Oregon Modocs Set Second Meeting to Discuss Benefits of Self-Government

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 21, 2010
Contact: Perry H. Chesnut
pchesnut@indigenous-rights.org
425-770-7345

Modocs Seeking to Form Government Separate from the Klamath Tribes Set Second Meeting:
Will Discuss Economic Development, Tribal Membership Requirements and Ancestral Land Base
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An informational meeting for Modoc Indians interested in the movement to dissolve the Modoc Tribe’s political relationship with the Klamath Tribes will be held between the hours of 6:30pm and 9:00pm on the evening of Friday, January 29, 2010 at the Commissioners Hearing Room of the Klamath County Government Center located at 305 Main St. in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Entrance to the building will be by the door coming off the rear parking lot on Pine St.

A previous meeting held in the same location on October 9th of last year drew approximately 30 Modocs. Perry Chesnut, an adopted member of the Modoc Tribe, stated that it was time to end 136 years of subservience to the Klamath Indians, and said that the only practical way to preserve the Modoc Tribe’s unique ethnic and cultural identity, and protect and advance the Modoc People’s political and economic interests is to set up their own government, separate from that of the current Klamath tribal government. He presented a document titled Declaration of the Rights of the Free and Sovereign People of the Modoc Indian Tribe (Mowatocknie Maklaksûm), which enumerates in 46 articles the natural, political and human rights of the Modoc People. Since that meeting, a number of “Declaration Bearers” have been circulating the document within the Modoc Tribe and gathering signatures for its ratification.

The upcoming meeting on Friday, January 29th, is open to all who wish to learn more about the separation movement and the opportunities it presents to the Modoc People.

M. Sean Manion, a Modoc Indian who is a civil engineer and has spent the last seven years in Iraq managing various rebuilding projects, will present an economic development model that has proven to be very successful for Arab tribes in Iraq. Mr. Manion states that the economic development model is especially well-suited to tribal entities and believes that it can be implemented successfully by the Modoc Tribe to create large tribally owned enterprises as well as smaller business ventures owned by individual tribal members. Mr. Manion will also speak to the issue of eligibility for tribal membership, contrasting the blood quantum standard now used by the Klamath tribal government with the lineal descent standard to which more tribes are now turning.

Perry Chesnut will speak about the opportunity for developing a large casino resort complex and present an architectural rendering of such a casino resort prepared by David P. Soderstrom of Soderstrom Architects, a Portland Oregon architectural firm. He will also present a map of the Modoc Tribe’s ancestral lands ceded to the government in the Lakes Treaty of 1864 and discuss the many opportunities for economic development presented by the five national forests included in these lands and by the potential restoration of the vast wetlands that constituted Lower Klamath Lake, Tule Lake and Clear Lake prior to the extensive “reclamation” projects of the early 1900s.

An extensive period of time has been set aside for questions and answers following the presentations of Mr. Manion and Mr. Chesnut. Declaration Signature Sheets will also be available for those who wish to ratify the Declaration with their signatures. Those who wish to circulate the Declaration can obtain a signature sheet from Mr. Chesnut after the meeting.

The Commissioners Hearing Room has a seating capacity of 70, so those wishing to sit should come early.
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Source: Modoc Land Recovery Project

Native Rights News is making this material available in accordance with a general press release. This article is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information. Distribution of this material is for research and educational purposes that will promote social and economic justice and benefit society.
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Native Rights News (NRN) is published by the Alliance for Indigenous Rights, a nonprofit corporation owned and operated by Temple Beit Shem Tov as part of its Social Justice Ministry.

Oregon Modocs Reassert Unique Identity & Right to Self-Government: to Separate from the Klamath Tribes

Modoc Land Recovery Project
Press Release: October 15, 2009

Oregon Modocs Take First Step to Separate from Klamath Tribes and Form Own Government — Issue Country's First Tribal Declaration Based on UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Approximately thirty Modoc Indians attended a meeting last Friday evening (10-09-2009) in the Klamath County Commissioner's Hearing Room in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where they listened to a presentation by Perry Chesnut in which he urged them to join the movement to reestablish Modoc self-government and sovereignty over their ancestral homelands by signing the Declaration of the Rights of the Free and Sovereign People of the Modoc Indian Tribe .

Chesnut, whose Indian name is Two Eagles, is a life-long social activist and champion of indigenous rights. In 1992, the late Miller Anderson adopted Chesnut into his family and made him a member of the Modoc Tribe. Miller Anderson is a direct descendant of Sloc-a-lot (known to white settlers as Chief George), who at the time of the Modoc Indian War of 1872-73 was the acknowledged La̕qi (Modoc for "Leader") or Headman of the Kokiwas Band of the Modoc Tribe.

The 11-page Declaration contains 46 Articles setting forth various inalienable rights preceded by a preamble containing 30 statements as to the reasons why the Declaration has been issued. It is believed to be the first such declaration issued by any Native American tribe or nation that is based on the provisions of the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIP) approved by the UN General Assembly in September of 2007.

We must take decisive action to reassert our unique tribal and cultural identity

Mr. Chesnut opened the meeting by noting that the Modoc Indians of southern Oregon and northern California are living in a time of crisis. He stated that just two days before the meeting he had received a phone call from a Klamath Indian who "angrily told me that the Klamath Tribes are one people — that the Modoc Indians have no separate identity or culture, that they and the Klamaths are culturally indistinguishable."

"What could be more sacred to us than our unique identity as an Indian people? Yet that identity has been slowly slipping away for the last fifty or more years, being eroded and submerged into a mishmash of Indian peoples enrolled in the political organization known as the Klamath Tribes. And make no mistake, the Klamath Tribes is not a tribe. It is a political organization, an affiliation of three separate tribes, to which no law or moral imperative requires us to remain tied. Today very few people draw a distinction between the Klamath and Modoc peoples. Yet our Creator did distinguish between all other people and us, making us unique and giving us our own unique homeland and culture. We must take decisive action to reassert our unique tribal and cultural identity. And we must do it now, before it is too late."

Indisputable evidence of the unique identity and culture of the Modoc Indians

Mr. Chesnut noted archaeological evidence showing that the Modoc Indians have occupied southern Oregon and northern California continuously for the last 12,000 to 15,000 years and stated that there is no scientific evidence showing a similar history for the Klamath Indians. "Compared to us the Klamaths are relative newcomers to this region," Chesnut said.

Chesnut also cited ethnological field research by the University of Washington Laboratory of Anthropology in 1934 that concluded that the belief systems, values, patterns and practices of the Modoc Indians up to the time of the Modoc Indian War of 1872-73 "set their culture clearly apart from any other in the world, even from their immediate California neighbors."

Chesnut also cited a book titled Myths of the Modocs published in 1912, containing a large number of myths related to Jeremiah Curtin in 1884 by Ko-a-lak'-ak-a, a Modoc woman who was part of the group of Modocs exiled to Oklahoma at the close of the Modoc Indian War in 1873. According to the author's introduction to the 389 page book, "In childhood her grandfather had instructed her in the religion of her people, in other words, taught her all the myths of the Modocs, and to old age her tenacious memory retained many of them."

Chesnut stated that this book is "absolute proof" of the separate identity and culture of the Modoc people. As an example, he read from a passage in the story called "Kumush [Modoc for Creator] and His Daughter" that describes how the Creator made, named and gave to each of the Shasta, Pitt River, Warm Springs, Klamath and Modoc peoples their own lands and unique characteristics. Chesnut stated that the book is filled with mythical events that occurred at such places as Mt. Shasta, Lost River, Tule Lake, the Sycan River and Marsh, and Glass Mountain. "These references to culturally significant events associated with places can be used to verify and validate the extent and boundaries of our ancestral homelands," Chesnut said.

Chesnut also referred to the unique style and quality of Modoc baskets, which are prized by museums and collectors around the world. "It is not Klamath baskets that enjoy this distinction, but Modoc baskets."

Chesnut concluded this portion of his talk by stating: "It is beyond dispute that our people are a unique people with our own unique identity and culture. I have shared this with you because before we can do, we must be."

Declaration of the Rights of the Free and Sovereign People of the Modoc Indian Tribe

Holding up a copy of the Declaration, Chesnut stated that the document "is not a petition asking for relief from some higher authority, but a declaration of our fundamental rights as a people that reasserts our status as a unique tribe independent of any other." He said that it enumerates "specific God-given rights inherent to us as a tribe, including, but not limited to:

• the recognition of our political sovereignty,
• political and economic self-determination,
• the restoration and control of our homelands, which cover an area of between 5,000 and 6,500 square miles and include three national forests
• the right to protect our homelands and their resources from the detrimental actions of third parties,
• the right to preserve and protect our culture, including our language, arts, religion and sacred places;
• the right to bring home and reunite with our brothers and sisters who are living in exile in Oklahoma.

All of these rights can be boiled down to one overarching right — the RIGHT TO SELF-GOVERNMENT."

Chesnut declared, "Those who sign this document will be declaring their identity as a Modoc Indian, and they will be preparing the ground for the reinstitution of our own tribal government through the drafting, ratification and, if legally necessary, U.S. Government approval of our own constitution."

Constitution of Klamath Tribes 'fundamentally and fatally flawed'

Chesnut stated that the Constitution and Bylaws of the Klamath Tribes is "fundamentally and fatally flawed, and we will never be able to convince the ethnic Klamaths to fix it." He said that it is modeled on the constitutional framework offered to Indian tribes by the government under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1834. "What true government has 'bylaws'? Bylaws are something a club or a corporation have." He said that the Klamath Constitution creates a government with a weak single legislative body (General Council), a strong, directly elected executive body (Tribal Council) and a recently added Judicial branch. Chesnut stated that over the last ten years there has been a nationwide movement of tribes to reform their governments and rewrite their constitutions, moving away from the IRA model still in use by the Klamath Tribes.

Chesnut said that while such an IRA type constitution "might work" for some tribes, it has never worked for the Modocs. "As you all know, with the Lakes Treaty of 1864, the government forced the Modocs and Yahooskin Snake Band of Paiutes to remove to the Klamath Reservation, which was located entirely within the territorial boundaries of Klamath ancestral lands. This itself was a formula for failure, and, in fact was the most important cause of the [Modoc Indian] war and subsequent exile of our people to Oklahoma. But added to this is the fact that the three tribes, all of which have very different histories, beliefs, values and cultures, have been merged by this faulty constitution into a single General Council, in which all decisions are made or ratified by a simple one man one vote majority. The more than ten to one numerical superiority of the ethnic Klamaths over the ethnic Modocs and Yahooskins operates to effectively disenfranchise and subjugate them to ethnic Klamath rule."

A simple analogy

Chesnut asked those gathered at the meeting to imagine what would have happened if the founding fathers of the United States had not had the wisdom to create a bicameral legislative branch, "that is, if the Constitution did not provide for a U.S. Senate to act as a check on the power of the U.S. House of Representatives. Without a Senate, in which each state, regardless of population, has two senators, New York, California, Texas and two or three other states would make all the decisions, rendering the smaller population states effectively powerless, with representation in name only."

"This is the situation we Modocs and our Yahooskin brothers have faced for 136 years, and many of us, perhaps most, are tired of trying to work within a system that is structurally designed to make us powerless against the tyranny of the majority, who are the ethnic Klamaths."

The next step: 'our own constitution'

Chesnut said that after the Modoc people gain sufficient signatures on the Declaration, the next step will be to "draft and ratify our own constitution for the Modoc Tribe." He said that this process must be careful and deliberate because "if we just slap something together, we are likely to end up with a constitution just as bad or worse than the Klamath Tribes constitution we have now. We will need to hold numerous meetings to decide many difficult issues, such as how traditional and decentralized our government should or should not be, what particular governmental structures we need, and what our citizenship criteria will be. Above all, the constitution must reflect the values and culture of our people in order to have the legitimacy and stability necessary to promote political self-determination and healthy economic development."

The difficulty of our task — the inevitability of our freedom

During the question and answer session, Chesnut was told that many Modocs were afraid to sign the Declaration because officials of the Klamath Tribal government would retaliate by taking away their federal benefits or fire them from tribal jobs.

Chesnut responded, "This is going to be a long and difficult process. An independent self-governed Modoc Tribe will be opposed not only by the Klamath Tribal government but by many of the white owned farms and businesses that are making money off of our land. They want things to remain as they are. To the Klamaths our independence will mean a loss of federal dollars which are allocated on the basis of head count. So they see us only as so many dollars. Local farms and businesses are likely to fear that our independence will result in changes that will adversely affect them. So it's going to be hard, and we must expect vigorous opposition to what we are doing."

" But we can also expect support and help from various sources, including other Indian tribes, major university projects and institutes, environmental and human rights organizations, and even from individual white persons in this very community, who want to see the injustices of the past righted. Now that this movement has started, it cannot be stopped so long as we pursue our goal. Our liberation from 136 years of exile and oppression, the reestablishment of Modoc self-government and restoration of our ancestral homelands is inevitable."

"As to your specific concerns about retaliation against those Modocs who sign or promote the Declaration, let me point out that nothing in the Lakes Treaty of 1864 or the Klamath Tribes Restoration Act of 1986 took away our sovereignty as a tribe separate from the Klamath Tribe or Yahooskin Snake Band of Paiutes. In fact, both the Treaty and the Restoration Act list and recognize our tribes separately. Further, what we are doing now is exercising rights to self-government and self-determination authorized and encouraged by the Indian Reorganization Act of 1834, as amended in 1988, and by the Indian Self-Determination Act of 1975."

"Until our new constitution is ratified and, if necessary approved by the Interior Department, we will all remain enrolled members of the Klamath Tribes, entitled to receive all the federal benefits we are receiving right now. When our new constitution goes into effect, the BIA and IHS will be required by law to administer these same benefits to our people through our own government instead of the Klamath Tribal government. This transition should be seamless, with no interruption in the flow of benefits."

"In 1968, Congress enacted the Indian Civil Rights Act, which protects political activity and speech such as we are engaging in now. The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission also has jurisdiction over Indian tribes and nations and enforces regulations designed to prevent and punish discrimination in employment on the part of a dominant band or group."

"One can never prevent another person who is committed to violating the law from doing so, but any retaliation by the Klamath Tribes or its officials against the Modoc People will be immediately be reported to the federal government, and appropriate legal action will be taken. As a tribe we must protect and support each other. We must make the commitment now to financially support any Modoc who is fired from a tribal job in retaliation for exercising his or her right to free speech and political organization, while legal steps are taken to obtain that person's reinstatement and back-pay. And I can assure you, if anything like that happens, there will be serious legal consequences for the Klamath tribal officials involved."

Signatures obtained and Declaration Bearers

At the close of the meeting, thirteen adult Modocs signed the Declaration, bringing the current total number of signers to just over fifty. Additionally, four individuals volunteered to act as Declaration Bearers, that is, to carry and promote the Declaration to other Modocs and to obtain their signatures. These individuals include John Slaughter, Preston Miles and Diana Wright. Modocs wishing to learn more about or sign the Declaration of Rights and the movement to enact a Modoc constitution, or who wish to become Declaration Bearers themselves should contact any of the following persons.

Robert Wayne Anderson, 541-591-2956
John Slaughter, hatchat@charter.net
Preston Miles, 541-274-1330, 929miles@gmail.com
Diana Wright, 541-273-8874, dianawright1@charter.net
Perry Chesnut, 425-770-7345, pchesnut@indigenous-rights.org

A copy of the Declaration of the Rights of the Free and Sovereign People of the Modoc Indian Tribe is attached as a Microsoft Word .doc file. For more information concerning this press release, contact:

Perry Chesnut
Modoc Land Recovery Project
425-770-7345
pchesnut@indigenous-rights.org
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Copyright 2009: Modoc Land Recovery Project

Native Rights News is making this material from [name of news source] available in accordance with the Fair Use Doctrine codified at Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information. Distribution of this material is for research and educational purposes that will promote social and economic justice and benefit society.
____________
Native Rights News (NRN) is published by the Alliance for Indigenous Rights, a nonprofit corporation owned and operated by Temple Beit Shem Tov as part of its Peace and Justice Ministry.

Video of Hugo Blanco's Speech on Indigenous Struggles in the Western Hemisphere

Hugo Blanco Galdos, has been an activist his entire life. In the 1960s he led the Campesino movement and coined the famous chanted slogan for the movement: "Land or Death!" In his later years, he has returned to his roots as an indigenous Peruvian Indian and is championing the rights of South American Indians to remain on their lands and pursue ecologically sound development. He currently is publishing a magazine titled Lucha Indigena (Indigenous Struggle). We have included the following capsule biography from Wikipedia.

Following the capsule biography are YouTube videos of the speech he delivered last year at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C.

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Hugo Blanco

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

For the Venezuelan musician, see Hugo Blanco (musician).

Hugo Blanco Galdos is a Peruvian political figure and leader of the Campesino Confederation of Peru.

In the early 1960s he led the Quechua peasant uprising in the Cuzco region of Peru. Captured by the military, he was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment on the island of El Frontón. During his imprionsment he wrote Land or Death: The Peasant Struggle in Peru.

Blanco was released from prison and expelled to Sweden in 1976^[1] following an international solidarity campaign that included Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Bertrand Russell. After spending several years of exile in Sweden, Mexico and Chile he returned to Peru in 1978, was a founder of the Workers Revolutionary Party and was elected to parliament on a left-wing slate.^[2]

He served in the Peruvian Senate as a representative of the Partido Unificado Mariateguista until 1992 when he fled to Mexico where he was granted asylum following^[3] due to Alberto Fujimori's "self-coup" and declaration of a state of emergency.^[4]

Hugo Blanco is currently Director of a Cusco-based newspaper called Lucha Indigena.

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This article is also licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Hugo Blanco"

It Is Not the Earth that Belongs to the People but the People Who Belong to the Earth

HUGO BLANCO The convert

Legendary campesino Hugo Blanco merges old-style Marxism with earth-first land reform philosophy
By WAYNE ROBERTS

Now Magazine

Artículo publicado en Canadá en septiembre del 2007

The western hemisphere has a new name. On October 12, indigenous peoples from many countries met in Bolivia to celebrate the United Nations declaration on their rights, and once again rechristened (so to speak) our continents Abya Yala.

In the Kuna language, this means "land in its full maturity." Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian explorer of the late 1400s, lost his naming rights to descendants of settlers who arrived 10,000 years earlier.

The rising sense of power among the hemisphere's 50 million indigenous people is transforming politics in what used to be called South America. But few people have been changed as profoundly by this new politics of identity as Hugo Blanco, the legendary Peruvian Trotskyist revolutionary.

It was Blanco, back in the 60s, who invented the now famous chant of peasants and campesinos the world over: Land or death.

During a lecture tour of Canada last month, he showed how deftly he has wedded old-style Marxist revolutionism to his relatively recent encounter with his own indigenous heritage.
At a meeting at a Ryerson lecture theatre in September, Blanco sports the typical floppy sheepskin hat worn by the Quechua people of the frigid mountains of southern Peru. I only learn afterward that the young-looking 73-year-old wears the hat at all times on doctor's orders, for fear that his skull, which has suffered too many police beatings, can't withstand an accidental bump.

Even with his disarming appearance, Blanco's opening lines surprise me. They're nothing like what I remember from the fiery speeches that almost got him executed when he was tried for his role in a 1962 armed peasant revolt.

The reason native politics are so charged today, 500 years after Europeans invaded, he begins through a translator, is that mines and oil and gas wells are poisoning Pachamama, Mother Earth.

And the aggressive materialism of global corporations is destroying "ayllu," the indigenous sense of community that encompasses every being in a village, including hills, rivers, animals and plants, each of which is endowed with a spirit.

But he's still a socialist, he says at the end of the lecture. After all, reports of Inca civilization inspired Voltaire and Thomas More, contributing to Europe's tradition of utopian socialism.
One of Blanco's daughters, raised in Sweden during one of his many periods of exile, once led Swedish tourists through a Peruvian village and was told it looked like socialism. You have that backwards, he recalls her telling the Swedes; socialism looks like this.

But the world has changed since his youth, he says. "When I was young, I took up the struggle for equality. Now the struggle is for the survival of the species."

Blanco, educated in a radical European culture when he was a student in Argentina during the 1950s, confesses that he is still a recovering Eurocentric. It's easy to see he's struggling to make the transition from the polemical truths of his youth to something else.

South American radicals "copied our social analysis from Europe," he says, "yet socialism, social democracy and Communism have all been defeated in the South.

"I don't know how much Eurocentrism is still in me," he adds. "I am in the process of overcoming. We must initiate this revolution within ourselves."

What does this mean for future organizing? He doesn't know, "but little by little we move forward." The newspaper he edits, Lucha Indigena, follows what indigenous people are doing, not the line of a political organization such as the one he once led. Many of his statements end with a quotation from the Spanish poet Antonio Machado y Ruiz: "Walker, there is no road. The road is made by walking."

Working without a compass is something he says he learned from studying the Zapatistas of Mexico, another country he spent time in as an exile. Blanco has a totally different sense of power than the one he held during the 1960s, when the struggle for campesino and worker power was at the heart of the manifesto Land Or Death: The Peasant Struggle In Peru that he wrote on death row in prison.

"Among revolutionaries, we were negatively affected by an obsession with power," he now says. His movement has since overcome old-style illusions thanks to the experience of pseudo-revolutionary Shining Path terrorists, who once ordered him killed, he says.

Indigenous communities practised consensus, he says. "We are not about taking power, but building power," he says. He now likes to organize "peasant circles" that displace judges and corrupt government officials with self-managing groups at the municipal level.

I luck into a two-hour after-lecture dinner with Blanco, Phil Cournoyer, the translator of his memoirs, and assorted friends at a nearby Internet café serving Somali food.

When Blanco chanted "Land or death," Cournoyer tells me, the activist had "an incipient understanding" that it was different from the Hispanic tradition of "Fatherland or death," a popular cry in Cuba. It reflected a deep-seated and intuitive psychological and spiritual understanding that land, identity, meaning and life were one continuum.

It is not the earth that belongs to the people but the people who belong to the earth," Blanco clarifies.

From the leader of militant land reform during the 1960s comes a land reform philosophy for the 21st century.

[Editor's Note: For a really good article describing how Hugo Blanca's Lucha Indigena mobilized indigenous protests that repealed the Peruvian government's recent legislation (enacted in conjunction with the Free Trade Agreement with the United States) that would have opened up communally held indigenous lands to mining and oil extraction, check out Derek Wall's excellent blog, Another Green World. - Perry Chesnut, Editor, Native Rights News]

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© by NOW Communications Inc.

Native Rights News is making this material from Now Magazine available in accordance with the Fair Use Doctrine codified at Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information. Distribution of this material is for research and educational purposes that will promote social and economic justice and benefit society.

NY Governor Signs Bill to Tax Cigarettes Sold by Seneca Nation

Taxation to begin on reservations within 60 days
by Sharon Turano
The Observer: December 16, 2008

Seneca Nation of Indians officials will detail their response to Gov. David Paterson's decision to collect sales tax on cigarettes sold to non-Indians during a news conference at 11 a.m. today.

''The Seneca Nation of Indians will explore all of its options,'' report nation officials, who said the law threatens the nation's treaty rights and 1,000 retailing jobs in Western New York.

''This action is a threat to the Seneca Nation, and we have no choice but to explore all of our options,'' said Barry E. Snyder Sr., Seneca Nation president.

''Attacking tax-free commerce in our territories is short-sighted and disastrous for us and all of Western New York. The nation has a complicated and intertwined relationship with the state. Since this is the direction that the governor wants to take things, then we have no choice but revisit every aspect of our relationship with the state.''

''The issue here is not cigarettes, but the protection of the nation's treaty rights. We will do what it takes at the right time to protect those rights,'' said Snyder.''Because our Nation believes that diplomacy is always the best path when governments are in dispute, I have invited Governor Paterson to our historic territory to discuss how this problem can be resolved in a matter respectful of our treaties,'' said President Snyder.

GOV. PATERSON'S DECISION

Paterson also listed his reasons for signing the bill into law.

''Cigarettes sold by Indian retailers to non-Indians must be taxed,'' a news release from Paterson said.

Under the law, those selling cigarettes to retailers must provide the state tax department with certification the cigarettes will not be resold to untaxed retailers to resell without collecting taxes on the products. The state Department of Taxation will have 60 days to issue a certification form and prepare to receive the certifications that will be submitted.

Under the law, tax law violators are subject to revocation or cancellation of its license. A false certificate could be referred to a district attorney's office for prosecution for perjury or filing a false instrument.

''This law has not been adequately applied for far too long giving non-Indians easy access to tax-free cigarettes both on the reservations and over the internet,'' Paterson said. ''However, the signing of this bill should not be seen as anything other than enforcing the tax laws of New York in a fair and effective manner. My commitment to the sovereign powers of New York's Indian Nations has not and will not waver and I will continue to seek a comprehensive negotiated solution with all of New York's Indian nations.''

Although cigarettes sold by agents to retailers for re-sale to non-Indian purchasers must bear tax stamps, the state has, for many years, adopted a policy of non-enforcement, and unstamped cigarettes continue to be sold by agents to Indian retailers who sell them to non-Indians at discount prices, his press release states.

''Tomorrow, I will present my 2009-2010 budget proposal and while we will continue to aggressively and responsibly address New York's current budget crisis, this bill is not only about collecting revenue for the state of New York, it is also about protecting the health of our citizens. Smoking has long been a tragic public health crisis in New York and around the world,'' Paterson said.

He said cigarette taxes have been one of the state's most effective tools in addressing this crisis.

''To the extent that the tax is undermined, our efforts to fight smoking are also undermined,'' Paterson said.

GROUPS PICKING SIDES

Bills that state tobacco manufacturers can't sell untaxed cigarettes to retailers for resale were passed by the state Assembly and Senate over the summer and were awaiting the governor's signature to become law.

''I urge the governor and the Seneca Nation to undertake discussions to find a peaceful and productive resolution to their differences,'' said state Sen. Catharine Young, R-Olean.

''I am disappointed that Governor Paterson has signed this legislation without further negotiation with the Seneca Nation of Indians,'' said state Assemblyman Joe Giglio, R-Gowanda. ''I believe that this is a complicated issue, and negotiations among the involved parties should take place prior to the effective date of this legislation.''

Convenience store lobbies, such as the New York State Association of Convenience Stores, have requested taxes be collected.

''In the quest for tax fairness, this would be a step in the right direction,'' said James Calvin, executive director of the association about the governor signing the bill into law,'' he said.

Members of the Seneca Free Trade Association, a private-non-profit cooperative assoication of individuals and businesses licensed by the Nation to develop commerce and industry within and around Nation territories, could not be reached to comment Monday.

They previously called on the public to ask Paterson to veto the bill.

''We are both saddened and angered by the continued attacks upon our indigenous rights and sovereignty by narrow-minded New York politicians and government officials,'' they wrote in a letter seeking support for a veto. They called the legislation ''a misguided assault upon Seneca Indian sovereignty.

''Because tobacco and the trade of tobacco have long been an integral part of our Seneca culture and heritage, we view this recent effort by the New York Legislature as a direct, discriminatory attack on the Seneca people,'' they said. ''Seneca Indian business owners have no intention of helping New York's incompetent bureaucrats close their state's budget deficit, which has been created by their misspending and mismanagement of your tax dollars.''

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© 2008 The Observer

Native Rights News is making this material from The Observer available in accordance with the Fair Use Doctrine codified at Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information. Distribution of this material is for research and educational purposes that will promote social and economic justice and benefit society.

Huge Land Rights Victory for Brazilian Indians

Indians rejoice as Supreme Court affirms land rights

Survival International
11 December 2008

Indians across Brazil are celebrating today as the majority of judges in the Supreme Court ruled to uphold indigenous land rights in a key case. Indian representatives have called the decision, made yesterday on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a ‘great victory’.

The ruling concerns the indigenous territory Raposa-Serra do Sol (‘Land of the Fox and Mountain of the Sun’) in the Amazon state of Roraima. A small group of powerful farmers, who want the Indians’ land and are supported by local politicians, had petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the Brazilian government’s legal recognition of the territory. President Lula signed the territory into law in 2005.

Yesterday eight out of eleven Supreme Court judges affirmed the Indians’ rights to the land, saying it had been demarcated according to the constitution. They affirmed the importance of maintaining indigenous territories as single, continuous areas and stated that territories on Brazil’s borders do not pose a risk to national sovereignty.

The five tribes of Raposa-Serra do Sol had struggled for thirty years to reclaim their ancestral land. The group of farmers refused to leave the area when it was demarcated as an indigenous territory, and since the demarcation they have been waging a campaign of violence against the Indians in order to resist being removed from the land.

Shocking footage taken in May this year shows gunmen hired by one of the farmers attacking a Makuxi Indian community, throwing homemade bombs and firing assault rifles. Ten Indians were wounded in the attack.

The judges also ruled that the farmers must leave Raposa-Serra do Sol, but did not specify when. This will be decided when the ruling is concluded during the court’s next session starting in February 2009, when the remaining three judges deliver their rulings.

Makuxi leader Jacir José de Souza of the Indigenous Council of Roraima (CIR) said today, ‘The land is our mother. We are happy that [our land] has been reclaimed and that the Supreme Court has vindicated indigenous people.’

The Indians of Raposa-Serra do Sol believe that the loss of their land would have destroyed their way of life. Indians elsewhere in Brazil also feared that if the Supreme Court had overturned the demarcation of the territory, it would have left their lands open to similar legal challenges.

Survival’s director Stephen Corry said today, ‘This is fantastic news for the people of Raposa-Serra do Sol. The Brazilian government must now make sure that the farmers leave the area and that the campaign of terror against the Indians ends. It must also ensure that Indian land rights are upheld nationwide, so that never again will we see such blatant attacks on Indians on their own land.’

For more information please contact Miriam Ross at Survival International (+44) (0)20 7687 8734 or (+44) (0)7504 543 367 or email mr@survival-international.org

Act now to help the Indians of Raposa–Serra do Sol
Your support is vital if the Indians of Raposa Serra do Sol are to survive. There are many ways you can help.

Donate to the campaign for the Indians of Raposa Serra do Sol (and other Survival campaigns).

Write to your MP or MEP (UK) or Senators and members of Congress (US).
Write to your local Brazilian high commission or embassy.

If you want to get more involved, contact Survival…


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© Survival International, 2008

Native Rights News is making this material from Survival International available in accordance with the Fair Use Doctrine codified at Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information. Distribution of this material is for research and educational purposes that will promote social and economic justice and benefit society.

Indigenous People Demand Voice in Climate Talks

November 28, 2008
Haider Rizvi, OneWorld US

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 28 (OneWorld) - Calls for greater participation of the world's indigenous leaders are on the rise as another round of talks on global climate change opens in the Polish city of Poznan next week.

It is incomprehensible how governments believe they can discuss the effects of climate change and agree targets without the input of those who already face [its] impacts," said Mark Lattimer of the London-based Minority Rights Group International (MRG).

In a study released last week, MRG researchers warned that a new climate change agreement would be "seriously compromised" if policymakers continued to shut out the voices of those most affected by global warming.

More than 8,000 delegates from around the world are expected to participate in the meeting at Poznan. The two-week meeting is supposed to hammer out further international commitments to fight climate change, including climate-related financial assistance for developing countries.

UN officials hope the meeting will prove to be a "milestone on the road to success" for the negotiation process launched at past conferences, because it is tasked with setting the agenda for next year's final talks on a climate change treaty.

But in Lattimer's view, the UN process is deeply flawed, because it does not allow the communities that have first-hand experience of dealing with climate change to participate in the negotiations.

For one, official delegates in Poznan are expected to set targets on carbon emissions from deforestation, but forest-dwelling communities who are mostly indigenous people may not be included in those discussions.

According to MRG's new report, the impact of climate change hits indigenous communities hardest because they live in ecologically diverse areas and their livelihoods are dependent on the environment.

To cite some examples of climate change impact on indigenous communities, the report refers to unprecedented levels of ice-melt in the Arctic region, droughts in east Africa, and a rapid fall in crop yields in Vietnam.

Minorities, according to the report, are often among the poorest and most marginalized communities and are most likely to face discrimination when disasters occur during climate changes.

"There has been a lot of attention paid to the damage climate change is doing to the environment and the loss of certain plant or animal species, but we aren't sufficiently recognizing its impact on people," said Farah Mihlar, the report's author.

"There are entire communities that could be lost," she added in a statement. "Cultures, traditions, and languages could be wiped off the earth."

At the climate change conference held in Bali, Indonesia, last December, indigenous rights activists held a series of demonstrations against their exclusion from the official talks.

Among them, many had come from the communities living in the tropical forests of the world. At the conference, they expressed worries about plans by governments and international financial institutions to control forest degradation.

At the conference, they particularly expressed their concerns about the World Bank's Carbon Partnership Facility, which is likely to provide large-scale incentives for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
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"Indigenous peoples have for centuries adapted to changing environments and would be able to contribute substantially to adaptation strategies the UN is trying to include in a new climate change treaty."- Mark Lattimer, Minority Rights Group International

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The tropical and subtropical forest, the subject of the Facility, is home to 160 million indigenous people who are seen by many scientists as custodians and managers of forest biodiversity.

"While the Facility can be a good thing, we are very apprehensive on how this will work," said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chairperson of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, "because of our negative historical and present experiences with similar initiatives."

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognizes native groups' right to control their lands and resources, including forests, but many governments and corporations continue to abuse the rights of forest communities.

"We remain in a very vulnerable situation," said Tauli-Corpuz, "because most states do not recognize our rights to these forests and resources found therein."

Last year, a report released by an international advocacy group raised similar concerns about the role of governments and corporations.

In its report, London-based Survival International named and shamed countries where the violations of tribal peoples' rights are most egregious, including Botswana, Brazil, New Zealand, Malaysia, Paraguay, Peru, and the United States.

The report entitled, "The Terrible Ten: Key Abusers of Tribal Peoples' Rights in 2007," said tribal people in West Papua were suffering abuses at the hands of the Indonesian army and that their native lands were often exploited by the government and foreign companies.

In Botswana, Bushmen were forcibly prevented from returning to their homes in the country's diamond-producing area, despite a court ruling that declared their 2002 eviction "unlawful and unconstitutional."

According to Survival, Guarani Indians in Paraguay continued to lose their lands as a result of violence perpetrated by cattle ranchers. A number of natives were killed and raped as well.

In the Peru-Brazil border region, which is home to half of the world's about 100 still uncontacted tribes, indigenous populations faced land grabs by oil companies and loggers backed by the government.

And similar cases also took place in other indigenous territories across the world. The UN Permanent Forum's Tauli-Corpuz demanded that governments and corporations obtain the "free and prior" consent of indigenous peoples before taking any initiative on forest protections.

"I imagine that donors and the private sector would not like to put their resources in high-risk projects which will not genuinely involve indigenous and other forest-dwellers," she said. "If there is an acceptance of the Facility, indigenous peoples must have a representation in [its] governance."

In contrast to the UN negotiation process on climate change issues, indigenous communities enjoy relatively participation in international discussions on preserving biodiversity. The secretariat of the UN treaty on biodiversity has established a working group to ensure for this.

Meanwhile, MRG has gathered a series of testimonies from the world's indigenous leaders in which they express "deep frustration" at their exclusion from the negotiations on climate change.


In a statement, the group called for the United Nations to set up a mechanism, similar to that of the treaty on biological diversity, so that indigenous communities could be able to have their voices heard at the international level.

"Indigenous peoples have for centuries adapted to changing environments and would be able to contribute substantially to adaptation strategies the UN is trying to include in a new climate change treaty," said Lattimer.
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OneWorld.net: Latest News, Groups Working on Indigenous Rights and Climate Change
OneClimate.net: Join in the UN Talks Without Leaving Home




Native Rights News is making this OneWorld.net material available in accordance with the Fair Use Doctrine codified at Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information. Distribution of this material is for research and educational purposes that will promote social and economic justice and benefit society.

Jake Fire Would Have Joined the National Day of Action

Thursday, May 29, 2008

The following letter by a Mohawk youth is being posted on the Day of Action:

Mohawk Nation News
Letter to the editor:

Jake Fire Would Have Joined the National Day of Action! Canadians are seeing the gruesome power of police officers. They have been given the right to carry deadly weapons as part of their arsenal to use during arrests. They carry 50,000 volt tasers, which recently caused the death of an immigrant at the air port in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Canadian public should be very concerned about that incident, since it was not an isolated one. On May 1, 1899, an Akwesasne Mohawk, Saiowisakeron, also known as “Jake Fire”, faced the barrel of a gun in the hands of an RCMP officer. The RCMP had been sent to arrest the Akwesasne traditional chiefs. Standing up for what was right, an unarmed Jake Fire was shot and killed by the RCMP officer. The RCMP officer shooting and killing Jake Fire is the kind of violence and aggression that the colonists use when dealing with Indigenous Peoples asserting our rights. Jake Fire was killed because he supported the traditional Iroquois government and though it was best for his people. At the time, the federal government wanted to impose the colonial band council system of governance. When the Mohawks of Akwesasne resisted the colonial band council style of government, they were coerced into obedience. This pattern has been followed over the centuries when Indigenous got in the way of the immigrants who were swarming all over Turtle Island. In the United States, whenever the settlers came against opposition from the Indigenous, the army was called in. Indigenous resisters were pushed onto uninhabitable areas of Turtle Island. In 1922 the RCMP raided the Six Nations as part of an Indian Affairs plot to overthrow the traditional govenrment. [Order in Council PC 1629, Sept. 17, 1924]. The Iroquois have always resisted being bulldozed into obedience by land developers, governments and police agencies. The most recent example of this brutal method to attempt to control Indigenous occurred in 1995 when an OPP sniper killed an unarmed Indigenous, Dudley George, at Ipperwash, Ontario. Canada and the provincial governments refuse to talk peacefully with the Indigenous people. Instead they arrest and jail, especially the youth. Jailing our people means that Indigenous across Canada are forced to take a back seat to ancestral land and resource theft. We are presently seeing the fast pace of urban development coming into conflict with the Indigenous. Land developers see no problem in going onto disputed Indigenous land to put up housing complexes and explore for oil that destroy the land. Reserves are the only lands left where the non-native are not supposed to encroach. This has not been stopping the developers from trying to enter them too. On May 29, 2008, the Indigenous are asking the Canadian public for support to inform the government that Indigenous Peoples must be dealt with fairly and equitably. This will be the second annual National Day of Action, and Indigenous will show the world that we still care about our rights. Support the cause since it is the future of Indigenous and non-natives alike that will be affected by the federal and provincial government’s response to Indigenous concerns.

Kanatase Horn
Mohawk Akwesasne
Kanatase_18@hotmail.com

Posted by MNN Mohawk Nation News, May 29, 2008. http://www.mohawknationnews.com/

Republic of Lakotah Answers Questions

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Republic of Lakotah Answers Questions

Russell Means answers some direct email questions.

on: January 26, 2008, 02:35:41 PM

From the online Lakotah Republic Forum



This is a response to an email sent to the webmaster from Pokey from the Rosebud Reservation. January 25, 2008

Response: Dear Pokey, Russell Means has asked me to respond to your letter. I will do my best. Some of the responses, particularly the ones with exclamation marks, are direct quotes from Russell. I have regrouped some of your points to address them together.

Best, Jerry Collette

Interim Attorney General Provisional Government


QUESTION: The Lakota leaders rejected the Lakotah Freedom Delegation's proposal. We are NOT part of what Russell Means is trying to do. There has been rejection statements in the news papers from our leaders.

Response: British colonial government leaders rejected the proposal by the American colonists to declare their independence. They were not part of what the signers of the Declaration of Independence were trying to do. There were rejection statements in the newspapers from the colonial governors appointed by the Crown.

QUESTION: Russell Means even read to us a letter of rejection form his own tribe. Russell read the letter from the Indian administrators (who have the full authority to administer US government Indian policies and nothing else) because their letter detailed gross treaty violations by the US.

Response: These “leaders” see the same problems as the freedom seekers do, but they still believe in the treaties. Do they still believe in the Tooth Fairy, too?

QUESTION: He didn't ask the Lakota people or our leaders about this before he started. It hasn't been brought to our Elders or any other of our people beforehand.

Response: In 1974, the first International TREATY Conference at Wakpala on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian reservation in what is now called South Dakota was where the Declaration of Continuing Independence was created. (The full text of the Declaration is available at http://republicoflakotah.com/docs/declarationofcontinuingindependence.pdf) The conference was attended by numerous elders. These were not your ordinary elders; most of them were born to parents who had been born free, they had never been to schools, and they spoke little or no English. These elders gave Russell and the younger participants two mandates. The first mandate was to become recognized by the International Communities. On September 2007, when the United Nations passed the Declaration of Indigenous Rights, that mandate was fulfilled. The second mandate is to return to our original status as free and Independent Nations. On December 17, 2007, the Lakotah Freedom Delegation notified the Department of State of the United States of America, we are unilaterally withdrawing from all Treaties and Agreements entered into between the United States of America and Lakotah. Before going to Washington, Russell traveled all over the five state area meeting with key people over a seven month period. Russell is now in his sixty-ninth winter, and has been working on achieving better conditions for the Indian people for over forty years. He is an elder!

QUESTION: Smoky and I went to the meeting in St. Francis and we left about 3:00 because what he was saying just wouldn't work the way he thinks it would.

Response: You left before the best part. The closing ceremony was amazing.

QUESTION: Here's some questions you might ask him. 1. If we are no longer part of the US how will we support our people? We wouldn't be able to get US Grants anymore either. We are having a hard enough time now even with the government programs and grants! We don't have any kind of industry, all the government programs we have now will stop because they are part of the treaties and US government.

Response: The US government has done a tremendous job of training Lakotah people to be dependent. We are now in a transition period, during which those programs continue while we reestablish our independence. This was done in the Compacts of Free Association that the US government did when the former Trust Territories of the Pacific, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Republic of Palau, and the Federated States of Micronesia, reestablished their sovereignty and freedom.

QUESTION: 2. Where will our communications systems come from ? We don't have any of our own companies. Will we have to import all our food and goods which will make prices sky rocket way out of our ability to pay? What will we do if companies that have what we need don't want to have anything to do with us now that we have our own money system ?

Response: Companies will trade. That is what they do. Prices tend to be lower in countries with less regulations. For example, identical prescription drugs are as much as ninety percent cheaper in other countries as they are in the US. This is because the US has so many laws that the Lakotah people do not need. Industry is flocking to invest here since we have reasserted our sovereignty. Investors like free countries. Their money return is faster and greater. Check out the investment that happened in the eastern European countries after they became free from the Soviet Union! Other countries, like East Timor, etc., have had similar investment booms.

QUESTION: 3 What kind of money system will we have ? What do we have to back it up with ? No one is going to put their money in our banks, with out some kind of interest or returns, and say ok here do what you want to with it. Will our money be excepted every place we want to spend it ?

Response: We expect that there will be many money systems. Some people will still use US dollars. We also plan to have our own currency, which will be backed by gold and silver. We have people from all over the world interested in this because, unlike the US dollar and all other governments currencies, ours will be backed by real value, not just printed up whenever the central bankers decide, like the US dollar, etc.

QUESTION: 4. How will we defend ourselves ? We don't have any Peaceful in place nor weapons of any kind. You know everyone even the US will be at war with us trying to over throw our government. If they succeed we would really lose everything including the treaties. Sure these other countries would bring weapons and someone that knows how to use them and help us defend our country, they want a piece of the pie too.

Response: Who's kidding who here ? The US is not our enemy, and they have no reason to attack us. Costa Rica has no Peaceful . The US has brainwashed its people that it needs a global Peaceful presence and taxes them like mad to fund it. We will not follow such a folly. Everything we are doing is lawful and legal! We are following US laws and international laws. We will never have to expend anyone else's money so we can have an army. We do not need one!

QUESTION: 5. What utilities will we have ? Where will they come from ? How will we pay for it ? 6. What do we have as far as postal services? 7. Passports, visa's, paying duty ? Mission, S.D. isn't part of the Rez. Will we need a passport and visa to go shopping and pay duty on the goods we buy there ? Will they accept our form of money and will we have to pay extra like Canada and other countries do ? Will we have to have a visa to go to Antelope, Winner, Valentine ? We'd have to go through Mission to go to these places. Will friends and families that don't live here have to go through all this to come visit us ? My grand-daughter and great-grand daughter live in Mission. We live in Rosebud 10 miles from Mission. 10. What about all the medical and other people providing services we need that aren't Indian ? Will they have to have passports, visa's and work permits ? What about their friends and family that want to come visit them from outside of our country but live with in the U S ? 11. What would become of all the money that was paid into Social Security. I know the SS wouldn't give it all back to the people that > paid into it all during their working years.

Response: Transitions for all these kinds of things have been done before elsewhere. There are experts who know how to do this, and they will help us, too. Already we have doctors, lawyers, engineers of all types, skilled workers, teachers, etc, etc. etc., emailing us wanting to come to a free country! When you are truly free, you don't have time to complain!

QUESTION: 8. Will we still have tribal presidents or will we have one president to run our country like the other countries do ? Would we have a president or a dictator ? If we couldn't vote on a president, we'd have a dictator wouldn't we. 12. What laws will we have ? Who will determine what they are ? Who will enforce them ? 13. What foreign policies will we have ? Who will determined what they are ? Will the people have anything to say about it.

Response: We are only the provisional government; we are serving as midwives for the rebirth of the Lakotah as a free people. The Lakotah people will decide on their own form of government. Remember, we are not starting from scratch. Before the white man came, Indians governed themselves freely for thousands of years. The white man used the Indian model to create the United States Constitution.

QUESTION: 14. Exactly where would our country be located ? Would it be all the 5 states or just one ? And which one would it be if it was just one ?

Response: The map you see represents the 1851 treaty boundaries, but our traditional lands go beyond that. The exact boundaries are yet to be determined. We are not waiving any claims to our traditional lands.

QUESTION: 15. No taxes? If we don't have to pay taxes who will pay for all the stuff that the taxes pay for now, like roads, schools, jails, our government workers, and all the other things it pays for ? We can't spin gold out of straw.

Response: We expect that there will be local taxes, but not national ones. The local governments will support the national government. We are not expecting to have huge governments. Free people do not need them. They do not work, anyway. We have seen that.

QUESTION: If we was to be part of this he would have to come up with some better ideas on how things was to be done and take it to the people and find out if that's what everyone wants. 16. Why wasn't this brought to a vote by the people ? No one has the right to speak for all of us with out our consent. Even our tribal presidents don't have the right to give the ok with out asking us how we feel about something like this and giving us a chance to vote on it. I am an enrolled member and I'm an Elder but no one said any thing to me, the first I heard of this is when someone from Ohio asked me about it in an E-Mail. All the Elders I asked about it said they didn't hear anything about it either.

RESPONSE: We came to a treaty meeting on Rosebud (at St. Francis) before we went to DC. Then, we had the meeting at Rosebud after we came back, part of which you even attended. We are having more meetings; we just had one at Standing Rock last weekend, we are having one at Yankton this weekend, and we are scheduling one for Rapid City. We will also be posting more info on the website as things develop.

QUESTION: Even our tribal President didn't know.

Response: We did not ask the permission of the US authorities disguised as tribal leaders. They like the existing system. They are in power, and they get to keep that power by begging to Washington for crumbs for our people. Then, eighty-three cents of every dollar they get from Washington goes to administration, and seventeen cents ends up passing through the reservation briefly on its way back to the white man's corporations.

QUESTION: Please excuse all the questions but these are all issues that would have to be addressed in a satisfactory way before we would even consider being our own separate country in the middle of the U S. They will all be addressed during the transition period. The United States has not left yet. If Russell Means really wanted to do something worth while, why don't he petition the US Government to honor the treaties instead of trying to start a war that every one knows we will lose and our country would be taken over with out any treaties or anything else and we would be a lot worse off than we are right now.

Response: Russell has been working for over forty years to get the US to honor its treaties. There will be no war with the US. Do you really believe the US people will allow their government to bomb us? We can count on things getting worse if we continue under US domination.

QUESTION: Every one here on the Rosebud Reservation tell me Russell is just trying to fill his pockets at the expense of our people.

Response: Out of his concern for his people, Russell is paying a lot of his own money to do this. However, a rising tide does raise all the ships in the harbor. With freedom and economic prosperity in Lakotah, we will all do better. Does anybody expect our situation to improve much under the current system? You know that everything has gotten worse during your lifetime. Wake up and smell the coffee!

QUESTION: Sooner or later every one will know he's just making a fool of himself, well if it was just himself I would just laugh along with every one else but he's making the Lakotah look like fools right along with himself! Russell admits that he was foolish to believe in the treaties for as long as he did, but does not fault the Lakotah people who still believe in them. By the way some one needs to teach Russell how to spell Lakota, there's no "h" at the end of Lakota !

Response: You are free to spell it the white man's way if you prefer.

Mayan Land Title Case in Belize May Help Indigenous Peoples Elsewhere

In an article written by Kim Petersen and published yesterday in The Dominion, an independent Canadian newspaper, http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/1616, we have learned the following.

On October 18, 2007, the Supreme Court of Belize issued a ruling that will elicit cheers from indigenous peoples and activists around the world. By the same token, the ruling is sure to be seen as a dark cloud on the horizon by the governments of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the only four countries in the world to reject the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIP), enacted by the UN General Assembly on September 13, 2007.

The ruling in Cal v. Attorney General is the first anywhere to cite DRIP, and holds that “Mayan rights to occupy their lands, farm, hunt and fish pre-date European colonization and remain in force today.” Supreme Court Justice Abdulai Conteh noted, “[A] mere change in sovereignty does not extinguish native title to land. … Extinguishment of rights to or interests in land is not to be lightly inferred.” The Supreme Court further held that "that the national government must recognize the indigenous Mayans’ customary tenure to land and refrain from any act that might prejudice their use or enjoyment of this land."

This ruling effectively puts an end to the Belize government’s granting of licenses to corporations and other concerns seeking to engage in logging, mineral extraction and hydroelectric development on Mayan land. Arguably, these companies will now be forced to negotiate directly with the Mayans who may or may not allow such operations. It is almost certain that Mayan values and culture will act as a moderating force upon any such ventures, ameliorating adverse impacts on the environment and ecosystems in Belize.

In what is perhaps the most troubling (for colonialist governments and multinational corporations) language in the ruling, Justice Conteh held that “British colonial and subsequent acquisition of land in Belize did not abrogate the Mayan people’s primordial rights to their land.” Citing Delgamuukw v British Columbia, Conteh said, “Indigenous title is now correctly regarded as sui generis.” In other words, indigenous title to land is unique, unlike any other claim of title to land. Essentially, the extremely long occupation and use of land by its original inhabitants confers title to them sui generis. This ruling means that a foreign government that seizes land from indigenous peoples by military force or acquires it by deception and fraud cannot convey clear title to its own citizens.

We may soon see cases brought in the U.S. and Canada, and perhaps Australia and New Zealand raising this very issue. Citing this case, tribes will demand that title to their traditional homelands revert to them because original title belongs to them sui generis, and a mere change in sovereignty does not defeat that title. Alternatively, this ruling could be used to support the filing of liens on existing landholders in the Lakota Nation, which has renounced its treaties with the U.S. government and reclaimed its sovereignty. See http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/1220-02.htm