Senate vs. Native Sovereignty id UAA28530; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 20:21:17 -0400 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the September 11, 1997 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- NEWS FROM INDIAN COUNTRY: FEDS STEP UP ATTACK ON NATIVE SOVEREIGNTY By Mahtowin Part of the government's current war against the poor is an increase in anti-treaty and anti-Indian activity. The workfare requirements that many states have imposed on welfare recipients are a cruel joke on reservations where there are no jobs of any type to be found. Increasingly, legislation and riders in Congress are unveiled assaults on Native sovereignty. Proposals have been made to tax Native business earnings on reservations and to prevent Native people from hunting and fishing on their own territory unless they allow equal access to white "sportspeople." Devastating cuts have been made in the funds that go to Indian reservations, particularly in the areas of health and housing. At the end of August, President Bill Clinton sent a memorandum to the attorney general's office calling for a plan to vastly increase the federal police presence on Native reservations, all in the name of "law and order." Clearly, Clinton intends to put a huge occupying police force on reservations, just as is the case in many urban Black and Latino communities. Now, two little-known riders have been quietly tacked onto a Senate spending bill. One rider calls for means- testing before any money is appropriated to a Native nation. Native leaders say that no city or state government has to meet income requirements to get federal funds, so why should Native nations be singled out? The other rider contains provisions that would force Native nations to waive their right to sovereign immunity from civil lawsuits. If the tribal governments refused to do this, they would lose about half of their overall funding. Without sovereign immunity, tribal governments would be exposed to potentially bankrupting lawsuits and would be unable to operate as governments. The riders are attached to an appropriations bill that contains $100 million to keep the National Endowment for the Arts alive and $700 million for environmental purchases such as a gold mine that threatens Yellowstone National Park and a huge grove of ancient redwood trees in California. FISH STICKS AND RACISM The author of the riders and a key leader of this anti- Indian assault is the senior senator from Washington state, Slade Gorton. Gorton is a virulent racist who has managed to worm his way in as a member of the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs and as the chair of the Senate Subcommittee on the Interior. These committees set policy and recommend spending for public lands and for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. For Gorton to be involved with this is akin to the fox guarding the chicken coop. Gorton has openly stated that his agenda is "to force a significant change in the longstanding status that Indians have had as nations within a nation." Have you ever eaten any Gorton's frozen-fish products? Gorton is a multimillionaire. He is anti-gay, anti- environment, anti-affirmative-action, anti-abortion, anti- welfare, and anti-immigrant. In his home state, he was key in keeping the Hanaford nuclear power plant operating. He supports opening up public lands for timber, mining and other big-business exploitation. Gorton also has a lengthy history of hatred of Native people and nations. A hundred years ago or so, he would have donned a blue U.S. Cavalry uniform and massacred Indians outright. Now, he wears a three-piece suit and is referred to as "the esteemed senior senator from the great state of Washington." In many Midwestern and Western states, there are dozens of anti-treaty groups that are nothing but fronts for the most virulent anti-Native racism. These groups are a peculiar conglomeration of right-wing elements, including militia members, sports hunters and fishers, and the Ku Klux Klan. These anti-treaty organizations want to do away with Native reservations and tribal status completely. They claim that Native nations are getting "special rights." They completely overlook the basic fact that Native nations were forced to give up vast amounts of land; the only thing they received in return was federal recognition of their sovereignty and agreements that they would receive payments and other services. The anti-treaty organizations are backed by funding from energy, timber, real-estate, fishing and other corporate interests. These same forces are also behind increasing numbers of politicians, such as the current governor of Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson. NATIVE POVERTY No one has benefited from these forces more than the senior senator from Washington state, Slade Gorton. Gorton's pockets are stuffed full with dollars from anti-treaty and other right-wing groups and from key Washington big-business interests such as the logging industry. Many opponents of Native treaty rights like Gorton have tried to spread the perception that Native nations shouldn't get federal money because they are getting massively rich from casino operations. This is completely false. Only about one-third of Native nations have any type of gaming enterprise. Indian gaming has yet to lower the high levels of poverty endemic to Indian people nationwide. Poverty among Indians has actually risen during the past decade of the gaming boom. Now more than half of all reservation Indians live below the poverty level. That number has increased from 45 percent in 1980 to 51 percent today. Gorton is not alone in his efforts to dismantle Native sovereignty in any form. The U.S. government has never truly respected that sovereignty, and conducts attacks on it in every day on many fronts. Sovereignty has been given little more than lip service. But even that lip service may soon be eradicated. The forces that seek to weaken Native sovereignty further, and to exploit Native lands and resources, will always be strong as long the capitalist system remains in place. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info@workers.org. 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