http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-1/573/573_04_Robideau.shtml
American Indian Movement activist on the Abramoff scandal:
One of many racists out to defraud Native tribes
Socialist Worker Online
January 27, 2006 | Page 4
GEORGE BUSH and his Republican buddies are scrambling to shift attention
away from a scandal that could send some of the most powerful people in
Washington packing--if not land them behind bars.
At the center of the scandal is Jack Abramoff, a longtime Republican Party
operative who became a high-powered lobbyist in the 1990s. Abramoff goes way
back with important Republican leaders (former Christian Coalition leader
Ralph Reed was a college buddy), and he became increasingly powerful as the
right-wingers like ex-Majority Leader Tom DeLay took over in the House of
Representatives.
Because of his connections to DeLay and other prominent Republicans--such as
Ohio Rep. Bob Freedom Fries Ney--Abramoff was able to offer his lobbying
clients inside access when their interests were threatened by legislation
pending in Congress. In return, Abramoff got filthy rich.
But Abramoff isn't in hot water for selling political influence. He got
caught ripping off his clients--in particular, Native American tribes who
run casino and gambling operations.
The tribes would hire Abramoff to lobby for them over gaming issues, and
Abramoff would tell them which politicians to make political donations to.
What he didn't say was that he and his business partner Michael Scanlon were
sometimes working for groups whose interests were directly opposed to the
tribes. For example, in 2002, Abramoff and Scanlon worked for religious
conservatives lobbying the state of Texas to shut down a casino run by the
Tigua of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo in Texas--at the same time that Abramoff was
charging the Tiguas millions to lobby for the casino.
Abramoff had nothing but contempt for his Native American clients. In
e-mails exposed a few years ago, Abramoff called tribal members
trogdolytes and morons. I have to meet with the monkeys from the
Choctaw tribal counsel, he wrote to Scanlon.
Overall, the Abramoff scandal is offering a glimpse of how political power
is bought and sold in America, but this particular aspect is shining a light
on a small part of an injustice that dates back even longer--the U.S.
government's genocide against Native Americans, its theft of their land and
the crushing of anyone who stood in their way.
--
ROBERT ROBIDEAU is co-director of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee.
Along with Leonard, his cousin, Robert was an activist in the American
Indian Movement, an organization formed in the 1970s to demand civil rights
and defend Native Americans from government violence.
Robert was accused along with Leonard of killing two FBI agents on the Pine
Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975. Robert was acquitted; in a
separate trial, Leonard was convicted and sentenced to prison, where he
remains unjustly to this day.
Robert has continued the struggle for Leonard and for Native American
rights. He wrote this article for Socialist Worker in response to the
Abramoff scandal.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
HISTORICALLY, RACISM has characterized and justified unscrupulous behavior
toward Native Americans. This attitude has kept us in poverty and ill health
since the inception of the reservation system.
The long historical racist mentality, accentuated through the doctrine of
Manifest Destiny, has allowed countless political types and racist
individuals like Jack Abramoff to defraud Native tribes of billions of
dollars.
This theft is consistent with congressional double-dealings that manipulate
away profit, land, natural resources and enterprising attempts by Native
American tribes to make their nations economically and socially independent.
When tribal people stand up in self defense, as they did in the 1970s, when
thousands marched across North America on the Trail of Broken Treaties to
Washington, D.C., to protest tribal corruption sanctioned by federal
policies and congressional acts, we were met with clubs and violence.
Before federal treaties removed tribes from their traditional lands, they
lived a rich and abundant life for thousands of years. Since then,
congressional acts have kept tribes locked in poverty and ill health to the
present day.
The federal government's programs enacted by Congress have whittled away
millions of areas of reservation land for profit, and continue an ongoing
policy that sanctions thefts of Indian land and natural resources. The
gaming industry represents a continuation of congressional manipulations
that erode tribal sovereignty and continue to plague the quality of life for
Native people.
We have fought the land rush, gold rush and oil rush. Now comes the gaming
rush, which has created more corruption in our tribal governments and
animosity among Native Americans. Congress passed the Indian Gaming
Regulatory Act in 1988, and it has only brought money-mongering politicians
scurrying in from Washington, D.C., sniffing out casino profits.
Governmental reports alleging that gaming revenue has been used to reduce
poverty and unemployment rates, build schools and hospitals, paved road and
construct sewer systems, preserve and revitalize cultural traditions and
build responsive and responsible government institutions such as tribal
courts are a smokescreen for the United States to escape its treaty
obligations.
If these treaties had been honored decades ago, the Native American
communities would have enjoyed the same opportunities and the same standard
of living as mainstream America.
The United States is the wealthiest country in the world, with a higher
poverty rate than any other progressive nation. Native Americans rank the
poorest in health and economy due to federal Indian policies.
The government has attempted to mask these policies as good and wholesome,
but in reality, they are bent towards genocide, ethnocide and land and
resource theft in the name of divine manifest destiny to spread
civilization by territorial expansion and subjugation of American Indians.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE AMERICAN Indian Movement fought against tribal corruption in the 1970s,
which resulted in us being labeled terrorist and wholesale federal attacks
on us by their political police force, the FBI, which used its
counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO) to destroy our legitimate protest
movement.
The Church Committee declared that these methods were in violation of the
constitutional protections. Despite the Church Committee's findings, the
federal government declared war on the American Indian Movement, resulting
in over 300 assaults and homicides by a corrupt tribal government that was
armed and protected by the FBI, an agency of the Department of Justice.
The USA PATRIOT Act is today using similar methods against us. The federal
government justifies such acts through scare tactics that label threats
under the name terrorist. Leonard Peltier, a victim of the COINTELPRO
program, has served 30 years in prison to date, and there seems to be no end
in sight to his continued incarceration.
Congressional acts are passed to regulate the lives of Indian people into
oblivion. One of the most outrageous congressional acts passed was about
freedom of religion. Why did we need a special act protecting our religious
rights when the U.S. Constitution alleges to protect everyones religious
freedom and rights?
Just as the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) controls the lives of tribal
people through corruption, so too does the casino business create and
maintain corrupt tribal leadership. Tribal leadership is now using what
remains of our sovereignty as a weapon against their own people.
Many American Indians now view the Gaming Act as just another congressional
act of genocide, similar to congressional acts like the Relocation and
Termination Act. These were attempts to remove Indians from their remaining
lands and make them disappear into the melting pot of North America.
Many California tribes, in order to get a bigger share of the profits, have
been thinning out their population by arbitrarily kicking hundreds of
members from tribal roles and/or denying them enrollment. The Enterprise
Rancheria kicked out 75 members, while still other tribes corrupted by the
money are kicking out hundreds.
The real kicker is that when these tribal members attempt to appeal these
outrageous acts of genocide by their own Nations through the U.S. Department
of Justice, tribal sovereignty is recognized. It is clear that institutions
of the federal government continue to manipulate tribal sovereignty to the
disparagement of Indian people.
Tribes began as sovereign powers, which are recognized by treaties between
them and the United States of America. Congress has historically limited
tribal sovereignty by passage of such congressional acts as the Indian
Gaming Regulatory Act, which are cloaked as progressive economic
opportunities for tribal nations, while they are, in fact, designed to take
from the tribes control of their lives, by expressly limiting tribal
sovereignty.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To subscribe, send a blank message to lpdc-on@mail-list.com
