CERF / CERA - P.O. Box 0379; Gresham, WI 54128

Last updated: June 25, 2010

Welcome to the Citizens Equal Rights Foundation web site.
    CERF is a sister organization to Citizens Equal Rights Alliance

 

CERA Editorial
                             Indian Casinos -The NEW industry that is…                         
"Too Big To Fail”  

June 21,2010

By Elaine Willman, Board Member
Citizens Equal Rights Alliance  

Imagine a major Indian casino, the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, stating that its slot revenues reported to the state in April have “stabilized,” slipping only 1 percent. The same casino reported $1.3 billion (with a “B”) in gross revenue for 2009. However, the economy is still dark, customers have less disposable income to slough into the tax-exempt slots, and the casino is facing a $15 million lawsuit for a head-on wreck caused by a drunken customer.  

So every member of Connecticut’s congressional officials (except for one on travel) wants to ensure that the Mohegan Sun does not fail; that its “job creation” is always protected. These fool elected officials have promoted and now awarded Stimulus funding of $54 MILLION dollars in the form of a guaranteed loan from USDA to this mega-wealthy tribe.  

And if they default? No problem. Tribes have sovereign immunity. Your taxes are already subsidizing this and 565 other Indian tribes in 35 states for all basic needs—housing, health, law enforcement, roads, environment, scholarships, language, cultural preservation—Yes, you and I, our children and grandchildren, will just continually pay off the casino debts in perpetuity across the country.   

Taxpayers get to: 1) annually fund all basic needs of tribal governments: 2) cover all tribal uncollectable debt due to “sovereign immunity” and 3) keep throwing dollars into tax-exempt tribal slot machines across the country until our local economies get sufficiently and systematically drained of tax revenues. To make this work in the past, taxpayers had to faithfully frequent tax-exempt tribal government businesses. But now it doesn’t matter if you don't go.  They’re too big to fail; the federal agencies will step in and bill you for their losses anyway.  

There are 245 tribes in the lower 48 states entitled to the same perks as the Mohegan Sun. There are 228 tribes in Alaska who receive basic-needs funding, but fortunately, they don’t have casinos yet. Alaskan tribes are actually corporations without jurisdictional authority or gaming so they focus almost entirely on their income producing businesses and their culture. What a concept!
First a few facts:  565 federally recognized (tax-exempt) tribes are located in 35 host states, of which 246 tribes offer gambling casinos under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988.  Is it a coincidence that every  state that hosts tribes with tax-exempt tribal governments, reservations and casinos are also the states experiencing the largest state budget deficits.?  

Is it possible to to calculate the annual cost of this race-based socialist system spreading across the country? Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced $94 million in Stimulus Funding was ear-marked for the tribes in Washington State alone. We’re hearing $4 billion annually is spent just for tribal health care with many more billions for housing, law enforcement, etc. These funds are additional and on top of the “Tribal Priority Allocations” doled out annually by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. There are 29 federal agencies – each have their own separate Indian budget for funding the 565 tribes. And worse, state governments that have no legal obligation or “trust relationship” with Indian tribes  (such as Washington, Oregon, Montana and others) have set up separate state budgets to supplement federal dollars going out to tribes. Strike Two for taxpayers.  All of these federal and state dollars are serving less than 1 million enrolled tribal members of our 300+ million American population.   

Who can blame the Native Hawaiians for wanting in on this lucrative industry, forever chaining down American citizens to the galley oars of a feudal federal Indian policy system? Pray that the Akaka Bill (Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act) fails again in Congress this year, or these numbers will considerably worsen.  

Since the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 federal Indian policy has been a 76-year private conversation between federal agencies, elected officials and tribal leaders, with the whopping bills added to your federal and state tax bill annually. We simply can no longer afford to sustain and grow this socialist erosion spreading across 35 and perhaps 36 (Hawaii) states.

One of our astute Supreme Court Justices assessed our predicament accurately when he wrote the following, over fifteen years ago: “Individuals who have been wronged by unlawful racial discrimination should be made whole; but under our Constitution there can be no such thing as either a creditor or a debtor race. That concept is alien to the Constitution's focus upon the individual. ...To pursue the concept of racial entitlement - even for the most admirable and benign of purposes - is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred. In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American." Justice Antonin Scalia, Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Mineta, 534 U.S. 103 (1995)

Here is the problem:  In 1975 Congress passed the Indian Self-Determination and Education Act (IDEA) to promote economic self-sufficiency for tribal governments. Apparently this was not working well enough, so in 1988, Congress added the economic steroid of a tax-free gaming monopoly for Indian tribes when it passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.

In March of this year, George Skibine, an Assistant Secretary at the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was a keynote speaker at the 2010 Citizens Equal Rights Alliance (CERA) conference in Washington, D.C. Mr. Skibine was asked: “Has the Department of Interior (DOI) or Bureau of Indian Affairs ever developed criteria or measuring systems by which a tribal government might be deemed economically self-sufficient, and no longer in need of federal funds?” The answer was no. Not in 35 years so far. Not even with a gaming monopoly. The follow-up question: Does the DOI/BIA have any interest in establishing such economic indicators so that federal subsidies could be redirected to either write down our national deficit, or redirected to the poorest tribes? The answer was also no.  Why should they? The behemoth BIA bureaucracy grows as the number and needs of tribes grow.  

Also at the CERA Conference Mr. Skibine was asked if the BIA or federal government could ascertain the total annual federal funds expended for tribal governments? His response: “We tried to do that once, but were unable to.”  Astounding! No one knows the annual bottomless pit of taxpayer dollars supporting tribal governments.

So there you have it. This current flawed system, created by Congress, enslaves the nation's taxpayers to financially support a burgeoning number of private tax-exempt race-based governments with unknown annual billions of dollars into perpetuity. Must we assume the responsibility for all failed tribal government debts? Is this a realistic priority need when we have to face the costs of a disastrous oil spill, the failing housing and banking industry, and government takeover of health care? I think not!  

What can you do?  Try any or all these suggestions:   

1)      Howl at every talking head on radio and television.

2)    Get firm commitments from incumbents or candidates to put a “sunset” or end game in place for this tax-enslavement.  

3)    Get federal legislation that prohibits gaming tribes from receiving stimulus funds of any sort.  

4)    Get legislation in place that ends any further “federal recognition” of wannabe tribes.  

5)    Educate everyone you know by circulating this article, and getting it web-posted everywhere you can.  

We are stuck with the horrendous oil spill disaster. We are stuck with the present administration throwing more huge tax dollars out to tribes? We are stuck with the government takeover of multiple industries in this country under the present administration.  

We are not stuck with our elected officials. We can get responsible commitments from federal and state elected officials, or get them out office, beginning in November 2010. We are not helpless.   

And we best get busy. Tribal governments claim to plan for seven generations. That is a long time for Americans to be subservient custodians of our fellow U.S. citizens.  Menominee Tribal leader, Ada Deer once said, “We use the system to beat the system.”  It is time to end the abuse of the “system.”  

Elaine Willman, MPA, is the author of Going to Pieces…the dismantling of the United States of America. Ms. Willman is past Chair and current Board member of Citizens Equal Rights Alliance, an organization focused on the equal rights of tribal members who have no protections under the 14th Amendment, and serve at the mercy of private tax-exempt governments annually subsidized without inquiry or consent of American taxpayers.

       Contact Elaine Willman:  toppin@aol.com

 

-- Breaking News --
Congress to legalize a race-based government?
 It's happening now!
The House passes H.R. 2324 on 2/23/2010

Video link
___________________________________

 

Letter to Congress from the United States Commission on Civil Rights

preceding House vote on H.R. 2324

 

Dear Distinguished Members of Congress:

 

We write to you in our individual capacities as members of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. We understand that the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act (the “Akaka proposal”) is about to be brought to a vote on the House floor. We also understand that the bill will be a substitute for the one considered by the Natural Resources Committee. The bill slated for a hasty House vote was apparently negotiated behind closed doors among Hawaii’s Congressional delegation, possibly the White House, and certain state officials, although those actually involved are unclear. Indeed, more changes were reportedly made over the weekend and released less than 48 hours prior to the expected House vote. The citizens of Hawaii, Members of the Committees on Natural Resources and the Judiciary, and any other experts will not have the normal opportunity to discuss or debate the revised provisions of the bill. Nor will members of the general public.

 

We wish to register our profound disappointment that a bill of this great importance would be dealt with in this manner. The creation of the largest tribal entity in the history of the nation – potentially 400,000 strong – is too important a step to take this lightly.

 

Attached is a letter that the Commission on Civil Rights sent to the Senate leadership on August 28, 2009, in which the Commission expresses its opposition to the race-based Native Hawaiian Government proposal. We wanted to ensure that you received a copy. A preliminary review of the new eligibility requirements for membership in the purported tribe does not eliminate the substantial constitutional doubt about the legislation. Nor does it lessen the profound, negative policy implications of the bill. 

 

We urge you to oppose both the Akaka proposal and this circumvention of the normal legislative process.

 

Respectfully submitted,


Gerald Reynolds, Chair

Gail Heriot, Commissioner

Ashley Taylor, Commissioner

 

Peter Kirsanow, Commissioner

Todd Gaziano,Commissioner

 

[1] We understand that a vote on this measure is imminent. Because the Commission only meets once or twice per month, there was no opportunity for the Commission to act as a whole.

 

 

 

Our American Ideals: 

Our Motto:    " e pluribus unum"  (out of many, one)
Our Pledge:   "...one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America - there's the United States of America.  Barack Obama

"We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all our citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization."
--Franklin Delano Roosevelt's greeting to the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign-born, January 9, 1940

“You cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups.  America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American.” -- Woodrow Wilson; speech, May 10, 1915 ;  Philadelphia , Pennsylvania

"History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy... These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened." --Benjamin Franklin, Emblematical Representations

"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."   -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1907

“In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man—these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We cannot continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth and their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress.” —Calvin Coolidge  

"Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and invidious that a state bound to defend the equal protection of the laws must not invoke them in any public sphere" - (the NAACP's brief, written by Thurgood Marshall, in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case).  

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." -- James Madison

And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth. The Bible, Acts 17:26 (King James version)

American Ideals Violated 

"This holding is consistent with other judicial decisions finding the Constitution inapplicable to Indian tribes, Indian courts and Indians on the reservation."
-- Tom v. Sutton;  533 F.2d 1101, 1102-03 (9th Cir.1976).

See Also: Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U.S. 49 (1978)   and 
 Why Indians are Second Class Citizens  by Darrel Smith 

In no other area of constitutional law does there exist a doctrine recognizing the preservation of cultural autonomy as a justification for limiting individual civil rights."
Kenneth W. Johnson, “Sovereignty, Citizenship and the Indian,” 15 Arizona Law Review, n. 36, 980 (1973) 

 Reservation Realities: 

"The greatest injustice the federal government has imposed on Indian people during the 20th century is to make us citizens, but deny us most of the basic rights of citizenship. . . .

"Democracy is not simply the existence of free and fair elections, which I would argue often do not exist in tribal elections. Democracy is also defined by limiting the power of the government by such things as the rule of law, separation of powers, checks on the power of each branch of government, equality under the law, impartial courts, due process, and protection of the basic liberties of speech, assembly, press, and property. These do not exist on Indian reservations. . . .

"James Madison, a founding father and signer of the U.S. Constitution, said that government with no separation of powers and no checks and balances is the very definition of tyranny. That is what we have on America's Indian reservations. . . .

 "Let it be said right now that sovereign immunity has nothing to do with Indian culture or tradition. It is a concept that developed in the Roman empire and was used by European monarchs to protect them from challenge or criticism. Tribal sovereign immunity has essentially told a generation of tribal leaders that once they are in office they are above the law and can do whatever they please. The only culture that tribal sovereign immunity is protecting is a culture of corruption, denial of rights, and unaccountability.

 "In closing, I would like to quote a great American, the late Dr. Martin Luther King. He said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
-- Oral testimony of William J. Lawrence, J.D.; publisher of the Native American Press/Ojibwe News, former BIA official, and member of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians; given to the U. S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in Seattle, Washington on April 7, 1998. Read his complete testimony and that of others in the "Real Stories" section of our web site.

A Solution - The Fourteenth Amendment:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
The Constitution of the United States of America - Amendment XIV, Section 1 (1868)

The Supreme Court's Comments on the Fourteenth Amendment:  

"This Court has consistently held that Congress may not authorize the States to violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Moreover, the protection afforded to a citizen by that Amendment's Citizenship Clause limits the powers of the National Government as well as the States. Congress' Article I powers to legislate are limited not only by the scope of the Framers' affirmative delegation, but also by the principle that the powers may not be exercised in a way that violates other specific provisions of the Constitution."
 Saenz v. Roe; 000 U.S. 98-97 (1999)  

“[d]istinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious,”… “[A] free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality, …, should tolerate no retreat from the principle that government may treat people differently because of their race only for the most compelling reasons. Accordingly, we hold today that all racial classifications, imposed by whatever federal, state, or local governmental actor, must be…analyzed by a reviewing court under strict scrutiny. In other words, such classifications are constitutional only if they are narrowly tailored measures that further compelling governmental interests”….“Racial classifications are simply too pernicious to permit any but the most exact connection between justification and classification”…“the Constitution imposes upon federal, state, and local governmental actors the same obligation to respect the personal right to equal protection of the laws.”
 Adarand Constuctors, Inc. v. Pena  000 U.S. U10252 (1995)

The fourteenth amendment to the constitution is not confined to the protection of citizens. It says: 'Nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.' These provisions are universal in their application, to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction, without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality; and the equal protection of the laws is a pledge of the protection of equal laws....that 'all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right, in every state and territory,...Sovereignty itself is, of course, not subject to law, for it is the author and source of law; but in our system, while sovereign powers are delegated to the agencies of government, sovereignty itself remains with the people, by whom and for whom all government exists and acts.
Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886)

Chief Joseph's Request:

"If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian he can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike. Give them the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. . . . all people should have equal rights.  . . . I have asked some of the great white chiefs where they get their authority. . . . They can not tell me.

"I only ask of the government to be treated as all other men are treated. . . .We ask that the same law shall work alike on all men. . . .with one sky above us and one country around us, and one government for all. . . .that all people may be one people."
--Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce  in a speech on January 14, 1879 to President Rutherford B. Haynes and a large gathering of cabinet members, congressmen, diplomats generals and others.

Chief Joseph Prints

Other Comments: 

"With respect to the questions of who has jurisdiction over whom, I firmly believe, and have so stated that Congress, and not the states or the tribes, must assume responsibility for creating these jurisdictional problems. Congress has had more than an entire century to resolve Indian jurisdictional issues and has not done so. Congress has been assisted by the plodding, inconsistent, and largely impotent attempts of various courts, mostly federal, to fill the void left by Congress, and the result has been that they have left both tribal members and non-members in a state of constant uncertainty and acrimony. It is a preposterous situation that strains the fabric of our mutual existence sometimes to the near breaking point. At best, it is a product of benign neglect. At worst, it is an unacceptable denial of responsibility."
-- Montana Governor Marc Racicot, Speech given September 4, 1997

"Our Constitution is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens."
Supreme Court Justice John Harlan, in his lone dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson 

"The ability of nonmembers to know where tribal jurisdiction begins and ends, it should be stressed, is a matter of real, practical consequence . . . . " Nevada v. Hicks, 533 U.S. 353, 383 (2001) (Souter, J. concurring).  

"Since the civil war, until now, there has been no locality in this country with a first class of citizens and a second class, the members of which are obliged to pay taxes to support a government which, by law, serves and represents only citizens of the first class."
--  Eric Richter, Esq., Seattle, WA - Legal Counsel for Citizens Standup! Committee
CERA leaders' passing mourned
 Native American Civil Rights Lawyer/Writer Deceased
Jim Mitchell, CERA co-founder, dead at 73
Roland Morris Sr., Defender of Individual Rights, Succumbs to Cancer

Tribal member speaks about life on a reservation
Short video part 1 by Scott Kayla Morrison
Short video part 2 by Scott Kayla Morrison

Recommended reading:
Why Indians are Second Class Citizens  by Darrel Smith
 One People. One Law. by Lana Marcussen
The Great Chiefs Fought for Independence  by Lisa Morris
The Tragedy of Tribal Sovereignty by Darrel Smith
Where's the Government's Authority for Federal Indian Policy? by Darrel Smith
Where's the Government's Authority? .   .  . Revisited by Darrel Smith
S. 1691 Testimony by William J. Lawrence
Sovereignty Testimony by Scott Kayla Morrison
Why are tribes still litigating? The Indian Claims Commission by Randall Thompson
Responding to Negative Labeling and Slander   
Sovereignty and Civil Rights  by Julie Shortridge
Reclaiming Accountability In Tribal Governments by Sean Page
Accountability and it's Effect on the Law by Lana Marcussen
American Indian, Citizens or Slaves? by Lana Marcussen
Indian Reservations: A Reversal of America's Ideals - Part I of a Series by Darrel Smith
Indian Reservations: America's Model of Destruction, by Darrel Smith

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of the  political, human rights, economic, democratic, scientific, and social justice issues, as pertains to federal Indian policy.  We believe this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for research and educational purposes. Articles provided here without permission from the copyright owner are provided for the purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws. This material may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use". 


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