[News] One of many racists out to defraud Native tribes

[Anti-Imperialist News]

American Indian Movement activist on the Abramoff scandal:
"One of many racists out to defraud Native tribes"
http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-1/573/573_04_Robideau.shtml

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 everyone's 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.


The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20060126/517bc323/attachment.htm>