a fondness for UBC Chiefs.

I spent the road hours suffering with the horrible Pimsler German III cds (gads, "lesson 6" was a duplicate of "lesson 5", and how many times does anyone wnat to hear "i learned X using the [horrible] Pimsler course" and how realistic is it that some Anglophone attending to the inane utterances of said horrible Pimsler cds would be deep in invited for dinner chats with random Germans? Language learning via ultra soft porn seems vastly less realistic than more banal "how do I sound kwel to a Germanophone of the opposite (or same) persuasion?"

I'll be spending part of next week in Germany, so I submitted myself to whatever the Ithaca public library had on hand.

While I was in Quebec I dropped in on the Abenaki museum in Odanak. Kezzie will be 7 tomorrow, and she needs something cultural.

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From We just got $2 billion for economic development – let’s use it, By Tex G. Hall and Chris Stearns

As the debate over the impact of President Obama’s economic stimulus bill rages in Washington, we want to call attention to an unprecedented source of $2 billion in funding for tribal economic development projects. The stimulus bill authorizes American Indian and Alaska Native tribes to issue tax-exempt Tribal Economic Development bonds in an aggregate amount of $2 billion over the next two years.

There is a catch – the Treasury Department only recently issued guidelines for the tribal bonds and then set an application deadline of Aug. 15 – that’s less than five weeks away – for tribes to submit applications for the first $1 billion in available bond authority.

The upside is that the new tribal bonds are not subject to the old restrictive rules that governed past tribal bond issues. A tribe may apply for up to $30 million in bond authority that it can then use to finance the construction of hotels, tourism centers, energy projects, golf courses, housing projects, and sports and entertainment venues. Tribes can also use the new bonds to “refund” or refinance previously issued bonds. What the new bonds do is finally offer tribes a chance to take advantage of tax exempt bonds the same way that states and local governments have been doing for decades.

The Treasury Department will simply allocate the bond authority among all the tribes who submit applications. In other words, the door is wide open, but tribes will need to work quickly with their financial and legal advisors to:

• pick projects;
  
• set up financing plans;
  
• work with rating agencies, underwriters, bond buyers, and bond counsel;
  
• complete the Treasury Department’s application.
  

The second round of funding starts Aug. 16, and ends Jan. 1, 2010, a period of just four-and-a-half months. The Treasury Department said it may stick to the $30 million per tribe limit for the second round, but reserves the right to raise, lower, or do away with the limit.

The good news for Indian country is that tribes can enter into joint projects with other tribes by combining their own bond allocations with the allocations of other tribes. In other words, if three tribes went in on a joint tribal project and each tribe received $30 million in bond authority, together they could raise $90 million through a bond issue. There are some tighter restrictions on the kinds of projects that can be financed under this scenario.

The new rules also allow a tribe that receives an allocation to use an agent – another tribe, for instance – to issue bonds on its behalf and then loan the money back to the tribe that initially received the allocation. So-called bond pool financing allows smaller tribes or tribes with lower borrowing requirements to reduce their underwriting costs and benefit from greater bond ratings which translate into lower interest rates.

These last two options are very important because of the historical and institutional hurdles that smaller or poorer tribes face when it comes to issuing bonds. But it is those tribes who need the money the most.

Of course, every silver lining has its cloud, and the major drawback to this program is the lack of federal enhancements – that is a source of federal financial backing that would help a tribe guarantee that it could meet its interest payments. We think the Treasury Department and the Interior Department should work with Indian country to utilize loan guarantee programs – across the administration – to offer support to tribal bond issues in order to make those bonds attractive to market investors.

The bottom line is that tribes should seize the financing opportunities available to them through Tribal Economic Development bonds. If they do, they will be in a far better position to control and direct their own economic fortunes and create jobs than they would be if they stand back and rely on the formula funding, BIA spending, or state discretionary spending contained in the rest of the economic stimulus bill.

Tex G. Hall is the chairman of the Inter-Tribal Economic Alliance, past-president of the National Congress of American Indians, and past-chairman of the Mandan, Hidatsa & Arikara Nation. Chris Stearns is of counsel to Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker LLP, a national firm specializing in Indian law and tribal finance law.

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This appeared in today's Denver Post. I think it is a useful piece of writing. I'm more tolerant about Ward's efforts than his AIM inter-factional critics, if only because it is possible, in theory at least, for a German or an Englishman, who has never left Berlin or London, to write critically about the European colonial project in the Americas, and Ward is colorably more Indian than a never-took-the-boat citizen of Berlin or London. ebw.

The jury got it exactly right. In fact, the jury, six men and women, tried and true — clearly understood what the leaders of our state's flagship university could never quite grasp.

The jurors figured out that this case was not really about Ward Churchill. The case was, from the very beginning, about the University of Colorado and its unwillingness to do the right thing, meaning the hard thing, when it mattered most.

The case was about what happens when the mob wins, when a grandstanding governor trumps academic freedom, when talk-radio noise gets mistaken for the sound of truth, when university leaders cower in fear.

The jurors sat for weeks in Denver District Courtroom 6, and, after hearing all the testimony, they got it. Yes, they got it exactly right.

They didn't care about Churchill. They gave him a dollar. Churchill pulled out a dollar bill and waved it around the courtroom because he didn't care about the money either. For Churchill — and for CU — what will matter is when he walks back into a classroom (once the judge presumably rules that Churchill gets his job back), followed by TV cameras that will record yet another public CU humiliation.

After the trial, Churchill's lawyer, David Lane — who may get hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney's fees from CU — said that CU's leaders had hidden under their desks while the mob howled outside the campus gates.

The jury agreed. The jury didn't, however, buy Lane's concept that Churchill was a martyr. That may have been why Lane never made a real case about money to the jury. He didn't want to confuse things. The remedy here wasn't to make Chur chill rich; it was to make CU pay, but in more essential ways.

And so we went back to 2005, when Churchill hysteria was in full bloom, when we were arguing not only whether the essay was protected speech but whether Churchill's speech was inciting violence wherever he went. Nobody at CU had seemed to notice these violence-inciting tendencies before the world of talk radio took them up, but, by then, every word Churchill had said or written needed investigating.

And it was only coincidence — this was essentially CU's case — that eventually entirely unrelated charges would be brought against Churchill.

Give the jurors credit. They saw through it all. There's the great line about juries, that we are tried by people not smart enough to get out of jury duty. But this jury had to pass several difficult tests.

The jurors had to fight through all the minutiae. They had to fight through some brain-numbing testimony. They had to stifle yawns, and laughter, when the CU regents — who represent a great testament to our democracy — mostly testified that, whatever they might have said at some earlier point, they really cared only about protecting the sanctity of academia from the likes of Ward Churchill.

For those who now blame CU attorney Pat O'Rourke for not being tough enough on Churchill, I wish they had seen what he had to work with. For example, he had a regent, Tillie Bishop, who, remarkably, testified that he didn't know what the "Little Eichmanns" essay had to say about 9/11 victims.

Lane asked if Bishop meant that, for all he knew, Churchill had compared the victims to Boy Scouts. Bishop's answer: "Yes."

Case closed. Game over. OK, I guess former CU president Betsy Hoffman's testimony that Bill Owens had threatened to cut off state funds from the university if she didn't fire Churchill immediately was even more damning, but it wasn't nearly as entertaining.

And when the jurors heard the case against Churchill, they must have been surprised by how underwhelming — and less than entertaining — it all seemed. Let's agree, Churchill broke rules, stretched the truth, was a fabricator and at least a minor-league plagiarist.

But I'm guessing the jurors — who didn't speak to the media after the verdict — had to wonder whether all those years spent chasing Churchill weren't just a little disproportionate. Was this, as Lane said during the trial, all you got?

I kept waiting for CU to come up with a list of tenured professors who had been fired for similar misdeeds. Maybe no one ever committed Chur chill-like misdeeds. Or maybe CU just doesn't often (or ever) fire professors for academic misconduct.

I kept waiting to hear why CU never seemed to care about Churchill's transgressions before his essay on Sept. 11. There had been longstanding complaints about Churchill's research, but no one had ever acted on them. CU officials say they had never heard them, which, of course, would be damning enough.

And so you had a trial in which CU had to make the case that, say, an unsupported Churchill footnote — alleging that John Smith had tried to kill off Indians with smallpox — was the reason it fired him.

Churchill wrote his controversial essay the day after 9/11. Nobody seemed to notice it for three years. And when the public did notice, the outcry was only, in part, about comparing some victims to Adolf Eichmann — and what Churchill meant by that. The essay also came at a time when the "liberal" professoriate was a hot issue. Although Churchill, a radical, scoffs at mere liberals, he was a ready symbol in what would be one more battle of the recent culture wars.

If you want to take anything from the verdict, something worth more than a buck, anyway, it's that six jurors decided this: However hard academic freedom is, if you want to be a real flagship university, you can't hide from it — under a desk or anywhere else.

Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.

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I was asked to be on a conference call on progressive strategies for implementing the recovery plan at the state level. Kate Gordon gave a tour of provisions in the recovery plan pertaining to clean energy and green jobs, a lot of which was weatherizing retrofit monies but some was for grid, and transmission lines affect a lot of western tribes, as MB's written about on (see "Section 1813"). But most of what the Progressive States organized call was about was ... states. There was some interesting policy, and some interesting politics -- discussion of the not-so-bi-partisan themes of transparencies (note the plural), and how skewed "measurement" is (shades of education policy and NCLB hoop dances), but the best thinking point was What you want, you need to measure. The alternative restatement is What you don't measure, you can't defend. This applies to programs competing for stimulus monies, how many (sustainable, quality) jobs are created by each contractor, sub-contractor, ... to show that money here works better than, provides more economic stimulous, than money there.

When I was asked for questions I was ready. I brought up the absence of the indian governmental element in "a progressive strategies for implementing the recovery plan at the state level". This isn't something that's an automatic toxic no-no because Indians are a Federal Problem (tm), nor is it unnecessary because Indians have Casinos and Pay (or Should Pay) into States Treasuries (tm), our governments exist side-by-side and, absent economic Jim Crow, should stop sinking and start swimming, even acquire some economic buoyancy, together.

Tribal governments don't have "transparency" process or any means to show money spent by tribes results measures competitive with states claims to be better stewards of the same monies, (as well as the underlying resources, rocks, sticks, fish and people) which isn't fatal as states don't have much there either, but as the biggest bang for the buck is food stamps and lower income bracket "disposable income", by whatever means, and since tribes do have poor, by percentage, more than the states, some of the federal economic plan's general delivery of stimulus monies should go to tribal governments and tribal members.

Also on the PSN call: Phineas Baxandall, Federal Tax and Budget Policy Analyst, U.S. PIRG, Maurice Emsellem, Policy Co-Director, National Employment Law Project, Kate Gordon, Co-Director, The Apollo Alliance, Nick Johnson, Director of the State Fiscal Project, Center for Budget & Policy Priorities, Joel Packer, Director of Education Policy and Practice, National Education Association, Jenny Sullivan, Senior Health Policy Analyst, Families USA, and Nathan Newman, Interim Executive Director, Progressive States Network (who used to be a blogger).

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Today (in 1942) is the birthday of Karl May, the creator or Winnetou, Old Shatterhand, and via the flickering image, the "Spaghetti Western" genre.

Karl never got futher west than the eastern end of Lake Erie, and eastern indians didn't interest him. But who needs facts when fiction is so close at hand?

Today, well, actually yesterday, but I was up to my elbows in bits and expired signatures and every test case for brokenness and wrongness I or anyone could stumble across, and just briefly, when it was asserted that the policy, in particular, the signing of the .gov zone, applied recursively to all .gov sub zones, federal, state, and "native soverign nation", asserted by the GSA, that my ears perked up and I thought "no, GSA doesn't make policy for the Peers of the United States, the Parties to Treaties ... but the moment passed and a mismatch of Zone Signing Key and the zone signature cause me to realize that the key hash was undervalued as the real unique identifier of correctness ... and that that was what was really important.

Anyway, yesterday the USSC decided Carcieri v. Salazar, which in a nutshell comes down to the founders' intent analysis of ... "now"

I can't imagine (without giggling) legal challenges to any bill acted on by the federal legislature on February 24th, 2009, which contain the word "now". Who knows, a bill containing those three magic letters, in that order, may mean that the Congress was knowing precluding, for all time, all future Congresses, from any act concerning the same parties, or that the same Congress, was vacating all pending claims upon the United States, which had not matured before the fatal "now" was legislatively uttered. Or, to be creative, both. All VA claims not processed by "now" are junk, and no future Congress may ever offer (in fact, legislative fiction is a perpetual joy), after "now" any "Veteran's Benefits" to any sliced and diced signed-at-18 who takes a through-and-through or otherwise absorbs some opfor kinetic effect.

But that is what Carcieri v. Salazar is. All those treaties for the California, Oregon and Washington tribes, entered into by the Executive Branch, that a pissy House leadership decided (on an appropriations bill) would never reach the Senate for a ratification vote (Appropriation Act of March 3, 1871, Ch. 120 sec. 1, 16 Stat. 544, 566 (codified at 25 U.S.C. sec. 71), all those tribes terminated by the Oklahoma Statehood (Curtis Act of 1908), and not restored prior to 1934, starting with the Narragansett who were not recognized until the late 20th century, like most east-of-the-Appalachian tribes, just became "peculiar fruit" in the Neue Süddeutsche Bundes-Indischen Recht.

I thought Justice Ginzberg's deciding that Indians and Whites have distinct access to facts was a gem competitive with Wild Bill Rehnquist's finest (City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York), and I expect that Justice Breyer's joining the Rehnquist-Roberts majority means we've lost another member of the court to Wild Bill's theory of Injun Justice.

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The rules of the Maine House of Representatives (for which my co-author and partner-in-life ran in 2004) were just revised, and in particular, a sentence was added to Rule 525

Rule 525. Penobscot Nation and Passamaquoddy Tribe. The member of the Penobscot Nation and the member of the Passamaquoddy Tribe elected to represent their people at the biennial session of the Legislature must be granted seats on the floor of the House of Representatives; be granted, by consent of the Speaker, the privilege of speaking on pending legislation; must be appointed to sit with joint standing committees as nonvoting members during the committees' deliberations; and be granted such other rights and privileges as may from time to time be voted by the House of Representatives. In reports from committees on which a tribal member serves, the position of the member must be noted and included. The names of the member of the Penobscot Nation and the member of the Passamaquoddy Tribe elected to represent their people at the biennial session of the Legislature must be included on the roll call board for purposes of electronically recording their attendance only.

This only affects the parties to the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act of 1980, the Passamaquoddy Tribe (Pleasent Point and Indian Island) and the Penobscot Nation, not the parties to the Supplementary Claims Settlement Act of 1986, the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, or the Aroostook Band of Micmacs Settlement Act of 1991, or Maine's Abenakis, and it is symbolic, as neither Donald Soctomah (PT) nor Wayne Mitchell (PN) can vote outside of committee or chair any committee of the Maine House or ...

But it is something, and for those of you who know that federal recognition is not a static, unchanging thing, and that some tribes want the assets of others, that increases the latent heat on the Houlton and Aroostook and Western Abenaki of Maine Bands to resist political colonization by the Penobscots, and to a lesser degree, by the Passamaquoddies.

The longer piece I wrote for the Maine People Alliance on Maine Indians and the Maine Legislature is here.

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We, Indians and Progressives, have a puzzle we can either solve, and possibly find better outcomes for all of our societies in concert, or pass on, and possibly find better outcomes for our societies for all, or perhaps only some of our societies, or perhaps find nothing at all.

We have HR 1328 "Indian Health Care Improvement Act" (or the "Amend the Indian Health Care Improvement Act to revise and extend that Act"), see the CRS Summary for the details of the bill. And we have HR 676 the the “United States National Health Insurance Act" (or the "Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act”), see the CRS Summary for the details of the bill.

I'm getting mail, political and policy, on each, and there has to be a way to make both stronger, and deliver Medicare to all via IHS and via non-IHS, and cover on-rez and off-rez human needs.

More when I think of it.

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There exists an organization which is has been granted the status of a "registered student organization" by the University of Illinois. The purpose of the organizers is to promote an imaginary character, a skit, a dance routine, executed by a single actor in costume with some props.

We tend to see this kind of thing one way, and Robert Warrior rose to the occasion at Illinois [ 1, 2 ].

But another way occurred to me, I suppose because of the number of times I've seen this series of films. The kids like them, heck, I like them.

Restated, why do some students prefer to see the lounge act rather than the game show? Do the athletes who perform cheer routines want to give their time to the non-athlete and his routine? Is this just "anti-Indian" (and of course it is anti-Indian) or is it also anti-performance? Anti-excellence? Anti-athleticism? Is it fake dance against real dance?

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First degree murder charges brought in a federal court against John Graham for the execution of Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash were dismissed on Friday. The reason for the dismissal was simple. While Mr. Graham is a member of the Southern Tutchone First Nation, and Ms. Pictou-Aquash was a member of the Indian Brook First Nation, neither belonged to an Indian Tribe recognized by the United States, therefore, while the crime originated on the Pine Ridge, jurisdiction lies with the State of South Dakota.

No "full faith and credit". To make a colorable claim to federal jurisdiction for the killing of an indian by another indian from a nexus in indian country, in the universe created by Bill Rehnquist, the US Attorney has had to file a new complaint, arguing that both Graham and Pictou-Aquash were affiliated with the Olgala Lakota Sioux tribe as AIM members, and as an alternate jurisdictional theory, that Pictou-Aquash had married an enrolled Lakota member in a traditional ceremony, and therefore became "an Indian". If the US can't claim that either Mr. Graham or Ms. Pictou-Aqquash are "Indians", then the US, Bill Rehnquist's US, can't prosecute the murder.

While comedic, the import is that protection from political violence targeting Indians is conditional, and that political violence against Indians who are members of tribes terminated by the United States, or not currently recognized by the United States, will not be provided by the United States. Crimes against Indians other than members of Federally Recognized Indian Tribes are left to the states.

In effect, the bounty period for members of "extinct" tribes lives on, with Federal protections, such as they are, waived for Indians not members of currently recognized tribes.

Note well Indians north and south of the US, and east of Alaska. Cross the line and your "Indian" is "killed", while your "man" or "woman" is "saved".

Bill didn't just invent rape tourism, he invented semi-permiable mental membranes that let "Mexicans" and "Canadians" cross the border, but kills "Indians" on contact. From the crypt he's managed to nullify the Jay Treaty.

Posted by EBW at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kitzen Branting, a citizen of the Coquille Tribe, requested the government recognize her pending marriage to Jeni Branting, a non-citizen. The government agreed, and while Jeni Branting isn’t a citizen now, and therefore doesn’t have access to the health care programs and other opportunities afforded to citizens, when married she will be a Coquille citizen.

There's a very nice write up at Oregon Live.

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Richard Matson of SnagFilms wrote us yesterday to offer us this. I watched half of it before Jonah repurposed my laptop back to its highest and best use -- watching and re-watching Arthur on YouTube and paging through the (now around 700) photos he's taken of his surroundings. The vision of the Autistic Indian Boy as an Artist. Richard's film is good and I'm looking forward to more. Its boarding schools and Lakotas.

Hello,

I'm getting in touch because of your excellent writings on American Indian issues. I work for a company called SnagFilms that allows audiences to download award-winning documentaries for free, help support filmmakers and donate to topical charities. With a couple of clicks and only a few of your pixels, the SnagFilms widget turns any website into a free online theater, with real films, not a bunch of trailers. Our documentary library already has hundreds of titles like SOMETHING'S MOVING, about survivors of a U.S. boarding school for the Lakota who are breaking the chain of trauma in order to heal their spirits, their community and the country. We would like to share this movie with you and your audience!

By showcasing this growing library of films, you will support an independent filmmaker and vital causes, while also increasing the time spent on your site/blog by your readers, and adding another reason for new readers to visit.

The SnagFilms movie player does not require a desktop download, but instead efficiently streams the films. All expenses, including streaming costs, are covered by SnagFilms and there is no additional load on your servers. You need only provide the pixels and we take care of the rest.

We have some pretty audacious goals – we believe we can preserve and strengthen independent filmmaking; we think we can use the democracy of the web to build stronger communities; and we know we can enrich a great number of websites with what is normally the most costly content: professional, compelling films.

I hope you'll consider adding SOMETHING'S MOVING to your site. To add the widget, click on the Snag button under Snag This Film. Feel free to email me with any questions.

Best regards,
Richard

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In the flood of 1877 the Missouri River changed course and cut an oxbow. In the early 19th century American jurisdiction followed water, but when the states jurisdictional dispute reached the Fuller Court in 1893 the river of law had cut off that oxbow too.

In January this year the Attorney General for the state of Nebraska, Jon Bruning, filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, challenging the decision of the National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC) that the Ponca Tribe's 4.8 acres of trust lands within the oxbow qualify for Indian Gaming.

The basis for Jon Bruning's challenge to the NIGC's ruling is transit through Nebraska. In effect, he's arguing for overturning the 1893 decision.

The Ponca Tribe was terminated in 1966, and restored to federal recognition by the Ponca Restoration Act, 25 U.S.C § 983 -- 983h. In 1999 the Tribe acquired 4.8 acres of land within the oxbow and in 2000 applied to Interior to have the land taken into trust.

The NIGC order of December 31, 2007 is here (18pp .pdf).

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Bill McAllister, who's the spokesperson for the Cobell Litigation Team just sent us this:

A number of news accounts – particularly The Associated Press - are incorrectly saying that the plaintiffs have rejected a $7 billion offer from the government to settle the Indian Trust lawsuit. That simply isn't true.

Here are the facts:

The government has never offered to settle the Cobell vs. Kempthorne lawsuit at any price. Every proposal made by plaintiffs and by mediators to settle the case has been rejected by the government.

The Bush administration in March 2007 suggested it was willing to spend $7 billion over 10 years to resolve a wide range of major Indian issues, including land fractional land claims, the Cobell suit, all individual land mismanagement claims, the 100 plus trust lawsuits filed by tribes and pay for all of trust reform as well.

Oh yes, and it also included provisions to deny Indians any right to bring any future lawsuits for future mismanagement no matter how egregious. That final provision was essentially a license to steal. This proposal was universally condemned by everyone not associated with the government, including a wide range of Native leaders.

It never went beyond conceptual testimony to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. And it contained no specific amount to settle the Cobell litigation.

In testimony before the committee Ms. Cobell said the figure was insufficient to settle her case alone. "This is not an offer -- instead, it is a slap in the face for every individual [with] trust fund litigation," she said. She did note that a mediator had suggested recoveries could run between $7 billion to $9 billion in the case. She said she "would want to talk about that more." Hardly a rejection.

But the Bush administration never followed up on her overture. In fact, federal officials have never made any offer to the Cobell legal team to settle the class action lawsuit for any specific amount.

In 2006, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee did introduce legislation to settle the lawsuit without a specific dollar amount. The Committee later amended that bill to include an $8 billion figure but the bill never moved out of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee because of objections raised by the government.

Lawyers for the Justice Department and the Interior Department have made clear throughout the Cobell litigation that the government's firm position is that the Individual Indian Money (IIM) Trust is not a real trust and that Indians are owed nothing no matter how much money and other assets are missing or have been looted from the Trust.

The position of the Cobell plaintiffs has long been that we will consider reasonable offers from the United States to resolve this case. Unfortunately, none has been put forth.

Bill McAllister
Cobell Litigation Team Spokesman

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Professor N. Bruce Duthu's NYT OpEd is entitled "Broken Justice in Indian Country". It is interesting that the NYT published a piece on the Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 435 U.S. 191 (1978) line of cases, without mentioning them by name -- Duro v. Reina, 495 U.S. 676 (1990) and United States v. Lara, 541 U.S. 193 (2004). I look forward to seeing a similar piece on Cobell v Kempthorne, but sooner then 30 years from now. This week would be good. Timely. Newsworthy. Etc.

It must be difficult writing for the NYT. To write for the journal of record, the daily work of the gente de razón, publisher of the writings of Judy Miller and a host of others, and read by their unsurprised readers.

Professor Duthu focus is on rape, and that's fine, assuming the problem is simply, as he frames it, a policy and funding want that any sensible person can see and prescribe sensible solutions for.

But Rehnquist discarded functioning courts and prior law, the specifics, to write a general, and cut out the Indians aren't Christian bits of Ex parte KAN-GI-SHUN-CA (Crow Dog), while promoting that finding from 1883 to 1978. There is a lot more to just Rehnquist's Oliphant than promoting rape tourism. And why stop there? Marshall's trilogy, where "domestic dependent nation" comes from, discarded three centuries of land title history to smooth the way for Federal Period expansion. These both pass for mainstream legal doctrine in US legal culture.

Professor Duthu doesn't ask a question that should keep Americans up at night. How is it in the interests of the United States for the Attorney General to argue against the maturation of the civil and criminal justice systems of any jurisdiction? Why did the states of South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, and Wyoming file briefs of amici curiae for reversal of the 9th Cirucit ruling, and inevitably for rape tourism?

Howard Dean had an answer. No jurisdictions in Vermont but Vermont. Unlike some states, there is little Federal military presence in Vermont. No Fort Sumter to bombard into submission. No Abenaki jurisdiction ment no standing to challenge Vermont's historic and not so historic indefensible acts. Even in Howard's time as state executive, Abenakis were statistically distinct from all other socially, culturally, and politically identified individuals in Vermont, having significantly greater representation in state criminal custody. No Abenaki jurisdiction also ment no Indian Gaming to co-exist with the state lottery.

Posted by EBW at 05:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Civil Action No. 1996-1285, COBELL, et al v. KEMPTHORNE, et al, Doc No. 3573 (memorandum) by Judge James Robertson was published today. He went for the government's number.

The text is here. 72 pages of pdf.

Elouise Cobell had this to say: "I have asked our lawyers to carefully review this opinion as we consider whether to appeal the ruling.

I know I speak for everyone in Indian Country when I say that it is difficult to reconcile the Court's ruling with beneficiaries' experiences with the Individual Indian Money (IIM) trust. I am disappointed, to say the least.

We believe we presented a strong, compelling case that individual Indian trust beneficiaries are entitled to much more than the government's admitted mismanagement of our trust monies over the past 120 years."

That works out to about a 25.9cu refrigerator (at Sears) per Indian, after 100 plus years of theft and 11 years of first class litigation.

Posted by EBW at 05:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There's a nice op-ed by Anne T. Denogean in the Tucson Citizen on Indian voting rights. I like the fact she gets the dates right on Maine Indians, yes, 1952 federal, and 1967 state.

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Luke Cole and Brent Newell from the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, and Heather Kendall Miller from the NARF are the attorneys for the Native Village of Kivalina. The complaint was filed in February and I only just found it via Indianz. 72pp of .pdf for our FIL and GW reading list.

Google Earth brings up a nice photo of Kivalina. Its the kind of village my grandmother taught at 70 years ago.

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Many of Bill Ried's works were stolen over the weekend from the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. The gold box features a three-dimensional sculpture of an eagle on the top, with the head of a bear on the front.

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Good morning [or afternoon or evening]. Thank you for coming. I hope you want to hear my views on some central issues of Federal Indian Law and the policies of the United States towards Indian Nations, because that is what I'm going to use the next few minutes for. Then I'll take questions from the elected members of government present, some I'll have heard before and have answers for, some I will be hearing for the first time.

President Dwight Eisenhower erred when he accepted the arguments of a small group of members of Congress and approved a new federal Indian policy designed to free the federal government from its unique guardianship role over Indian tribes and to bring about the dissolution of tribes. Formalized in House Concurrent Resolution 108 and Public Law 83-280, the immediate effect of the legislation was to mandate that five states assume civil and criminal jurisdiction over all "Indian country" within their boundaries. Other states were extended the option of assuming such jurisdiction.

The New York Times observed that the legislation was "whipped through Congress so rapidly that practically no one interested in Indian affairs -- least of all the Indians themselves -- knew what was happening until it had already happened". Of course, that was a different New York Times than what exists today. John Collier, the commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1945 under President Franklin Roosevelt, rebuked Congress and the White House and predicted that P.L. 280 would result in "a dragon's nest of legal and administrative confusion. We don't hear that kind of thoughtful criticism from recent Assistant Secretaries and Secretaries of the Interior.

Bill Rehnquist erred when he exploited the age and enfeeblement of Warren Burger and Thurgood Marshall to strip all Indian governments of the right to hold Indians and non-Indians accountable for their criminal acts, and whether he intended it or not, he created Rape Tourism for Indian Country.

The Congress and the current administration perpetuate these errors and more by failing to fund the police, courts and human services of Indian Governments.

Almost two centuries ago John Marshall erred when he ignored centuries of treaties between the Eastern Indians and the United States and created the infamous "domestic dependent nation" fiction. The truth is that we are a continent of inter-dependent domestic nations, and when I am president of the largest of these nations, I will nominate to its Courts women and men who respect the Treaties of the United States, and I do have a position on the federal government's responsibility in the Cobell vs. Kempthorne lawsuit. A remedy must be found for the Department of the Interior's unrepaired, and irreparable, breach of its fiduciary duty over the last century.

One last item before questions from the elected representatives of governments present. I'm the junior Senator from the State of New York. I don't get adopted, I adopt. Thank you, and now your questions.

I don't know, but in the last cycle when I wrote Wes Clark's FIL material, and we got him endorsed by the Vermont Abenaki Band, Clark took the wind out of Howard Dean's sails in the Indian press and the states where the Indian vote is more signal than noise.

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Despite their colorful traditional clothes, Indians of the Seminole tribe did not come from their reserves to Paris to Florida folklore. These are matters which led, Thursday, May 22, at the Hard Rock Cafe in the capital, one of many restaurants owned by the group Hard Rock International that they have acquired in March 2007. One way for these "native Americans" to formalize the purchase and announce their strategy for the future.

Located in forty-eight countries, Hard Rock International group includes hotels, casinos, restaurants and concert halls. With an earnings growth of 15% per annum, these Indians run a business incredibly lucrative. The cultivation of tobacco in the management of hotels and casinos, there is only one step that the Seminole have crossed successfully. Partnerships and other funds have more secrets to them.

The reason for this appetite is explained simply: the Seminole Government does not levy taxes from its citizens. "The word" tax "has not translated into our language," comments humorously Max Osceola, representative of the Board the tribe. The luxury hotels, casinos and restaurants to allow these capitalists of a new kind of developing their nation. Schools, hospitals or police posts are born of profits made in the world. The benefits they redistribute also for humanitarian operations, and safeguarding the environment.

Came in the gaming industry in 1979, the Seminole do not provide an immediate return to farming. They are hoping instead on a major expansion of their business in the coming years. Their trip Parisian omen of course they want new impetus given to their hotel operations in Europe. Mr. Osceola listing of projects for London, Paris and Madrid.

Original text is here.

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On Monday this week Senator Obama traveled from Billings, where he did a morning event for teens at the West High gym, to Crow Agency where he delivered an 11 minute speech at the Apsaalooke Nation Veterans Park. A 53 mile road-trip that got him ... favorable copy in over 100 media outlets and more copy in the Obama-aligned blogs, which as far as I have noticed, never cover Indian issues, ever. Good ROI for the campaign, and a way-point on the road to Bozeman and the evening event at the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse on the MSU campus. The out-of-state coverage of the hours at Billings and Bozeman events is less than the out-of-state coverage of the 11 minutes at Crow Agency.

Next week former President Bill Clinton is scheduled on Sunday at Crow Creek, Rosebud and Yankton, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is scheduled on Wednesday at Pine Ridge, in South Dakota.

Montana currently receives approximately 54 percent of its electricity from coal-fired power plants, and plans are in place to build more, and if you click on the photo you can learn more from folks who are not amused by King Coal.

Present were representatives from Fort Peck, Rocky Boy, Blackfeet, Fort Belknap, and Three Affiliated Tribes.

Writing for RezNetNews, Mary Hudetz waxes lyrical in Crows Thrilled to Be Obama's 'Brothers and Sisters', and manages not to ask a single Federal Indian Law policy question, such as why Senator Obama doesn't have an opinion on the merits of the Cobell case, or on whether the United States has a fiduciary trust relationship with Individual Indian Trust Accounts and the Indian people, lots of whom live in Montana, who depend on those Trust Accounts.

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The likelihood that women won't pay down Senator Clinton's campaign debt seems to me to be about zero.

When a woman ran a competitive race against a multi-term incumbent man for the executive office of the Cherokee Nation a year ago, there was no demonization of gender, no media portrayal of my candidate as an old and vicious cultural stereotype -- the Female monster.

I suppose this means that there really is a difference between the highly acculturated Cherokee and neighboring tribes, and the dominant culture. Julia Keller, writing for the Chicago Tribune, has an interesting summary of the public disposal of an unwanted woman in Devil in a pantsuit or the demonization of Hillary Clinton. h/t Susie.

Posted by EBW at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

via J. Kehaulani Kauanui, American Studies and Anthropology, Wesleyan University

Scholars Found Native American and Indigenous Studies Association
Minneapolis, MN, May 13, 2008

A group of Native scholars have just co-founded the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. In May 21-23, 2009 the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota will host the first annual meeting of the new association. Registered attendees at a recent meeting, "Native American and Indigenous Studies: Who Are We? Where Are We Going?," from April,10-12, 2008, voted to ratify a constitution and bylaws for the new association. This was the second meeting called by a six member steering committee and was hosted by The Institute of Native American Studies at the University of Georgia. The event -- the largest of its kind ever held -- drew more than 450 scholars and graduate students and included 95 sessions from scholars from more than 165 institutions from 18 countries. The Native American Studies program at the University of Oklahoma hosted the first meeting in May of 2007.

Members of the founding steering committee -- now the acting council -- are: Inés Hernández-Ávila (Nimipu), Professor of Native American Studies, University of California at Davis; K. Tsianina Lomawaima (Creek), Professor of American Indian Studies, University of Arizona, Tucson; Jace Weaver (Cherokee), Director of the Institute for Native American Studies, Professor of religion, University of Georgia; Robert Warrior (Osage), Edith Kinney Gaylord Presidential Professor, English, University of Oklahoma; Jean O'Brien (White Earth Ojibwe), Associate Professor, Department of History and Chair, Department of American Indian Studies; J. Kehaulani Kauanui (Native Hawaiian), Associate Professor, Anthropology and American Studies, Wesleyan University. A nominations committee made up six scholars elected at the meeting in Georgia will conduct an election of a council that will take office next May in Minnesota.

The aims of the steering committee have been to gather a critical mass of scholars to help shape the new association and mold its agenda within the framework of a set of principles to guide its work. It has been committed to facilitating a process that will result in an association that: is scholarly, is interdisciplinary, is governed by individual members, has annual meetings that rotate among institutional hosts or other locations, is open to anyone who does work in Native American and Indigenous Studies, and has a program committee that takes primary responsibility for sending out an open call for papers and setting the agenda for annual meetings.

WEBSITE: Native American and Indigenous Studies Association: link.

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Leaving it to the judiciary doesn't mean what it seems to.

In the first instance, the "judiciary" has to work in the shadow of Wild Bill Rehnquist. He's dead, but none of his opinions have been overturned, and none are likely to be overturned by the current court.

In the second instance, the SCOTUS just makes stuff up. There were no sales or leases of land before Marshall. No drunken non-Indian ever pushed a Tribal Peace Officer before Oliphant.

In the third instance, the win-loss ratio for Federal Indian Law bar is worse than the win-loss ratio for the criminal defense bar.

But that's all obvious.

Leaving it to the judiciary means that our participation in party politics is over, that our relationship with the Democratic and Republican political coalitions that dominate electoral politics is without effect. That the locus of control over policy that directly effects Tribal Governments moves from the political to the administrative, to the Bureau within the Department within the Administration.

By 1871 the House of Representatives had grown tired of living with the results of Federal Indian policies carried out by the Senate and President through their treaty making authority. Their remedy was the Appropriation Act of March 3, 1871, Ch. 120 §1, 16 Stat. 544, 566 (codified at 25 U.S.C. §71), which ended the Treaty Period.

All it takes for the present to become the past, to acquire a name like the "Legislative Period", is leaving it to the judiciary. And like Aboriginal Treaty Right in Canada with the Smokehouse line of cases -- R v Sparrow, R v Van der Peet, R v Gladstone, and R v Delgamuukw -- Federal Indian Law will become static, incapable of being changed, by Indians or non-Indians, just "reinterpreted" by each Administration's Department, and by each Department's Bureau, and by each Bureau's Agency.

No Duro Fix. Just Duro.

No politics. Just process. It will have to wait until tomorrow, but I have to explain to my mom why voting Indian in this cycle is complicated.

Posted by EBW at 08:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday we were favored by a visit by an adult fish eagle doing circles over the Salinas River. The white tail and head against the dark body and wings was easily visible. Today we are favored by a guest post by Nord Wennerstrom:

I want to call your attention to a cultural treasure that is under threat ... the 10,000+ petroglyphs and pictographs in Utah's Nine Mile Canyon:

May 1, 2008 is the deadline for contacting the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) about a proposal that could dramatically step up damage to the rock art in Utah's Nine Mile Canyon, affectionately known as the "world's longest art gallery" and home to more than 10,000 petroglyphs and pictographs made primarily from the Fremont and Ute Indian cultures. A massive proposed oil and gas development project (more than 800 wells!) will cause a four-fold increase truck traffic inside the Canyon, resulting in enormous amounts of dust, chemical dust suppressants and vehicle exhaust that will accumulate on and permanently harm this native, and human treasure.

A recently released study shows a direct link between truck traffic in the Canyon and the deterioration of the rock art panels, due to a build up of dust and harmful chemicals used to control dust on the road. The BLM, which manages much of the land in and around Nine Mile Canyon, needs to recognize the findings of this study and present plans for a new access road to the exploration site, rather than continuing to rely on the narrow dirt roads that run through Nine Mile Canyon.

We urge you to send an email to the Bureau of Land Management today at UT_Pr_Comments@blm.gov and copy the National Trust for Historic Preservation at crc@nthp.org.

Let BLM know that it is imperative for them to protect the thousands of prehistoric petroglyphs and pictographs in Nine Mile Canyon. Tell BLM that it is unacceptable to allow these international treasures to be damaged by the dust and chemicals and exhaust generated by current and proposed truck traffic in Nine Mile Canyon. Ask BLM to perform a detailed evaluation of alternative routes that trucks could use to access the project area instead of the existing dirt roads in Nine Mile Canyon and its narrow side canyons. Encourage BLM to fulfill its role as the steward of the world's longest art gallery and save our shared heritage for future generations.

Additional information:

1. More information and to access the Draft Environmental Impact Study are available from the BLM.

2. Learn more about Nine Mile Canyon.

3. YouTube video

4. The following article appeared in the magazine Science January 25, 2008, Dust Storm Rising Over Threat to Famed Rock Art in Utah: [I'm looking for a non-pay link to the 1pp .pdf, ebw]

5. ninemilecanyoncoalition.org [ebw add]

The author is director of communications for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

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The House Natural Resource Committee, formerly chaired by Dick Pombo (R-CA-11), now by Nick Rahall (D-WV-03), approved four Indian bills at a markup on Thursday. The bill that caught my eye was HR 1575 To reaffirm and clarify the Federal relationship of the Burt Lake Band as a distinct federally recognized Indian Tribe, and for other purposes.

(b) Membership Criteria-

(1) To qualify for membership in the Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, a person must be able to demonstrate through evidence acceptable to the Tribe that the person meets at least 1 of the following requirements:

(A) The person descends from one or more tribal members who were domiciled at Colonial Point, Burt Township, Cheboygan County, Michigan before or at the time that the Tribe's village was burned in October 1900, as said tribal members are identified in the United States v. McGinn litigation and related documents, the 1950 Albert Shananaquet list of Colonial Point Residents, or both.

(B) The person descends from one or more tribal members who are listed on the 1900 and/or the 1910 Burt Lake Township Federal Census, Indian Enumeration Schedule.

(C) The person has an Indian ancestor who was, prior to 1910, living in tribal relations with the Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians as the Burt Lake Band is defined in this Act.

(D) The person descends from Rose Midwagon Moses.

No weasel words attempting to limit Indian Gaming either, no sovereignty subordinate to a state.

Posted by EBW at 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Issue: Whether tribal courts have authority to decide a civil lawsuit that involves business dealings between a company owned by a member of the tribe and a bank that owns land on a reservation, but itself is not owned by a tribal member.

The issue in Plains Commerce Bank v. Long Family Land & Cattle was whether tribal courts have jurisdiction over a dispute between a nontribal bank and a company that is majority Indian-owned. More than 51 percent of the owners of the South Dakota ranching company in the case are members of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and, as such, the company was entitled to loan guarantees from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Roberts seemed concerned about how a bank can be expected to know whether a company it is dealing with is a so-called "Indian corporation," thereby triggering tribal court jurisdiction. After all, companies incorporate under state, not tribal, law.

"That's a concept I don't understand," said Roberts, who then pointed to the left side of the bench and added, "If Justices Scalia and Alito form a corporation, is that an Italian corporation?"

Amid laughter, veteran advocate David Frederick of Kellogg, Huber, Hansen,Todd, Evans & Figel wisely sidestepped the issue. "I would like to beg the indulgence of the Court in not answering that question specifically."

In the past, Justice Antonin Scalia, like many other Italian-Americans, has bristled at being described as Italian since he, like Alito, was born in the United States, not Italy. But Scalia went along with the joke and interjected with a question of his own: "And do we get special loan guarantees?" Justice Samuel Alito Jr. was laughing too.

Isn't Roberts funny? Via BLT.

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The nine Mi'kmaq of Bands located in western and central Newfoundland (Isle) overwhelmingly endorsed an agreement-in-principle over the weekend with the federal government that will give them recognition as status Indians.

The Federation of Newfoundland Indians has around 10,500 members, of which about 8,000 were eligible to vote. A total of 3,232 ballots were cast in Saturday’s vote and the preceeding Tuesday's advance polls. Of those 2,913 were in favor of the agreement-in-principle announced by the FNI and the federal government last fall.

This means that the members of the Federation of Newfoundland Indians will obtain recognition under Canada's Federal Indian Act.

The federation chose to pursue status as a landless band, because so many of its members live in different communities and did not want to move from their homes to a reserve.

There is a very nice piece on the election at The Western Star.

This is an approach that is foreign to the US Federal Indian Law experience, yet Native Hawai'ians, and California Mission Indians until rather recently (and my neighbors, the Esselens and just about every other non-gaming California Indian Band), and the Lumbees and ... actually exist in landless, status limbo(s) (note the plural).

The turn-out was an order of magnitude greater than the CNO's last attempt at democracy. Something to keep in mind, Tribal elections don't have to be complete cock-ups.

h/t Acee's Indianz.com

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If the Indian vote in the early primary contests was anything near the African-American vote, if Santa Fe and Albuquerque, not Reno and Las Vegas, were the third cache of mid-winter voters to open and consume, to analytically crack the bones and suck out the marrows -- canvas, message, poll, vote, spin -- then everyone, non-Indian as well as Indian, would be thinking through the meanings of this:

Obama's campaign said he believes tribal gaming should be decided on a case-by-case basis with consideration for the wishes of the states involved¹.

The most exculpatory construction, to which Molly Ball devotes several paragraphs, is that the Obama inner-circle of 2007 hadn't given any thought to the issue and recycled the non-surprising policy of most non-Indians in state-level electoral politics -- state's rights, not in the 10th Amendment sense of a covert undermining of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but the even more corrosive sense of nullification of the first Indian Nonintercourse Act (Act of July 22, 1790, 1 Stat. 137) and its sequella, 25 U.S.C. § 117, which hold that a sale of Indian lands was not valid unless "made and duly executed at some public treaty, held under the authority of the United States." Oklahoma after the 1906 Act. All of Indian Country from 1947 to 1961.

Howard Dean, while governor of Vermont, used state money to lobby the BIA to reject or delay the application for Federal Recognition made by the Swanton Band of Abenakis. His administration argued in state, and federal courts, for Vermont's jurisdictional exclusion of any Tribal standing in the state or the federal courts. That came back to haunt him in the New Mexico and Oklahoma primaries, which in the '04 cycle were neither early nor late, where he was defeated by the candidate I advised, Wes Clark, who was unconditionally for the Nixon model (the Gold Standard for the Tribal-Federal relationship) -- Self-Determination.

But what if the Obama inner-circle of 2007 had considered Indian Gaming, not as a policy problem, but as a political tool, a device to motivate demographics that reject "special rights", and who may not be able to reject "special rights" such as Affirmative Action, or Non-Discrimination, or Disabilities, could safely go after Indian Gaming as unfair, unequal, un ... American.

Does anyone have any indication that the Obam a inner-circle of 2007, or the Obama inner-circle of 2008, has a policy position on the Federal-Tribal relation, a policy position that envisions substantive changes to the contours created by a hostile Court over the past three decades?

If not, then its time to click through to a 10 minute read on the use of a political tool, a device to motivate demographics, by the Obama inner-circle in late 2007 and early 2008, and reflect on what this means, for Tribal Executives looking at either a McCain, or an Obama Administration, and for the fragile coalition of the historically disadvantaged who simply must have accommodation, or sink back into the conditions that caused Truman to send federal troops to Little Rock. Via Avadon, who's hesitation to post this is surprising. Sean Wilentz's piece in TNR, How Barack Obama played the race card and blamed Hillary Clinton.

Now reflect on the Land-into-Trust issue, the likely trajectories of the USET tribes, the California gaming and not-yet-gaming tribes, the Great Lakes and Upper, Middle, and Lower Mississippi gaming, and not-yet-gaming tribes, the Oklahoma tribes, and the Federal-Indian policy goals, and political goals, of an Obama Administration formed by the past, and present Obama inner-circle. Will the non-gaming issues like gas, oil, coal, and mineral rights, or energy corridors, be treated any differently?

Posted by EBW at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Periodically MB asks me what are my differences with Juan Cole. I reply that for Juan, the firing of Qassam rockets, powered by sugar and potassium nitrate (the same fuel mix I used as a teen rocketeer), with payloads of TNT and urea nitrate (which I passed on), ranges less than 10km, and payloads of less then 10kg, from Gaza, or the firing of 122 mm Katyusha artillery rockets, ranges less than 30km, and payloads less than 30kg, from ad hoc launch points in Lebanon, are sufficient to excuse or justify or ... limited and unlimited response by a sophisticated combined-arms military with effectively infinite depth.

Juan calls them terrorists. I call them opfors.

We don't talk alot about WK2. We don't talk about the balance of forces. We don't talk about what happened twenty five years ago as if it happened in someplace under a "friendly regime", attacked by a Soviet proxy. Or as a failed attempt at "popular liberation" by armed forces, Soviet proxy or organic to some remote, exotic peoples. We don't even talk about what happened twenty five years ago as if it were "terrorism", state-sponsored or otherwise.

A few days ago Tim Giago wrote No celebrating at Pine Ridge Reservation. Tim grew up in Wounded Knee. However, no where in his thousand words is there an awareness that a military operation was planned, and executed, within the boundaries of his childhood.

To Tim, his childhood was flooded by foreigners who had no claim on the boundaries of his childhood. I know I could have written a similar piece too, 99 people out of 100 can't trace their ancestry in California to when the Lembkes came to grow beans in pre-irrigation Los Angeles. But I don't think I ever have, or ever will. Age is experience remembered, not title to land.

Not long after, Richard Powers wrote a reply Defending the AIM occupation.

This is where I have to raise something, an empty hand will suffice, and point out that no one is writing history, Tim, and everyone, including myself, are writing politics. The AIM/NAIM split is still present, and even those who damn both the AIM/NAIM factions, can damn the pre-split AIM/NAIM, and external to that is the tribal vs (the 4th) pan-tribal conflict, and even beyond that is the ... are urban mix-bloods Indians question.

I fall somewhere within that mass of fissures of a thousand practices of accommodation and resistance.

Richard correctly places WK2 in a militarized context. There was a "dirty war". About a company strength of men and women were killed by gunfire during the sporadic exchanges of fire. Most of the casualties were inflicted by the US and its proxy, the Dick Wilson "Guardians of the Oglala Nation", whom we all called "GOONS", then and now.

Richard also correctly places Tim's piece in a larger universe of Anti-AIM writings, and he also correctly places the composition of the pre-split AIM's cadres, armed and unarmed, in the pan-Indianism of 1969-1971 occupation of Alcatraz. A Cherokee died at the Knee. A Mic'mac also died at the Knee.

Tim errs, whether he rejects that, inherently armed pan-tribalism, or the present legalistic pan-tribalism, in alienating the armed, unarmed, and other, including non-Indian, who came -- from most directions -- into the boundaries of his childhood. Wounded Knee does not belong to those who camp, or throw up buildings, roads, and business on a massacre site. Monk's Mound does not "belong to" the Indian living closest to it, and if it does, "accommodation and resistance" does not encompass the totality of continuity and transcendence.

Tim supports Chad Smith. I don't. But that is just theft and graft over several administrations. Not life, and death, in and around Pine Ridge, the Rosebud, and so on.

Posted by EBW at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Floyd collaborated with Vine in 1969 and each produced a Custer Died for Your Sins, Floyd's was a song, and Vine's a monograph.

Indian Country Today has an obituary. Today is a good day to browse YouTube for samples of his performance work, and his conversations.

Posted by EBW at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When we look for blogs that go to the root causes, to Rehnquist's Oliphant v. Suquamish for the jurisdictional mechanism that protects perpetrators of violence against women, or Cobell v. Clinton's Babbit, then v. Bush's Norton, and now v. Bush's Kempthorne, for the principle of trust that protects perpetrators of theft of individual property, we come up thin to empty.

So we see the outpouring of cash that comes from the PayPal clickstreams of blogs that fund raise for the womens shelter on the Standing Rock Rez as kin to Missionary Barrels. Putting on our American hats we become even less charitable. Private charity, preferably channeled through Christian cults, not public policy, is the dogma of Republicans.

Make no mistake, sixty-k dollars plus a ten-k hat for any detached residential unit, would be nice, even if a handout from White Liberals, but it's no substitute for fixing what's broken anymore than holding bake sales is an effective response to defunding public education.

Yes, the following liberal bloggers posted on Markos Moulitsas Zúniga's community scoop or on their own blogs:

nbier, flautist, sarac, njgoldfinch, Devilstower, Christy Hardin-Smith, mole333, DB, William Neuheisel, and no doubt others

But they don't write about Indian issues, about what's broken and what can be fixed. They've adopted a poster child, and that's all they've screwed themselves up to the sticking point to do. To steal a quote from Noel Pearson, responding to an event that is also making the rounds in the liberal blogs, also in isolation:

In my view, unless we tackle grog and welfare, the problems of this 10-year-old child at Aurukun ultimately will have no solution.

Noel has long argued passive welfare is to blame for a complete breakdown in social norms in Indigenous communities, in Cape York and elsewhere in Australia. His point is that responding to one report of child abuse because the abuse was pack rape, and ignoring the thousands of open or unfiled reports of child abuse because the abuse isn't sexual, just malnutrition or general care -- 80 reported and 30 substantiated per month in Cape York. just isn't reality based.

And yes, on the order of eight hundred people clicked through the donations links for a total of $50,000. So here's the link to contribute to the "netroots", or DailyKos+FireDogLake+... effort to buy a single bandaid.

What you won't get from DK/FDL/... is Abramoff as a complex crook who supports tribal soverignty reckoned in billions of dollars, or the full measure of inter-locked corruption at Interior and Justice, also to the tune of billions of dollars, or the embedding of sexual assault white privilege in Federal Indian Law, not as a crime of war, as the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague determined systematic rapes in 1996 in Kosovo, but as the necessary consequence of eroding tribal criminal jurisdiction, re-affirmed every October by the Supreme Court of the United States.

And so on. These are issues, stories, complex and human interest, that these liberal bloggers don't write or link to, and haven't for as long as they've each been around as on-line venues of political writings. Its why we didn't hold the Koufax Awards this year -- we're tired of people who only read Wampum to see their names, and if their names come first, or close enough to be cool, before going back to their no-Indians-or-Dogs avocations.

We're happy to see the Feminist Law Profs Blog do a post -- Unprosecuted Abuse of Native American Women, but its Zero Hour was April this year, when the Amnesty report got earned media. We hope they go the distance, it would be good to have another progressive legal group of co-authors go the distance too.

Posted by EBW at 01:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

That's the ratio of FAS diagnosed children to developmentally normal children in Aboriginal communities in North West Australia. And it gets worse from there. The infant mortality rates for Aboriginal children are three or four times higher than for non-Aboriginal children. Most of the deaths are preventable, the result of accidents, injury, suicide or infection.

Wednesday we'll post a fund-raiser for the Pretty Bird Woman House, which is coordinated by Andy Ternay of Street Prophets, aka Andyt on Daily Kos.

The 10 year old girl pack-raped at Aurukun, in Cape York, has FAS. As do some of the adolescents named, but not charged, in the report.

We just want to make the point that moral outrage has been the social basis for intervention there, and elsewhere, in the past, and that the problems are bigger than funding one Lakota women's shelter startup costs, or getting one Aboriginal child protection order and a dozen problematic felony sentences.

Things aren't too good in the Gaza Strip either. Israel blocks all imports into the strip, except for a short list of about half a dozen basic articles. 900 trucks used to be employed daily for the imports and exports of the Gaza Strip, now their number is reduced to 15. For example, no soap is allowed in.

Local water is undrinkable. Israel does not let in bottled water. Nor does Israel allow the importation water pumps. The price of water filters has gone up from $40 to $250, there are no spare parts at all for filters. Only the well-to-do can still afford them. However, chlorine is let in.

There is no import of cement. When there is a hole in the ceiling, it cannot be repaired. The building site for the children's hospital stands silent. There are no spare parts of any kind. A medical instrument that goes out of order cannot be repaired. Not even incubators for babies or dialysis equipment.

The populations of Cape York, the Standing Rock Reservation, and Gaza, have some things in common. Unemployment by design. Disintegration by design. And Settlers who can see everything but their own shadows.

Posted by EBW at 09:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

07-375 Aroostook Band of MicMacs v. Ryan, Patricia E., et al.

The 1st Circuit has ruled that all Maine tribes are subject to state jurisdiction under the 1980 Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement Act, even the Aroostooks, who weren't even included in the 1980 Act, and who's 1991 Act doesn't contain the "state jurisdiction" language. The people who wrote Bush v Gore couldn't be bothered.

In separate news, Alaska and Hawai'i have been ordered to relocate to the area bounded on the west the Mississippi river, and on the east by the Ohio river, in accordance with the Ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States North West of the river Ohio, which became law in 1787.

Afterthought: I suppose we Abenakis can now bring an federal cause of action against Maine for failing to subject us to state jurisdiction, since no matter when we are Federally Recognized, and no matter what the US Congress has to say about the conditions attached to a government-to-government relationship, the 1st Circuit will support the state of Maine's claim that its jurisdiction is supreme. So what's Steve Rowe's excuse for failing to paper us?

A proactive prophylactic legal pyrotechnic.

Posted by EBW at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The nature and circumstances of this case strongly reinforce this rule of interpretation in its present application. It is a case involving the judgment of a court of special and limited jurisdiction, not to be assumed without clear warrant of law. It is a case of life and death. It is a case where, against an express exception in the law itself, that law, by argument and inference only, is sought to be extended over aliens and strangers; over the members of a community, separated by race, by tradition, by the instincts of a free though savage life, from the authority and power which seeks to impose upon them the restraints of an external and unknown code, and to subject them to the responsibilities of civil conduct, according to rules and penalties of which they could have no previous warning; which judges them by a standard made by others, and not for them, which takes no account of the conditions which should except them from its exactions, and makes no allowance for their inability to understand it. It tries them not by their peers, nor by the customs of their people, nor the law of their land, but by superiors of a different race, according to the law of a social state of which they have an imperfect conception, and which is opposed to the traditions of their history, to the habits of their lives, to the strongest prejudices of their savage nature; one which measures the red man's revenge by the maxims of the white man's morality. It is a case, too, of first impression, so far as we are advised; for, if the question has been mooted heretofore in any courts of the United States, the jurisdiction has never before been practically asserted as in the present instance. The provisions now contained in sections 2145 and 2146 of the Revised Statutes were first enacted in section 25 of the Indian intercourse act of 1834. 4 St. 733. Prior to that, by the act of 1796, (1 St. 469,) and the act of 1802, (2 St. 139,) offenses committed by Indians against white persons, and by white persons against Indians, were specifically enumerated and defined, and those by Indians against each other were left *572 to be dealt with by each tribe for itself, according to its local customs. The policy of the government in that respect has been uniform. As was said by Mr. Justice MILLER, delivering the opinion of the court in U. S. v. Joseph, 94 U. S. 614, 617:

"The tribes for whom the act of 1854 was made were those semi-independent tribes whom our government has always recognized as exempt from our laws, whether within or without the limits of an organized state or territory, and, in regard to their domestic government, left to their own rules and traditions, in whom we have recognized the capacity to make treaties, and with whom the governments, state and national, deal, with a few exceptions only, in their national or tribal character, and not as individuals."

The writs of habeas corpus and certiorari prayed for will accordingly be issued.

This is Rehnquist's greatest work, the core of Oliphant. I've made bold the portions of the original text that Rehnquist didn't dare try to get past Marshall and Burger. The art here is that the black letter law and precident obviously held that Tribal Courts had jurisdiction over non-members, whether Indian or non-Indian, and Rehnquist turned this into the "rationale" why Tribal Courts did not have jurisdiction over non-members, whether Indian or non-Indian.

Great acts show great daring, even the bad ones.

Posted by EBW at 02:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The six murals at the Old Post Office on 12th Street, which are the subject of Section 106 consultation, are American Kunst.

We're fortunate that the muralists of the '30s chose Soviet Realism over expropriation of Southern Ceremonial Cult images.

The Individual and Tribal Trust Accountings, the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Reagan lootings in Interior, the Declaration on the Rights of Indian Polities, sweeping aside the lies that have accumulated since Marshall ignored every deed of sale and lease from the early Colonial Period to the 1820s to fabricate the reasoning in the trilogy of cases that bear his name to the Rehnquist fabrications, the loss of habitat and species ...

We want what is real. Some murals in a monumental edifice in the trophy taking capital isn't real.

Posted by EBW at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Four years ago this week a group of Rhode Island State Police executed a Rhode Island warrant on the premises of a Narragansett Tribal business. The RISP force inflicted injuries upon the person of the elected executive and seven members of the Narragansett Tribe. The order for the raid was issued by Rhode Island Governor Don Carcieri.

You may not remember this, but we do, and Joe Trippi does, as does Dr. Howard Dean, former governor and leading presidential candidate at this point in the previous cycle ("the Sleepless Summer", replacing Senator Joe Lieberman, then a Democrat, as the candidate to beat), and now Chairperson of the Democratic National Committee.

This is were the bones are ... Inyo County v. Bishop Paiute Tribe.

Can States physically seize documents from Tribal government offices under some "evidence" claim arising in a State court action? It is a question everyone in Maine knows, and we know the answer too, where the tribes are jurisdictionally mere townships of the State. We posed the general question, and failing to elicit the required response, we set out to ... ensure that authors of the wrong response did not advance.

Today the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Carcieri v. Kempthorne, joining the 8th Circuit, the 10 Circuit, and the 2nd Circuit on a fundamental test of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.

Narragansett 1, Rhode Island 0.

You have to wonder if all those DNC Dems who are lining up behind the junior Senator from New York and her constituent pleasing stands against Native land claims in that state are as full of themselves as the Deaniacs of the Sleepless Summer, right up to the post-Iowa nails in their campaign's coffin in Oklahoma, Washington, and New Mexico, or if they are taking their "inevitability" to novel heights.

Making nice to some Nevada Chiefs last week doesn't really offset most of a decade of making ugly to all Native land claims.

Posted by EBW at 02:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Bush Administration thought they won a huge victory by having Cobell v. Babbitt/Norton/Kempthorne judge Royce Lamberth removed last year. Maybe they want to rethink that.

With his eyes toward an October trial, the federal judge handling the Cobell trust fund case said on Monday he wants the federal government to show how much money Indian beneficiaries were or weren't paid.

Indian Country deserves to know the answer, Judge James Robertson said at a 2.5-hour status hearing in Washington, D.C. So do Congress and the public, he told lawyers for the plaintiffs and the Bush administration.

"What does it all add up to?" Robertson said. "What are the big numbers?"

The very last thing this government wants is an actual accounting, which is exactly what it seems Robertson is demanding.

Posted by MB Williams at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This may not be a surprise to anyone, but the campaign website for Stacy Leeds is now hosted on the hardware that also hosts the Koufax website. I fixed the Blix theme for Drupal 5.x, as Stacy's original tech support selected that theme, using Wordpress, and replicated the content over the weekend, going live last Sunday.

The following is from the Muskogee Phoenix, and the best part about it is the recognition of the motivation for the special election -- not preservation of culture or limiting distribution of benefits -- the messages used by the proponents of the special election, but the crass, early-Rehnquist motive of voter suppression -- in a polity that has fewer than 10% turn out, a history of Constitutional crisis, and almost seven decades in the 20th century of total failure of the political system.

"I just think this is a suit that's not winnable (for the Cherokee Nation) on the issues at hand," Cherokee Nation Councilor Linda O'Leary, chair of the Executive and Finance Committee, said Wednesday.

"When we're talking about civil liberties, then we are on the losing end of the stick here."

O'Leary said Principal Chief Chad Smith was the main supporter of the special election to disenfranchise Freedmen.

"Chad did this for political reasons to keep the Freedmen from voting (in the upcoming election) -- and the Cherokee Nation will have to spend millions of dollars in legal funds," O'Leary said.

Cherokee Nation spokesman Mike Miller said the Cherokee Nation is being sued.

"It's not our choice whether we spend money to defend ourselves or not," Miller said. "It was not a lawsuit we filed, but a lawsuit filed against us."

Jack Abramoff gave to Chad Smith, so you can give to Stacy Leeds. Its that simple.

Posted by EBW at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

[original from H-NET Discussion List for African American Studies, ebw]

News From Congresswoman Diane Watson 33rd Congressional District

March 13, 2007 For Immediate Release Contact: Bert Hammond (202) 225-7084, Lois Hill Hale (323) 965-1422

Congresswoman Watson & Congressional Black Caucus Register Outrage Over Blatant Discrimination by Cherokee Nation

Washington, DC-- Congresswoman Diane E. Watson and 25 other members of the Congressional Black Caucus have sent a letter to the Bureau of Indian Affairs protesting the recent vote by the Cherokee Nation to revoke the tribal citizenship of an estimated 2,800 black Cherokee descendants.

"On Saturday, March 3, a very small minority of the Cherokee Nation voted to disenfranchise their tribal members who have African ancestry in violation of established treaty rights," said Congresswoman Watson. "This is blatant discrimination of the worst kind."

"I and my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus question the validity, legality, as well as the morality of the Cherokee Nation's vote. The black descendant Cherokees can trace their Native American
heritage back in many cases for more than a century. They are legally a part of the Cherokee Nation through history, precedent, blood, and treaty obligations."

"In fiscal year 2006, the House Appropriations Committee estimates that The United States Government spent $12.6 billion a year on programs in support of Native Americans. The Cherokee Nation is one of the largest Native American tribes in the U.S. and its members obviously receive a significant share of federal funds."

"I have reason to believe that the Cherokee Nation's annual budget is somewhere in the range of $300 million a year, of which 75% is derived from federal funds. Black Cherokee descendants are now put in the incredible position of having to pay federal taxes to subsidize their own discrimination. This is a gross violation of their social, economic, and human rights."

"The federal government has a trust and responsibility through treaty obligations and federal statutes to provide for the well-being, health care, and education of Native American tribal members regardless of race. Fundamental social justice demands that the black Cherokees be reinstated in the Cherokee Nation with full rights."

The letter signed by Congresswoman Watson and Members of the Congressional Black Caucus is addressed to Carl J. Artman, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs. The full text of the letter follows:

March 13, 2007
The Honorable Carl J. Artman
Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs
Bureau of Indian Affairs
1849 C Street, NW
Mail Stop 4101
Washington, D.C. 20240

Dear Mr. Artman:

The undersigned members of the Congressional Black Caucus are shocked and outraged at the March 3 vote by Cherokee Nation members to revoke the tribal citizenship of an estimated 2,800 black descendants of the Cherokee Nation.

The black descendants are of mixed African-Cherokee heritage. Their lineage extends back for well over a century when they accompanied other tribal members to new settlements in Oklahoma after the Cherokee Nation had been expelled from its traditional lands in North Carolina and Georgia . Many African descendant Cherokees died during the forced migration, which has become known as the "Trail of Tears."

The Cherokee Nation fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. After the war it signed a federal treaty, in 1866, committing that its African-Cherokee descendants would be absorbed as citizens of the Cherokee Nation. In 1983, the Cherokee Nation expelled many African descendants by requiring them to show a degree of Indian blood through the Dawes rolls. A tribal court reinstated them in March 2006. The most recent March 3 vote is an apparent attempt to override the March 2006 court decision.

We question the validity, legality, as well as the morality of the Cherokee Nation's March 3 vote to disenfranchise its African descendants. A sizeable number of persons throughout the United States who can rightfully lay claim to Native American tribal citizenship and lineage are of mixed ancestry. The tribal lineage of black Native American descendants is rich in history and precedent that equals, if not surpasses, that of other racially and ethnically mixed Native Americans who have sought and been granted full tribal status.

We respectfully request an interpretation from the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the March 3 vote, particularly the legality of the vote, as well as what actions can be taken by the Bureau to correct this
egregious violation of the rights of Cherokee Nation members of African descent.

We are resolute in our efforts to undo this outrage.

The letter is signed by the following Members of the Congressional Black Caucus: Diane E. Watson (CA), Carolyn C. Kilpatrick (MI), Chaka Fattah (PA), Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC), Gregory W. Meeks (NY), John Conyers, Jr. (MI), Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX), G. K. Butterfield (NC), William J. Jefferson (LA), Bobby L. Rush (IL), Barbara Lee (CA), Donald M. Payne (NJ), Julia Carson (IN), Al Green (TX), Emanuel Cleaver (MO), Edolphus Towns (NY), Juanita Millender-McDonald (CA), Charles B. Rangel (NY), Wm. Lacy Clay (MO), Henry C. "Hank" Johnson, Jr. (GA), Yvette D. Clarke (NY), Kendrick B. Meek (FL), Stephanie Tubbs Jones (OH), Corrine Brown (FL), John Lewis (GA), Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX)

Posted by EBW at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In 1903 William C. Rogers became last elected Cherokee chief for 68 years.

Ms. Diane Watson is an enrolled member of the Democratic Party and represents a quarter of a million residents of Los Angeles county in the lower house of the Federal legislature in Washington City. She an opinion on the issues involved in the March 3rd Special Election of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

She also has a remedy. She wants to to end payments by the United States to the Cherokee Nation.

The likelihood that Representative Watson has an opinion on the causes for, or effects of, the Cherokee Nation not being able to hold elections for almost seven of the ten decades of the 20th century is wicked small, but I'm going to attempt the comic and ask the Congresswoman. Hell, she may not know that something happened in Mittle Europa during the middle decades of the same century. Some people are wicked focused on their own interests and need no partners, no coalition, to obtain their unilateralist, uncomplicated deciderist goals.

There's one like that at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, an enrolled member of the same, to hell with treaties party.

There are issues of Federal oversight of constitutional revisions, under section 16 of the Wheeler-Howard Act (The Indian Reorganization Act, June 18, 1934), and of course, anything really fundamental in Federal Indian Law goes, now that Bill Rehnquist is doing Hispanic voter intimidation in the several precincts of Hell, to Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Clarance Thomas to fabricate out of a whole cloth and call stare decisis et non quieta movere.

I don't advise Chad Smith, or support his quixotic adventure into non-vital issues in a polity that has only three decades of modern election history, and a voter turn-out of one in ten qualified voters, and I don't advise Stacy Leeds, who I support in her race against Chad Smith in next June's election. However, if I had the ear of the prince and Ms. Watson's brain fart managed to catch fire among the other Americans -- to end the existing treaties -- I'd advise that was worth looking into. Setting the clock back to 1822, before Marshall and Johnson formally committed the former British colonies to banditry outside of International Law, or 1789, or 1776, when the British Crown surrendered its claims under the right of Discovery against non-Christian Kings and right of War against Christian Kings (the Dutch and the French) to the Americas south of the Red Line, or even back to de Soto, would be an improvement over the perpetuation of the present.

If Rep. Watson's concern is with the legality of exclusion, rather than the fiction of race, she could look at the Pechenga, an hour's drive from her district office on Wilshire Boulevard, or any of the other California Tribes struggling with membership issues, rather than eastern Oklahoma, where Indians couldn't vote for any Federal office for half of the time between the 1861-1865 Insurrection and the present, and could not vote for any Cherokee governmental office for three quarters of the 20th century.

Unless spin is all.

Posted by EBW at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Two issues stand out to my reading: Section 2(b), which does not extinguish a right to petition for federal recognition by any group of Indians residing in Robeson and adjoining counties, and Section 5, the civil and criminal law jurisdictions.

Compare the criminal and civil law jurisdictions of the H.R. 65 and PL 280.

First, H.R. 65:SEC. 5. (a) The State of North Carolina shall exercise jurisdiction over (1) all criminal offenses that are committed on; and (2) all civil actions that arise on, lands located within the State of North Carolina that are owned by, or held in trust by the United States for, the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, or any dependent Indian community of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. (b) The Secretary of the Interior is authorized to accept on behalf of the United States, after consulting with the Attorney General of the United States any transfer by the State of North Carolina to the United States of any portion of the jurisdiction of the State of North Carolina described in paragraph (1) pursuant to an agreement between the Lumbee Tribe and the State of North Carolina. Such transfer of jurisdiction may not take effect until 2 years after the effective date of the agreement. (c) The provisions of this subsection shall not affect the application of section 109 of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (25 U.S.C. 1919).

Second, PL 280: 25 U.S.C. § 1321. Assumption by State of criminal jurisdiction

(a) Consent of United States; force and effect of criminal laws.
The consent of the United States is hereby given to any State not having jurisdiction over criminal offenses committed by or against Indians in the areas of Indian country situated within such State to assume, with the consent of the Indian tribe occupying the particular Indian country or part thereof which could be affected by such assumption, such measure of jurisdiction over any or all of such offenses committed within such Indian country or any part thereof as may be determined by such State to the same extent that such State has jurisdiction over any such offense committed elsewhere within the State, and the criminal laws of such State shall have the same force and effect within such Indian country or part thereof as they have elsewhere within that State.

The full text of H.R. 65 is in the extended area. I hope it becomes law, but I'd like language added to graduate from State, or Federal jurisdictions to Tribal as the legal institutions of the Lumbee Nation mature. I'm writing to the following members of the House Natural Resources Committee to that effect:

Chair Nick Rahall, WV-03 (I'm sorry, but 10 minutes wasted on e-brokenness of the www.house.gov webbish and I still don't have his mailto or click 4 form.)
Grace Napolitano, CA-10 click 4 form
Dan Boren, OK-02 click 4 form
George Miller, CA-07 mailto or click 4 form
Edward Markey, MA-07 click 4 form
Patrick Kennedy, RI-01 click 4 form
Stepanie Herseth, SD-AL mailto

As for this guy, well, he's in the pockets of the Michell Hicks, the current principal chief of the Eastern Band, so he's simply another seat the GOP will pick up in a cycle or two:
Heath Shuler, NC-11

I'm underwhelmed by the scholarship of Chief Hicks' opus on why the Lumbee Recognition Bill should not be made law, so I'll post an annotated version of it in the next few days. The original is here, a 10pp .pdf.

Continue reading "Commentary on H.R. 65, the Lumbee Recognition Act" »

Posted by EBW at 06:08 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I wrote about the issues earlier, the url is Nation and Race. This morning someone asked me to comment on the election.

I haven't read the results yet, so I've no idea how Chad Smith's proposal did, other than to hear that his campaign got the most votes yesterday. I would have voted against it, and I support the campaign of Stacy Leeds against Chad Smith.

People who want to write about it -- please use the comments.

Posted by EBW at 05:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Samoset get no turkee 2005

Moonin' the 'grims 2004

Derailing the Midnight Rider (Cobell v Norton) 2003

Holiday reading 2002

Posted by EBW at 08:27 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Dave Harris wrote us recently:

I recently finished Ghost Tribes, a short documentary about six Virginia Indian tribes -- the tribes of Pocahontas and her people -- and their 400 year struggle for sovereignty and federal recognition.
My film was selected as 1 of 6 finalists in the Third Millenium Foundation's "Seeds of Tolerance" film competition. I need your help to win. By taking a minute to vote for Ghost Tribes, you can help determine the winner and garner much needed publicity and funding for the these tribes' efforts.

Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA) has sponsored a bill that would grant the tribes recognition, and in the new congress, he just may have the political "capital" to push it through. In addition to funding for the tribes' cause, Al
Gore will present the winning film live, in a televised awards ceremony, raising awareness for the tribes.

To vote, Current will require you to register, but it's quick (<30 seconds) and there aren't any follow up emails or newsletters.

Vote for Ghost Tribes here (It's the 3rd video from the left): http://www.current.tv/tolerance

Thanks for your help.

-Dave Halliday

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When we were at Sleeping Bear dunes I happened to be at the Leelanau Coffee Roasting Company (featuring fine caffine and data) one day, and ended up being asked by the editors of the Glen Arbor Sun to read and respond to a piece they'd just published by a local contributor.

After I read it I looked up from the page to the two men and said it was very good writing.

It came to mind forcefully today as more and more children came to the playground today. We've been nearly alone here for a week, and people are already exotic. These were even more so. Most of the boys were in camos, with paint. The kind I used to wear when doing ambush exercises, with an M-14, in 1972/3. Even the girls were in Rambo face paint, So I'm posting Ojibway artist, author, and basket maker Lois Beardlee's "The Shirt".

The Shirt

By Lois Beardslee
Sun contributor

"No. You can't have the shirt."

"But I want it."

"I know. But you can't have the shirt."

"My friends will think it's cool!"

"I know. But you can't have the shirt."

It's on sale, isn't it?"

"Yes. But you can't have the shirt."

It is a camouflage design, in muted shades of military beiges and greens. The corporations that control America want to go to war again. And they are marketing children's clothing as early recruitment groundwork. The shirts are cheaper than any other shirts. They are in all the stores, and they are cheaper than all of the other shirts. It comes in other colors, that camouflage pattern. Oranges. Reds. Muted. Blending. Bloodlike.

"It comes in other colors, too. Look."

"I know. But you can't have the shirt."

"Why?"

She wants to tell him.

"Why?"

She wants to tell him. But she knows that he is still too young to understand modern military operations. He is too young to understand death. He is too young to understand permanent loss of faculties, of limb. He thinks it's cool. Blood and gore and stuff like in the horror movies. Like a Hallowe'en mask.

"It's cool."

Like a Hallowe'en mask.

"Mom. I said, it's cool."

"I know. But you can't have the shirt."

But nothing like a Hallowe'en mask.

"I could wear it for Halloween."

"No, I wouldn't let you."

"Why not?"

"I don't want you to be a soldier for Halloween."

"I could put fake blood on."

"It's called Hallowed Evening."

"What?"

"Hallowe'en. It's short for Hallowed Evening. And that means Holy Evening. It's supposed to be a Holy Evening."

"Who cares?"

"I care." It's supposed to be about honoring the dead, she's fairly sure, not just about gruesome ceremonies and an association with all things gory. It's supposed to be about loving the dead, loving their memories. And scaring the kids is just a bonus. Because scaring kids a little bit is important to keeping them alive and safe. That's why we've got stories about bad things. They are preventative stories. They are the true warriors' stories. And it's fun scaring the kids, too. It's fun hearing children squeal with delight.

Ima Pipiig's mind is wandering. It is taking her away from the urban development fringing the once-small town of Traverse City, Michigan. She is in small graveyards in the woods. Small patches of history and intertwined lives. She is sprinkling tobacco on the graves, following her mother, glad for the opportunity to toss and scatter something wildly with her young arms that beg for wide and simple motions without consequence.

She is hiding bundles of fresh sweetgrass behind the gravestones of Indian soldiers, where the white people will not see them and take them away, as souvenirs attesting to the quaintness of northern Michigan's remnant Native inhabitants. The boy is sprinkling tobacco on the graves, following his mother, glad for the opportunity to toss and scatter something wildly with his young arms that beg for wide and simple motions without consequence.

"But I want it."

"No. You can't have the shirt."

"Why?"

It is a camouflage design, in muted shades of military beiges and greens. The corporations that control America want to go to war again. And they are marketing children's clothing as early recruitment groundwork. The shirts are cheaper than any other shirts. They are in all the stores, and they are cheaper than all of the other shirts. It comes in other colors, that camouflage pattern. Oranges. Reds. Muted. Blending. Bloodlike.

He cannot have the shirt because, because -- there is nothing in our oral and written history prior to the advent of the fur trade that refers to protectors being recuited as warriors. There is nothing in our stories, no cultural precedents for the concept of children recruited for future disposability in the form of corporate warriors. Once enlisted, these children are endlessly deployed until death or dismemberment. There is no Anishnabe word for this. There is no Anishnabe concept for this. This came with the fur trade, and our success at adapting to the warfare you brought upon us is being used to recruit us right now.

Ima Pipiig has seen the government posters, distributed in the Native American communities, the ones that talk about Indian warrior traditions. Ima Pipiig knows at this time that the boy is to be protected from the idea of protector as warrior, until he is old enough to know that dead is forever, until he is old enough to know that dismemberment is not cool, until he knows that one must carefully choose what one protects.

"Mom. I want the shirt."

"I know. But you can't have it."

From last year. Little has changed, other than the numbers are larger than before and in the aggressor state, children are still dressed for war.

Posted by EBW at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by EBW at 11:53 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Associate Justice Scalia wrote the majority opinion in 1990. The case caused Congress to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to ensure members of the Native American Church could use peyote as a sacrament without punishment.
Scalia:

Two defendants in the case were drug counselors and it was discovered that they were going off in the mountains every week to smoke peyote

For the remaining Deaniac reading wampum, this Scalia gem:

... State sovereignty does not end at a reservation's border ...

via Indianz, from Justice Scalia and ACLU.

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In the 80th Assembly District, which covers the eastern Coachella Valley and Imperial County, the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla contributed $450,000 to the Riverside County Republican Party, which spent the money on paid media for Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, R-Cathedral City.

Here's how Steven Maviglio wrote it up for The California Majority Report:

Garcia has been carrying the tribes' water for years. A protégé of Sen. Jim Battin of Palm Springs, she introduced the legislation approving tribal compacts during the waning days of this year's legislative session. Garcia reports nearly $200,000 from the tribes in yesterday's filings.

Talk about "pay to play."

In the same piece he offers the following as context:

Why are the tribes throwing big bucks behind the Republicans?

A bit of recent history: After sailing through the Senate, Assembly Democrats put the brakes on approving the compacts. The card clubs and horse track interests, as well as several labor unions, weighed in heavily against approval in the final days, and the compacts didn't muster enough votes for approval.

You can't get how bad it is in Federal Indian Law until the absurdity of a bait shack on pier on a lagoon completely within a tribal polity's territorial jurisdiction rises to a state's highest court, and the underlying issue whether a tribal polity has the right to copy the zoning code of an adjacent municipality, and issue building permits using that code, or must obtain building permits using that code from the adjacent municipality, oozes out of your pores.

Every tribal government I've ever been in contact with wants its legal institutions, and that includes its civil and criminal codes, developed. The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla is unlikely to be an exception. I expect they'd like what millions upon millions of tax dollars have paid for in California -- a mature legal system. But theirs, or theirs shared with other cooperating tribal governments, or theirs shared with other cooperating tribal and state(s) governments, or ... but what is on the table is California's, unamended for Indians. Legal leg irons. Termination by labor rather than calvary or capital.

But more than just the Agua Caliente are working the issue this cycle.

The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla, the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians and the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians have pooled more money, over $3 million, to fund a Political Action Committee, Team 2006. The Desert Sun reported yesterday that the PAC has spent a third of its contributions, and its all been for Republican candidates.

That leaves two dollars in three as yet unallocated. The Desert Sun quotes Daniel Tucker, the chairman of the Sycuan Band, as saying the tribes will support candidates who "understand the challenges facing Native Americans" and "care about moving California's economy forward."

Any guesses on how the heck candidates wearing white hoodies and/or moving California's economy anywhere other than forward manage to pass for ... Democrats?

It does get better. Agua Caliente Chairman Richard M. Milanovich is on record for one bond measure on the November ballot, Proposition 84. Tribes across California understand that the time is right for stepping up to support the environmental infrastructure that's needed. Our tribe has more than 31,000 acres covering Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage and into the mountains where we have committed to preserving and protecting critical habitat. Team 2006 is going to be spending on Prop. 84, and for some as yet unidentified Democrats.

November is when we gather acorns.

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Citgo doesn't have a refinery in Alaska, though it does in Boston, which is why I tried I, II, III to get heating oil for Abenaki, Mic'mac, Maleseet, Passamaquoddy, and even Penobscot households last winter. It was a very mixed bag. Poverty-owning urban Democrats in Massachusettes horned in and cut all Indians out of the offer, eventually Maine Indians except Abenakis were allowed some oil, and a good man died on his way home after executing the deal that brought about $300 per household in heating season discounts to Pleasant Point.

In lieu of Citgo heating oil, discounted at about $1 per gallon, with approximately 300 gallons allocated per native household, Citgo allocated $5.3 million to native nonprofit organizations to buy 100 gallons this winter for each of more than 12,000 households. About 150 native corporations (Indian towns) in Alaska have accepted.

The Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association, on behalf of 291 households in Nelson Lagoon, Atka, St. Paul and St. George, rejected Citgo's offer of money for 100 gallons per household of heating oil. A gallon of heating oil goes for above $5 in the towns on islands on the eastern shore of the Bering Sea. My grandparents operated a BIA school at Unalakleet, also on the Bering, but on the mainland. Keeping a small school warm in the winter required lots of fuel and no accidents, however minor.

Dimitri Philemonof heads the APIA. He said accepting the aid would be "compromising ourselves." He also said "I think we have some duty to our country, and I think it's loyalty."

Justine Gunderson is the administrator for the tribal council in the Aleut village of Nelson Lagoon. She said "As a citizen of this country, you can have your own opinion of our president and our country. But I don't want a foreigner coming in here and bashing us. Even though we're in economically dire straits, it was the right choice to make."

That's close to six figures for ... what? The principle that freedom of expression doesn't apply to persons who actually can make meaningful criticism? The principle that lessé majesty, like leprosy, is contagous?

If that sounds wicked dumb, a lamp post only the bottle or fume afflicted would lean into, John Baldacci said he had no plans renew last year's agreement with Citgo -- the one that cost Pleasant Point Gov. Melvin Francis his life last January -- on behalf of all the poor households of Maine.

Posted by EBW at 08:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The jury pool exclusion of Indians in Kesser v. Cambra took place in Humbolt County. I came across this yesterday when looking up the history of the Mendocino Indians and the Mendocino Indian Reservation. MacKerricher SP is what is left of the 25,000 acre Mendocino Indian Reservation. In 1867 the land was sold off to settlers at $1.25 per acre. Thirty yeas later the Congress would terminate the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma to "ease" the transition of the Oklahoma Territory to Statehood. It took half a century to restore government to government relations between the US and the CNO. The Yokayo Tribe of Indians of the Yokayo Rancheria and the Noyo River Indian Community in Fort Bragg are still waiting.

From: Declaration of Lester J. Marston in Support of Defendant's Motion Challenging the Composition of the Jury Panel link.

The Jury Commissioner in Mendocino County refuses to utilize Mendocino County tribal voter registration lists as one of the lists in selecting jury panels for criminal cases here in Mendocino County, even though these lists are available and even though they contain one hundred percent (100%) of all of the enrolled members of every federally recognized Indian tribe located in Mendocino County.

This affects the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians, the Cahto Indian Tribe, the Manchester-Point Arena Band of Pomo Indians, the Potter Valley Band of Pomo Indians, the Pinoleville Indian Community, the Little River Band of Pomo Indians, the Covelo Indian Community, the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians, and the Guidiville Band of Pomo Indians. In addition to these federally recognized Indian tribes, there are two non-federally recognized Indian tribes in Mendocino County, the Yokayo Tribe of Indians of the Yokayo Rancheria and the Noyo River Indian Community in Fort Bragg.

Todo: Contact Harriet Rhoades, Spokesperson, Noyo River Indian Community, P.O. Box 91, Fort Bragg, CA 95437. (707) 964-2647, starfish at pacific dot net. We're visitors.

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Several years ago I wrote up the numbers on Abenaki incarcerations in Vermont while Howard Dean was governor. These are from the Canadian Federation for the past 12 months.

1. Established in 1991, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) concluded that the justice system has failed Aboriginal people, the key indicator of which was their steadily increasing and disproportionate representation in Canadian correctional facilities.
   
2. While Aboriginal peoples comprise 2.7 percent of the adult Canadian population, approximately 18.5 percent of offenders now serving federal sentences are of First Nations, Métis and Inuit ancestry (Correctional Service Canada, 2006.) Approximately 68 percent of federal Aboriginal offenders are First Nations, 28 percent are Métis and 4 percent Inuit.
   
3. This overrepresentation is particularly acute in the West, but it exists across Canada. In the Prairies, where Aboriginal peoples comprise a larger proportion of the general population, they account for a staggering 60 percent of offenders.
   
4. Aboriginal women are even more overrepresented than Aboriginal men in the criminal justice system, representing 30 percent of women in federal prisons.
   
5. While the federally incarcerated population in Canada declined by 12.5 percent from 1996 to 2004, the number of First Nations people in federal institutions increased by 21.7 percent. The number of incarcerated First Nations women also increased -- by 74.2 percent over the same period.
   
6. Aboriginal youth are also overrepresented among criminalized young people. Research shows that Aboriginal young people are criminalized and jailed at earlier ages and for longer periods of time than non-Aboriginal young people.
   
7. In 2000, 41.3 percent of all federally incarcerated Aboriginal offenders were 25 years of age or younger. First Nations youth are the fastest growing demographic group in Canada, and it is expected that this will have a significant impact on the criminal justice system.
   
8. Should the current trend continue unchecked, the Aboriginal population in Canada's correctional institutions could reach the 25 percent mark in less than 10 years.
   

1. The higher rate of incarceration for Aboriginal peoples has been linked to systemic discrimination and attitudes based on racial or cultural prejudice, as well as economic and social deprivation, substance abuse and a cycle of violence across generations.
   
2. As a group, Aboriginal offenders tend to be younger, are more likely to be incarcerated for a violent offence, have much higher needs (relating to employment and education, for example) and have had more extensive involvement with the criminal justice system as youths.
   
3. An extremely high percentage of Aboriginal offenders report early drug and/or alcohol use (80 percent), physical abuse (45 percent), parental absence or neglect (41 percent) and poverty (35 percent) in their family backgrounds. Twenty-eight percent of Aboriginal offenders had been raised as wards of the community, and 15 percent had been sent to residential schools. Aboriginal offenders also suffer from a higher incidence of health problems.
   

1. The Correctional Service relies on risk assessment tools that have been repeatedly found to overclassify Aboriginal offenders unjustifiably. Aboriginal offenders are initially placed in higher levels of security and are placed in minimum-security institutions at only half the rate of non-Aboriginal offenders.
   
2. Like their male counterparts, Aboriginal women are overrepresented in the maximum-security prison population, making up 46 percent of federally sentenced women in the maximum-security population, 35 percent in the medium-security population and 23 percent in the minimum-security population in 2003.
   
3. Placement in maximum security and segregation reduces access to programming intended to prepare inmates for eventual release and to increase their chances for successful reintegration into their communities.
   
4. Aboriginal offenders are admitted to segregation more often than non-Aboriginal offenders.
   
5. The proportion of full parole applications resulting in reviews by the National Parole Board is lower for Aboriginal offenders, due in part to high full parole waiver rates.
   
6. The grant rates at full parole for Aboriginal offenders fall below the rates for non-Aboriginal offenders. Aboriginal offenders are released and supervised on statutory release at a significantly higher rate.
   
7. Longer periods of incarceration and more statutory releases for Aboriginal offenders have contributed to less time in the community for programming/intervention than for non-Aboriginal offenders. There has been an increase in the number and percentage of Aboriginal offenders suspended/temporarily detained over the past few years.
   
8. The proportion of Aboriginal offenders under community supervision (31 percent) is significantly smaller than the proportion of non-Aboriginal offenders (41 percent) serving their sentences on conditional release in the community.
   
9. Parole is more likely to be revoked for Aboriginal offenders than non-Aboriginal offenders. The rate of revocation for breach of parole conditions (i.e., no new criminal offence) is higher for Aboriginal offenders.
   
10. Aboriginal offenders are re-admitted to federal custody (two-year post-warrant expiry date) more frequently than non-Aboriginal offenders, with a higher percentage of re-admissions for a Schedule I (violent) offence.
    
11. Aboriginal offenders continue to be overrepresented as a proportion of offenders referred for detention and detained compared to the other offender groups. In 2004 -- 2005, Aboriginal offenders accounted for 30.4 percent of all offenders referred for detention and 30.7 percent of offenders detained, although they represent 18.5 percent of the federally incarcerated population serving determinate sentences.
    
12. Correctional Service's own statistics regarding correctional outcomes for offenders confirm that, despite years of task force reports, internal reviews, national strategies, partnership agreements and action plans, there has been no significant progress in improving the overall situation of Aboriginal offenders during the last 20 years.
    

1. There are significant challenges in bridging the gap between traditional correctional approaches, and Aboriginal methods of justice and reconciliation. The ongoing support and involvement of elders, Aboriginal liaison officers, community representatives and Aboriginal organizations is viewed as key to closing the outcome gaps for First Nations, Métis and Inuit offenders.
   
2. Advocates for Aboriginal inmates have long stressed that Aboriginal people and Aboriginal organizations must be directly involved in developing and providing appropriate programs, and actively involved in the evaluation of current assessment tools used by CSC.
   

1. implement a security classification process that ends the overclassification of Aboriginal offenders;
   
2. increase timely access to programs and services that will significantly reduce time spent in medium- and maximum-security institutions;
   
3. significantly increase the number of Aboriginal offenders housed at minimum-security institutions;
   
4. significantly increase the use of unescorted temporary absences and work releases;
   
5. significantly increase the number of Aboriginal offenders appearing before the National Parole Board at their earliest eligibility dates;
   
6. build capacity for and increase the use of section 84 and section 81 agreements with Aboriginal communities; and,
   
7. significantly improve (above the required employment equity level) the overall rate of its Aboriginal workforce at all levels in institutions where a majority of offenders are of Aboriginal ancestry.
   

source: The Office of the Correctional Investigator, Canada

Posted by EBW at 12:21 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

So Russell Means is going to have to take the medicine handed out by the Diné courts for domestic violence.

This spares me from having to write a scathing (albeit unread) critique of a court whos standard of scholarship is ... just make stuff up.

Posted by EBW at 04:21 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The election held Tuesday on the Ridge resulted in a three-way tie. The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation election officials said the results are too close to call, which has Cecelia Fire Thunder three votes behind the second place finnisher, and they've called in the U.S. Census Bureau to look over some 300 contested votes. A result is expected later today. The constitution and by-laws of the Oglala Sioux Tribe call for run-off's between the top two vote getters absent an absolute majority, so the three votes in 300 are ... a subject of interest.

After Cecelia Fire Thunder was removed from office, Alex White Plume became the acting President of the OST, and John Yellow Bird Steel been elected President twice in the past.

Trivial Pursuits: William Fire Thunder was Chairman of the PRIR Election Board that supervised the vote on the PRIR constitution and by-laws of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of the Pine Ridge Reservation, which Harold L. Ickes, then Secretary of the Interior of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority granted him by the act of June 18, 1934 (48 Stat. 984), as amended, approved in 1936.

More Trivial Pursuits:
ARTICLE III OATHS OF OFFICE
Section I Each member of the tribal council and each officer elected or appointed hereunder, shall take an oath of office prior to assuming the duties thereof, by which oath he shall pledge himself to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and this constitution and by-laws.
(Oath) I, ________________, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies; carry out faithfully and impartially the duties of my office to the best of my ability; promote and protect the best interests of my tribe, the Oglala Sioux, in accordance with this constitution and by-laws.

The text support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies is an interesting artifact.

Posted by EBW at 05:52 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A few days ago Mark Grimsley posted Populate a History Department, positing a mid-western US college needing staffing. Being an idiot I made a suggestion, three actually -- someone who works in FIL, someone who works in the contact period, and someone who does cultigens. Naturally, the idea of Indians having histories, or indigenous technology having historical significance, is just plain silly. The real question is a medievalist or an islamisist or a historian of gender or ... . One commenter even suggested wasting a slot on ConLaw. I share my Crim teacher's contempt for ConLaw. Its like New England weather. Highly variable.

The Supremes have some Indian cases this session, as they do nearly every session.

Zuni Public School District, et al. v. Department of Education, et al. (05-1508) is more interesting than simply niggling about the formula used to distribute Impact Aid.

Petitioners believe that an issue of such magnitude and consequence should receive meaningful review. This need is not met by a quasi-judicial review by the Secretary of his own actions.

A case MB want's reviewed is BP America v. Burton, et al. (formerly Watson) (05-669), which has an amicus brief by the Mountain States Legal Foundation and an amicus brief by the American Petroleum Institute, as well as one by the Jicarilla Apache Nation, et al. Its all about the Minerals Management Service, tribal leases and missing royalties.

The one I care about the most is Means v. Navajo Nation (05-1614). Its is Oliphant, the Duro Fix, and all the Rehnquist madness in one tasteful zit. The Court is going to screw it up because they are going to "reason" just as Rehnquist did in Oliphant, and ignore the stare decisis record of actual treaties for synthetic constructs that will, to the uneducated, starting with the Supremes themselves, pass as "the way things actually were". But still, read the Navajo Supreme Court Opinion. Then read the Ninth Circuit Opinion for the Opinion of the Sureal Other. We won't know for at least a week if the Court will grant cert on Means.

Incidently, the sectarian composition of the Court is as follows:
Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Antonin Scalia , Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Anthony Kennedy are Catholic. Justice David Souter and Justice John Paul Stevens are Protestant. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Stephen Breyer are Jewish.

Posted by EBW at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Bruce Whalen (Oglala Sioux Tribe) is running against Stephanie Herseth for the South Dakota at-large seat.

Alex White Plume (Oglala Sioux Tribe) is running against Cecilia Fire Thunder, the first woman ever elected to serve as President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and subsequently impeached, making her the first modern executive of the OST to be impeached for speaking out against a policy of the government of the settler state of South Dakota.

Both have said things that interest me.

It is a given that Bruce Whalen has to support the RNCC's positions. Of interest is his rational for a photo ID to obtain access to the ballot.

If it becomes law, it would not affect American Indian turnout. Increasing Indian turnout in recent elections is proof of that. I don't see that that's a problem in Indian Country at all.

Alex White Plume has proposed a law that would forbid members of the tribe from running for president who do not speak Lakota.

As a matter of indigenous political theory, non-involvement in the electoral system of colonial polities has its adherents. Obviously, Bruce Whalen is not advocating that Indians not vote in American elections, a (debated) extension of the American franchise after our ancestors' sacrifices, for Canada, and the US, in the 1914-1918 European War. Nor is he advocating that Indians not be allowed vote in American elections, a retraction of the American franchise. He exists on a much, much simpler plane of existence. He is aware of voter suppression, most Indians in American politics are, and also aware of rolls suppression in Tribal politics -- if not in the OST, then elsewhere. Still, if one thinks that Indians vote at polling places they control, with enrolled individual voters presenting photo IDs that originate from their respective Tribal Governments, then the additional cost (discrimination against the poor) and additional complexity (discrimination against the elderly, traditional, and handicapped) issues appear to be less compelling than at polling places off reservation. However, for Indians living in Rapid, voting at polling places in Rapid, voter suppression is still as real as the hostility towards Indians in Cowboy bars.

A lot of Indians live off-rez. The Indian vote matters. If you don't think so, like Markos and the rest of his following circa Fall 2003, look at the performance of Howard Dean vs Wesley Clark in the February 3rd primaries in states with Indians voting:

Arizona: Kerry (43%), Clark (27%), Dean (14%)
New Mexico: Clark (30%), Edwards (30%), Kerry (27%)
North Dakota: Edwards (45%), Kerry (30%)
Oklahoma: Clark (30%), Edwards (30%), Kerry (27%)

Water under bridges. We supported Howard's run for DNC Chair. But subtracting one Indian voter in five in the off-rez polling places because of successful "Voter ID" vote suppression, sharply reduces the likelihood of the Indian Vote being significant enough to effect outcomes. We don't just have racists in the Republican Party doing anti-Indian voter suppression during the general election, we also have racists in the Democratic Party doing anti-Indian voter suppression during both the primary and the general election. And that is something Bruce Whalen should know.

Section 16 of the Wheeler-Howard Act of 1934, or informally, the Indian New Deal, reads as follows:

Sec. 16. Any Indian tribe, or tribes, residing on the same reservation, shall have the right to organize for its common welfare, and may adopt an appropriate constitution and bylaws, which shall become effective when ratified by a majority vote of the adult members of the tribe, or of the adult Indians residing on such reservation, as the case may be, at a special election authorized by the Secretary of the Interior under such rules and regulations as he may prescribe. Such constitution and bylaws when ratified as aforesaid and approved by the Secretary of the Interior shall be revocable by an election open to the same voters and conducted in the same manner as herein above provided. Amendments to the constitution and bylaws may be ratified and approved by the Secretary in the same manner as the original constitution and bylaws. [second part omitted, ebw]

The IGRA makes no mention of voter qualifications, other than the residency requirement, in a period before the massive resettlements by the BIA of on-rez Indians to Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, and elsewhere. It stands in a somewhat unique position in the history of FIL, in a universe without enrollment criteria other than the Blood Quantum, without Eastern Indians, Oklahoma Indians, California Indians, and Alaskan Indians, though it makes nominal reference to "persons of one-half or more Indian blood" and "Eskimos and other aboriginal peoples of Alaska". A world of Plains, Basin, and Range Indians. Buckskins and Blankets.

Could the Jay Random Tribe of Indians adopt a constitution and bylaws that limited the franchise more restrictively than the enabling legislation? Using criteria not used by the United States? A native-language requirement or a hereditary priest clan membership? We don't think so. And if the criteria for the franchise cannot be gamed, can the criteria for elected office? Could eligibility to hold office be restricted to hereditary clan membership?

Alex White Plume has a suggestion for how to improve the political life of enrollees in the OST, and there is no doubt that the political life of enrollees in the OST sucks and has done so for decades. But even if "our language is our culture" for every enrolled member OST interested in holding the highest elected office of the OST, is that a reliable, exclusionary criteria for office holders?

Jacqueline Keeler (Yankton/Diné) of TiyospayeNow has blogged about this as well:

Someone tell White Plume (someone fluent in Lakota) that corruption and the venality of politicians is the same in any language. So how will they enforce the rule? Not many fluent in Lakota anymore-- how to explain the disenfranchisement of such a large number of Oglala? There are about 18,000 Oglala, 3,000 self-identified as Lakota-speaking. In the entire hemisphere there are only 14,000 Lakota speakers (that's including Canada). In a previous post I noted that the latest census numbers for Sioux was 120,000 (not including Canada, but including Nakota and Dakota). In Pine Ridge, that leaves about 16 per cent of the population to rule the rest. Probably less than that since the number is self-reported and of various abilities. Who knows how many would pass a Lakota fluency test if required for the Presidency?

I trust neither man will prevail electorally. We support the renewed candidacy of Cecilia Fire Thunder for the office of Chief Executive of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, who's lands we camp on from time to time.

Posted by EBW at 12:18 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

RAWLINSON, Circuit Judge, dissenting:
After the United States Supreme Court's ruling in Batson v Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), no prosecutor worth his salt is going to come right out and say: "The defendant in this case is Native American. I do not want any Native Americans on the jury because Native American jurors might be more reluctant to convict Native American defendants." The prosecutor in this case came as close to this admission as we are likely ever to see. Not only did he use his peremptory challenges to exclude every prospective Native American juror, he candidly admitted that his decision was driven by the race of the prospective jurors.

To understand the magnitude of the prosecutor's actions, it is important to consider the sequence of events leading to the defense's Wheeler challenge.

The trial court identified three Native American prospective jurors who were peremptorily challenged by the prosecution: Ms. Rindels, Ms. Lawton and Ms. Smithfield. The prosecutor gave the following explanation for excusing Ms. Rindels from the jury panel:

My experience is the [N]ative Americans who are employed by the tribe are a little more prone to associate themselves with the culture and beliefs of the tribe than they are with the mainstream system, and my experience is that they are sometimes resistive of the criminal justice system generally and somewhat suspicious of the system. She was pretentious in my mind and self-important with the thought that only she could complete the necessary paperwork which would get the grant. She was emotional about the system as I indicated before. Her daughter had been molested by her father, and for that reason I'm assuming that the living situation was indicative of something of a dysfunctional family. I viewed her as somewhat unstable, fairly weak, and somebody who I thought would be easily swayed by the defense.

She would be commuting from the Willow Creek area. We're going into the winter. That sometimes is [a] fairly hazardous commute, although she had been commuting from where she lived to Trinity County and Weaverville and that is equally hazardous, but sometimes the road is closed, and that sometimes can affect our ability to go forward, and there is a certain flow to the proceedings that I frankly don't like to see disrupted if I can help it.

She also was the individual who wrote a letter to the Court to reemphasize how important she thought her position was and how important that she thought it was that she be there.

Now, I know we've had an awful lot of people who've talked about that, and we've had an awful lot of teachers, in fact I can't think of one teacher who didn't think they were pretty important and needed to be at their school, but we've got teachers on the panel, but she seemed overly concerned with that, took the time to sit down and write another letter to the Court about that, and for those reasons I didn't think that she was an appropriate juror in this case.

[I]n this county we've had Dr. Roy Alsop come in here and explain to the courts and I've seen this on the criminal calendar, child molesting is okay in certain [N]ative American cultures, and we can't treat [N]ative American child molesters the same way we treat other child molesters, and have to treat them through the [I]ndian culture center and there are a whole bunch of people that violate our laws that are [N]ative Americans and they go much more often through the [N]ative American system than the criminal system, and to say that does not exist is frankly incorrect.

Although this case had absolutely nothing to do with child molesting, the prosecutor took great pains to inform the court that, at least in his view, the Native American culture is at odds with the criminal justice system.

Against this factual backdrop, we must examine whether the California Court of Appeal's ruling upholding the denial of the defendants' Wheeler/Batson motions was an unreasonable determination of the facts.

The jury so obtained convicted the petitioner of first degree murder with special circumstances and the petitioner was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The petitioner is not an Indian.

Posted by EBW at 09:59 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Lucy Allen is a descendant of individuals listed on the Dawes Rolls, as am I. She seeks to become a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, as do I. Prior to March 7th, 2006, she could not, yet I could. After that date, we both can. At some point in the proximal future, she may not, yet I still can. This is about that.

Article III, § 1 of the 1975 Constitution defines eligibility for tribal membership thusly:

All members of the Cherokee Nation must be citizens as proven by reference to the Dawes Commission Rolls, including the Deleware Cherokees of Article II of the Deleware Agreement dated the 8^th day of May, 1867, and the Shawnee Cherokees as of Article III of the Shawnee Agreement dated the 9^th day of June, 1869, and/or their descendants.

11 Cherokee Nation Code (Annotated) § 12 defines eligibility for tribal membership thusly:

A. Tribal membership is derived only through proof of Cherokee blood based on the Final Rolls.

B. The Registrar will issue tribal membership to a person who can prove that he or she is an original enrollee listed on the Final Rolls by blood or who can prove to at least one direct ancestor listed by blood on the Final Rolls.

The entry which Ms. Allen cites in support of her application for membership is anotated "F" or "CF" or appears on a page captioned "Cherokee Freedmen", and meets only the Article III, § 1 criteria.

Ms. Allen is the descendent of persons owned by Cherokees, and freed consequent to the abolition of slavery, and made citizens of the Cherokee Nation by an ammendment to the Cherokee Constitution of 1839, subsequent to the Treaty with the United States of 1866 in which the Cherokee Nation agreed to extend citizenship to Freedmen and agreed to give them the same rights as "native" Cherokees, and recorded as members and citizens of the Cherokee Nation, eventually by the Dawes Commission.

As always in FIL analysis, the first question is jurisdictional. Is the controlling authority US Constitutional Law, with all its historical contradictions about race and equity? Do we look to the 14th Amendment? Is the controlling authority Federal Indian Law? Do we look to Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez? Or is the controlling authority some other body of law?

Further, what is correct critical framework to approach which ever authority is controlling? Is it within a stare decisis framework, that is, within a developing legalistic framework? Is it within a national liberation framework, that is, within a developing political framework? Is this about human rights?

Are Cherokee Freedmen and Freedwomen Cherokee?

Are Choctaw Freedmen and Freedwomen Choctaw? Are Chickasaw Freedmen and Freedwomen Chickasaw? Are Muscogee (Creek) Freedmen and Freedwomen Muscogee (Creek)? Are Seminole Freedmen and Freedwomen Seminole?

Next week I'll discuss the issues and the three opinions on Allen. Until then, try your hand at issue spotting. And I do have an opinion on the merits of the Allen case.

Posted by EBW at 10:02 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A parcel of land is claimed by polity A and by polity B. Both polities assert exclusive jurisdictions over the parcel.

A member of polity A brings an action in a court of polity A to eject a member of polity B from the parcel. The preciding officer of the court of polity A grants to the member of polity A an ejection order against the member of polity B from the parcel. The member of polity A presents the ejection order by a court of polity A against the member of polity B to the armed forces of polity A, and the armed forces of polity A conduct an armed force operation against the the member of polity B on the parcel.

The member of polity B forcefully resists the armed force operation against the the member of polity B on the parcel by the armed forces polity A, and remains in possession of the parcel.

The political departments of polities A and B begin negociations over the claims to the parcel.

The preciding officer of the court of polity A orders the political departments of polity A to cease negociations with the political department of polity B, until the ejection order issued by a court of polity A against the member of polity B from the parcel is successfully enforced by the armed forces of polity A.

The rational given by the preciding officer of the court of polity A for its order to the political departments of polity A to cease negociations with the political department of polity B, is that the rule of law must be restored, and officials of polity A must obey the orders of the courts of polity A.

Yes, you got that right. Superior Court Justice David Marshall has ordered both the Canadian federal and Onterio provincial governments to use force against Six Nations over the Douglas Creek Estates.

I expect that Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's government will appeal David Marshall's order, but the fact of the matter is that the Canadian press present the narrative of polity A (above), without breaking into laughter. The A narrative is about as sensible as the "Queen of Tarts" rhyme, which first appeared in print in 1782, contemporanious with the 1784 award by the British Crown to the Six Nations (Okarahsonha kenh Onkwehonwene) of the larger Haldimand Deed, which includes the Douglas Creek Estates.

The occupation of the Douglas Creek Estates construction site has a rational purpose: to reclaim territory that was wrongfully taken from the Six Nations reserve and, at longer range, to force a more just and timely handling of the many Native land suits.

Prior posts on the Six Nations v Province of Ontario and Federation of Canada: April 26, April 21, April 21, and March 30.

Posted by EBW at 08:21 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

[Orignally posed at Bobbie O'Neill's Native Unity. With Democrats shunning Tribes because they can't bring themselves to either (a) get a clue about the depth and breath of the Trust corruption, or (b) bring themselves to run against racism coded as "morality", or (c) are "co-beneficiaries" along with Pombo et alia, and Republicans running from the legacy of Nixon as fast as Rehnquist's smoking wings and cloven hooves will carry them, and Progressives and Greens systematically unable to deal with the jurisdictional distinctness of Indians, and an ecological framework that doesn't begin, and unfortunately end, in German Romantic Pastoralism, momentarily at least, it looks like we're heading back to 1924, the Land Before Time. Here's how our peers in Kahnawake/Akwesasne, play stickball. Enoy. ebw]

JEFF HEINRICH, The (Montreal) Gazette
Published: Sunday, January 15, 2006

Mike Delisle Jr. had some advice last month for the man who coaches his son's junior football team. It had nothing to do with sports. It had to do with the federal election.

Delisle is grand chief of Kahnawake, the Mohawk reserve just south of Montreal. The coach, Charlie Ghorayeb, is running as the Liberal candidate in Chateauguay-St. Constant.

Officially, the riding includes Kahnawake. But the Mohawks see things differently, as Delisle pointed out to his friend.

"He asked me whether it was worth his while to place advertisements for his campaign in our local newspaper and also in our post boxes, and he even invited me to one of his fundraisers," Delisle recalled.

The aspiring candidate needn't have bothered asking. The vast majority of Mohawks - who make up Canada's most populous native bands - don't vote in Canadian elections, on principle.

"I told him the ads would be a waste of his time and resources, and I politely declined the invitation," said Delisle, whose story was confirmed by Ghorayeb.

"He understood."

Welcome to Mohawk country, an election-free zone. Unlike most other Canadian native communities, the 9,300 Mohawks of Kahnawake, along with their 10,000 brethren of Akwesasne, which straddles the Canada-U.S. border near Cornwall, Ont., boycott federal and provincial elections.

The Mohawks believe in governing themselves first, not helping non-natives govern, whether that means Canada, Quebec or anyplace else.

Voting in "alien nation" elections "places us in submission to foreign governments and as a result alienates us from our own," according to the lead editorial this week in The Eastern Door, Kahnawake's community paper. "You can't stand with one foot in two canoes."

It's an old position, dating back at least to 1960, when Ottawa first gave natives the right to vote. But these days, the Mohawk way runs contrary to a trend in Canadian aboriginal politics, whereby Assembly of First Nations and Metis National Council leaders, as well as the Grand Council of the Crees in Quebec, are working with mainstream political parties to push aboriginal issues.

Fresh from negotiating a $5-billion aid deal in Kelowna, B.C. in November with Prime Minister Paul Martin and the premiers, national aboriginal leaders want natives to vote the Liberals back in on Jan. 23, or at least support New Democrats. The Metis believe their ballots could affect as many as 33 close ridings in the western provinces and up north, where natives are as much as one-quarter of some ridings' population.

The Conservatives? Forget it - they don't have any real official support.The Bloc Quebecois? In Quebec, they may be backed by the Crees, but the Mohawks? Never.

The Tories aren't getting the native vote for two reasons. First, the aboriginals fear they're not committed to the Kelowna deal. Last week Tory finance critic Monte Solberg said it had been "crafted at the last moment on the back of a napkin on the eve of an election (and) we're not going to honour that," a position the party quickly denied.

Second, a trusted advisor of Conservative leader Stephen Harper is Tom Flanagan, a Calgary political science professor whose publications (one of which is titled First Nations? Second Thoughts) the aboriginals view as anti-native.

The only hint of aboriginal support for the Tories came in a news report Friday that the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, which speaks for Canada's off-reserve natives, will endorse the party before election day. So far it hasn't happened.

In Quebec, Mohawks shun the the Bloc for the simple reason that it's a separatist party. Not that the Bloc hasn't tried to win them over.

On the highways leading to and from Kahnawake, for example, there are only two signs on native land advertising the election, and both are Bloc. The reserve has banned campaign ads, but the Bloc found a way around that by buying space on big commercial billboards already standing on real estate owned by the Mohawks.

Six weeks ago, at the start of the campaign, zealous Bloc volunteers started strapping campaign posters to utility poles, but after residents complained, Kahnawake Peacekeepers ordered Bloc campaigners off the territory, along with their signs.

Getting out the native vote isn't just something the Bloc and other parties would like. It's also a priority of Elections Canada. Since the early 1990s, the federal agency has aimed campaigns at the country's 735,000 registered natives, trying to convince them - in publications in English, French and 11 aboriginal languages - that voting is key to ensuring their self-determination.

In this and the last four elections, the agency has hired aboriginal community relations officers, elders and youth guides to get voters to polling stations in an increasing number of ridings - 48 in the 2004 election, 132 in this one. The goal is to increase aboriginal turnout substantially. It's usually minimal, about one-sixth the number of non-native votes, the agency estimates.

But Kahnawake is tough to crack. Turnout there is, simply, nil.

Any local resident who wants to vote - and of the 9,300 population there are perhaps half a dozen who do so each election, all of them non-natives married to natives, according to band council spokesperson Joe Delaronde - have to go into Chateauguay to do it. There are no polling stations in Kahnawake.

The Mohawks do follow the election on TV and in the newspapers. After all, they say, they're part of the story, however indirectly.

"It's not a matter of not being interested in the issues - we are interested, because we ourselves are one of the issues in Canadian politics," said Delisle, the grand chief. "We just don't consider ourselves part of the Canadian electorate, because we don't consider ourselves Canadian citizens."

jheinrich@thegazette.canwest.com

Posted by EBW at 08:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Abenakis are not represented by Jack Abramoff. Neither the Vermont band that has spent several decades jumping through hoops in pursuit of federal recognition, nor we Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusettes Abenakis, who haven't.

Very few Tribal Governments have gaming operations in metro areas. Only Foxwoods and the Sun, both in Connecticut, are competitive with the historic, organized crime originated, Atlantic City and Las Vegas / Reno gaming operations, and the modern gaming operations that exploit jurisdictional margins, the so-called "riverboats". These latter operations, and state-sponsored gaming, grew as progressive taxation as a theory of public policy failed.

I personally don't pay much attention to Indian Gaming, though I do know Ernie Stevens, Jr., who heads the National Indian Gaming Association (NIGA). It (gaming) was front-and-center in our minds during the Fall '03 election in Maine, but only because the Penobscot Nation and the Passamaquoddy Tribe qualified a ballot initiative to allow Maine to give them the right to operate a gaming operation anywhere in Maine -- in particular close to the New Hampshire boarder on the Portland-to-Washington rail-and-road corridor.

That is Abenaki land.

We cut the masters for the "No Casinos on Abenaki Land" posters in September and began the frankly icky task of approaching the moralistic bombastic racists of the "No on 1" campaign, which is the Maine Democratic Party, when we were saved by the polling data. By mid-October it was clear that the Penobscots had already lost the election, and it wasn't necessary for Maine Abenakis, or any other Maine Indians, to go on the record against the ballot question.

Indians and the Governments of Indians are not to blame for the failure of progressive taxation as a theory of social duty in the non-Indian and mercilessly dominant culture. Indians and the Governments of Indians did not write the body of Federal Indian Law that lead up to CALIFORNIA v. CABAZON BAND OF MISSION INDIANS, 480 U.S. 202 (1987) 480 U.S. 202.

The world of Jack Abramoff, of high-stakes Class II and Class III gaming conducted under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), is not universal. Tribal casinos located in the eastern United States generated roughly $3.8 billion in FY02. Those located in the Central United States recorded gross revenues of approximately $5.9 billion, while those located in the Western United States generated close to $4.8 billion. In FY02 12% of Indian gaming establishments generated 65% of Indian gaming revenues. Operations located in the populous areas of the West Coast (primarily California) represent the fastest growing sector of the industry. Most of Indian Country is far from profitable under any economic theory, from tourist hunting to tourist vacationing to crunchy eco-tourism to ... tourist gaming.

But every time a tribal council talks about jurisdiction, even the land use zoning code and a shack at the end of a fish pier on a pond, the good people of both parties, Democratic and Republican, run around gobbling about casinos and morality.

Abramoff doesn't represent Tribes. He's a bag man for the European Mafia that games morality as an industry. And when he's a minor memory doing time in a nicer place than any Indian felon will ever see, the Sicilians, mostly ethnic English, will be as busy as ever.

Posted by EBW at 05:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Tribes and trade unions collide over rights to organize, usually in the context of (large and successful, if heavily leveraged and operated, as well as financed, by non-Indian corporations) Indian gaming, and this has the superficial appearence of pitting progressives against ... Indians. Unglossed, it is the application of a universal totalitarian theory to support expropriation of resources arising from jurisdictional boundaries, by leaving them intact where they create resource, and simultaniously removing them where they prevent expropriation of the created resource.

Short form: No one would care about unionizing Indian Country if Harrah's weren't doing business in Indian Country.

I'll write more on this later, and I've a note to send to TribalLaw. Here's the happy para of the happy ruling.

Conclusion

Based upon the foregoing, I now direct the clerk to enter judgment for the Aroostook Band of Micmacs on Counts I and III of the complaint. I further permanetly enjoin Defendant Ryan and the Commission defendants from applying the Maine Human Rights Act and the Maine Whistleblower's Protection Act against the Band because under the provisions of 25 U.S.C. § 1721 note § 7(a) the Band enjoys a statutory right of self-governance that prohibits the enforcement of state employment discrimination laws against the Band. In addition, I enjoin Defendant Ryan and the Commission defendants from applying Title VII, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e through 2000e-17 to the Band and from filing charges of discrimination against the Band with the Eq ual Employment Opportunity Commission. The remaining counts of the complaint and the remaining defendants are dismissed as no further relief remains to be granted.

The Aroostook Band of Micmacs are now free to write the laws of the Aroostook Band of Micmacs, which might be direct incorporation of the best texts available, or the worst text available. The basic relationship of Maine's drafters and the Band's drafters needs to be re-examined now, with harmony and respect replacing the now settled struggle over jurisdictional metes and bounds.

Posted by EBW at 06:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

When we were at Sleeping Bear dunes I happened to be at the Leelanau Coffee Roasting Company (featuring fine caffine and data) one day, and ended up being asked by the editors of the Glen Arbor Sun to read and respond to a piece they'd just published by a local contributor.

After I read it I looked up from the page to the two men and said it was very good writing.

It came to mind forcefully today as more and more children came to the playground today. We've been nearly alone here for a week, and people are already exotic. These were even more so. Most of the boys were in camos, with paint. The kind I used to wear when doing ambush exercises, with an M-14, in 1972/3. Even the girls were in Rambo face paint, So I'm posting Ojibway artist, author, and basket maker Lois Beardlee's "The Shirt".

The Shirt

By Lois Beardslee
Sun contributor

"No. You can't have the shirt."

"But I want it."

"I know. But you can't have the shirt."

"My friends will think it's cool!"

"I know. But you can't have the shirt."

It's on sale, isn't it?"

"Yes. But you can't have the shirt."

It is a camouflage design, in muted shades of military beiges and greens. The corporations that control America want to go to war again. And they are marketing children's clothing as early recruitment groundwork. The shirts are cheaper than any other shirts. They are in all the stores, and they are cheaper than all of the other shirts. It comes in other colors, that camouflage pattern. Oranges. Reds. Muted. Blending. Bloodlike.

"It comes in other colors, too. Look."

"I know. But you can't have the shirt."

"Why?"

She wants to tell him.

"Why?"

She wants to tell him. But she knows that he is still too young to understand modern military operations. He is too young to understand death. He is too young to understand permanent loss of faculties, of limb. He thinks it's cool. Blood and gore and stuff like in the horror movies. Like a Hallowe'en mask.

"It's cool."

Like a Hallowe'en mask.

"Mom. I said, it's cool."

"I know. But you can't have the shirt."

But nothing like a Hallowe'en mask.

"I could wear it for Halloween."

"No, I wouldn't let you."

"Why not?"

"I don't want you to be a soldier for Halloween."

"I could put fake blood on."

"It's called Hallowed Evening."

"What?"

"Hallowe'en. It's short for Hallowed Evening. And that means Holy Evening. It's supposed to be a Holy Evening."

"Who cares?"

"I care." It's supposed to be about honoring the dead, she's fairly sure, not just about gruesome ceremonies and an association with all things gory. It's supposed to be about loving the dead, loving their memories. And scaring the kids is just a bonus. Because scaring kids a little bit is important to keeping them alive and safe. That's why we've got stories about bad things. They are preventative stories. They are the true warriors' stories. And it's fun scaring the kids, too. It's fun hearing children squeal with delight.

Ima Pipiig's mind is wandering. It is taking her away from the urban development fringing the once-small town of Traverse City, Michigan. She is in small graveyards in the woods. Small patches of history and intertwined lives. She is sprinkling tobacco on the graves, following her mother, glad for the opportunity to toss and scatter something wildly with her young arms that beg for wide and simple motions without consequence.

She is hiding bundles of fresh sweetgrass behind the gravestones of Indian soldiers, where the white people will not see them and take them away, as souvenirs attesting to the quaintness of northern Michigan's remnant Native inhabitants. The boy is sprinkling tobacco on the graves, following his mother, glad for the opportunity to toss and scatter something wildly with his young arms that beg for wide and simple motions without consequence.

"But I want it."

"No. You can't have the shirt."

"Why?"

It is a camouflage design, in muted shades of military beiges and greens. The corporations that control America want to go to war again. And they are marketing children's clothing as early recruitment groundwork. The shirts are cheaper than any other shirts. They are in all the stores, and they are cheaper than all of the other shirts. It comes in other colors, that camouflage pattern. Oranges. Reds. Muted. Blending. Bloodlike.

He cannot have the shirt because, because -- there is nothing in our oral and written history prior to the advent of the fur trade that refers to protectors being recuited as warriors. There is nothing in our stories, no cultural precedents for the concept of children recruited for future disposability in the form of corporate warriors. Once enlisted, these children are endlessly deployed until death or dismemberment. There is no Anishnabe word for this. There is no Anishnabe concept for this. This came with the fur trade, and our success at adapting to the warfare you brought upon us is being used to recruit us right now.

Ima Pipiig has seen the government posters, distributed in the Native American communities, the ones that talk about Indian warrior traditions. Ima Pipiig knows at this time that the boy is to be protected from the idea of protector as warrior, until he is old enough to know that dead is forever, until he is old enough to know that dismemberment is not cool, until he knows that one must carefully choose what one protects.

"Mom. I want the shirt."

"I know. But you can't have it."

Posted by EBW at 04:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

People will often ask me what tribal sovereignty is really all about, and yesterday in the Boston Globe appeared a good example:

Narragansett chief sachem, others arrested at tax-free tobacco shop
By Michael Mello, Associated Press, 7/14/2003 20:04

CHARLESTOWN, R.I. (AP) The chief sachem and seven other members of the Narragansett Indian Tribe were arrested Monday by state police in what onlookers described as a violent raid of the tribe's new tax-free tobacco shop.

Gov. Don Carcieri called the raid ''truly regrettable, but clearly necessary'' after tribal leaders said they would only close the smoke shop if the governor dropped his opposition to a casino, which the tribe has been trying to build for more than a decade.

Carcieri said the troopers entered the reservation under a court-issued search warrant that he ordered be executed.

''We do not take today's actions lightly,'' Carcieri said. ''We deliberated long and hard before authorizing today's response.''

Chief Sachem Matthew Thomas and other tribal members were arrested as police entered the Narragansett Smoke Shop, which opened Saturday. State police also confiscated the cigarettes that remained on the shelves and took about $900 from the store.

Now, there is no doubt that the Narragansetts are an Indian tribe; like the Mohegans in Connecticut, for centuries they remained just on the periphery of New England white society, often retreating to the Great Swamp, but re-emerging just enough to remind their Rhode Island neighbors whose appropriated land they were living on. And while I don't know the specifics of the Narragansett treaties with the British crown (which then passed onto the US government after separation from England), the US government has recognized a nation-to-nation relationship, according them "federal recognition" status.

Knowing that, imagine Vermont state police entering Canada, breaking into a border town pharmacy, and arresting all the staff for selling prescription drugs to Americans without collecting US taxes. While Canada is not a "protectorate" of the US, as most Indian tribes essentially are, the Constitution specifically forbids any government entity other than the federal government from acting independently for or against another sovereign country. So what is the State of Rhode Island doing, invading a sovereign political entity?

The Supreme Court for years, with the prodding of state and local goverments, has slowly eaten away at much of the core of tribal sovereignty. There are several pending cases in the federal court system which could mean the final death knell for the centuries-old federal-tribal relationship established by scores of treaties written in the blood of our ancestors. One hope is a President who in fact believes in honoring that relationship, who will appoint federal justices who respect tribal sovereignty, and do not seek to expunge indigenous claims and rights. So when Indians and their friends make a big deal over any candidate's stance on tribal sovereignty, think of state troopers around the US being able to walk onto any reservation with impunity. At some point, tribes will say "enough". What happens then is anyone's guess, but I suspect it won't be pretty.

Posted by MB at 06:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)