Liberals Gamble Away Indians' Future

Washington has continued its blind policy of selling American Indian rights out to non-Indians during the 21st century. Most recently, the nation’s government has stepped on tribal rights to make room for the corrupt “Indian” casino business.

I said as much at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Wednesday, May 12, I was invited to speak to leaders of Citizens Equal Rights Alliance, United Property Owners, Upstate Citizens for Equality, and One Nation. These organizations represent over a quarter of a million Americans citizens who have personally lost money, property, business, and basic civil rights as the result of aggressions by the Indian casino industry. (Not to mention the income counties and states lose to tax-exempt “Indian” casino business.)

As an American Indian, a Comanche from Oklahoma, I care about the public image of the Indian. I value being Indian. Though my tribe isn’t guilty of encroachment on anyone’s rights, it is a vital concern to me that, nationally, the “Indian” casino industry is destroying the pride and meaning of being Indian.

I therefore have a stake in the cause of these American citizens’ organizations that met in Washington. I’ve called myself an American Indian patriot since I began writing as a FrontPageMagazine columnist, speaking for Young America’s Foundation, and managing my own website, BadEagle.com. Therefore these citizens’ organizations called me to Washington to talk with them, and to them. I wanted to know how they really feel, and what their real goals are.

Of course, most Indian leaders regard these organizations as the enemy, especially those Indian leaders involved in the casino industry. CERA is serious threat. “This group has a history of attacking tribes,” said David Simmons, Director of Policy and Research for the National Indian Child Welfare Association. In a typically anonymous and inflamatory editorial in Indian Country Today, all these groups are called “anti-Indian organizations,” and “hate groups,” “focused on destroying the bases of Indian sovereignty on the basis of United States law.”

They’re against the federal government forcibly setting up a casino in their face when they didn’t want it. They’re offended that the federal government shows preference to syndicated contractors and managers, morally crippled politicians, and a handful of criminally-minded tribal leaders – instead of honoring the rights of honest American people. They feel betrayed when federal government completely denies the very idea of equal protection under the law, and suspends the whole concept of private land ownership.

These citizens’ organizations are against the idea that through this syndicated, politically corrupt gambling industry, irresponsible Indian leaders suddenly acquire land and have power and jurisdiction over American citizens who have owned and developed that same land for generations, and have paid taxes on their lands, properties, and businesses for decades.

They are against the idea that their rights as American citizens should be taken from them, and that the federal government should declare them foreigners on what was their own land.

And why should they? It’s their people that created America, not Indians. Only a diabolically self-righteous liberal politician would take America out of the hands that created it, and give it to those who either lost it, or never had anything to do with it.

But this is what’s happening. It’s really an internal war, not between Indians and whites, but between whites and other whites. It is a desperate power struggle, and Indians are being used by liberals as the arrowhead to strike deep into the heart of American values.

Yet the white blood flowing is the purest I’ve ever seen. These citizens I met in Washington have no resentment towards Indians. There wasn’t the slightest trace of animosity, nor a hint of anger or racism toward Indians

That set my heart aflame. I was proud of them. I was proud to be with them. In a way, I was proud that Indians are the catalyst of a fundamental American reformation.

Casinos are ruining Indian country and America. Casino politicians and businessmen are the ones who are anti-Indian and anti-American. Skip Hayward and his Mashantucket-Pequot Casino club for Negroes have done more damage to Indian Country than Christopher Columbus ever imagined. The “black Indians” have made the very claim to be Indian a joke. And their casino precedent has spawned more social disease in America than pox-infected blankets.

Dr. David A. Yeagley is a published scholar, professionally recorded composer, and an adjunct professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Liberal Studies. He's on the speakers list of Young America's Foundation. E-mail him at badeagle2000@yahoo.com. View his website at http://www.badeagle.com.

excerpts of an item of interest from the dreaded New York Times

May 6, 2004

Trump Named In Inquiry On Financing Indian Groups

Donald Trump and other major casino investors have quietly spent tens of millions of dollars to help Indian groups in Connecticut finance campaigns aimed at winning federal recognition as Indian tribes, according to testimony on Wednesday before a House committee.

The disclosure, made before the House Committee on Government Reform, gets to the heart of a major concern of critics who say private investors like Mr. Trump are bankrolling the efforts of would-be tribes in the hopes of grabbing a share of the Indian gambling industry. Federal tribal recognition allows Indian tribes to build casinos.

The most detailed testimony about the partnerships between private investors and would-be tribes came from Jeff Benedict, the founder of the Connecticut Alliance Against Casino Expansion, a nonprofit group made up of citizens, civic leaders and businesses.

Mr. Benedict testified that four major financiers, including Mr. Trump, had spent nearly $35 million in Connecticut alone helping several groups win tribal recognition from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Arguing that the situation in Connecticut is part of a larger pattern of abuse, he cited statistics showing that 291 groups nationwide are seeking federal recognition as tribes and that an estimated two-thirds of them have entered private deals with investors who want a cut of the $15 billion that is wagered annually in Indian-run casinos.

But Lyle Berman, whose company has spent about $4 million in helping the Nipmuc Nation in Connecticut petition for federal tribal recognition, offered no apologies for trying to become the tribe's partner in any future casino operation.

Moreover, he said that his company was performing a valuable service by helping the Nipmucs pay for the expensive legion of historians, lobbyists and lawyers they need to help them navigate the complex tribal-recognition process.

-snip-

Mr. Shays said that Mr. Trump and Tom Wilmot, a shopping mall developer who is a partner of the Golden Hill Paugussett, a would-be tribe based in Trumbull, Conn., had declined invitations to appear before the committee. He said that in light of the testimony that was given yesterday, the committee would press for the two men, along with other investors bankrolling would-be tribes in Connecticut, to appear.

''These are huge numbers,'' Mr. Shays said. ''We need to know what this money was spent on, and we are going to find out.''

-snip-

Other speakers at the hearing included Richard Blumenthal, the attorney general of Connecticut who is leading an effort to overturn the federal government's recent recognition of three tribes in his state. Mr. Blumenthal expressed concern that private investors who are bankrolling would-be tribes are having an ''undue influence'' on the recognition process.

-snip-

Mr. Blumenthal and others who appeared before the committee also called on the federal government to require private investors to disclose, among other things, the amount of money they spend on behalf of groups seeking tribal recognition.

Critics of the industry, in and outside government, have long complained that neither the would-be tribes nor the private investors who back them are required to disclose such information.

''If this committee does nothing more than implement rules of disclosure, it will have made a tremendous contribution,'' Mr. Blumenthal said in his testimony. In his testimony, Mr. Benedict said the major investors in Connecticut included Mr. Trump, who spent about $9.1 million helping the Eastern Pequots; Mr. Wilmot, the shopping mall developer who invested at least $10 million assisting the Golden Hill Paugussett, a group based in Trumbull; and Frederick A. DeLuca, the founder of the Subway restaurant chain, who also invested $10 million in the Golden Hill Paugussett.

But Mr. Reardon, the lawyer for Mr. Trump, said his client had been open about his work with the Indians. ''Neither Mr. Trump nor his organization has hidden the fact that they have supported this tribe.''-end-

FYI - in 2002, the leader of the Golden Hill Paugussett 'tribe' signed an greement with Bridgeport city council leaders that would give the group 300 acres of land in Bridgeport along I-95 to build a casino complex. The agreement was/is contingent upon the group's Federal Recognition. In exchange for the 300 acres, the group would agree not to file land claims on 750,000 acres in Connecticut - approximately 1/4 of the total land mass in the state including the entirety of Fairfield County, New Haven County and Litchfield county.

Some traffic impact studies have been conducted to determine how I-95 and Rte 15 would handle having a casino (or more than one since there are many 'tribes' vying for the same real estate)the size of Foxwoods or the slightly smaller Mohegan Sun built in Bridgeport along what is one of the most heavily-travelled stretches of I-95. You can view one of the studies at: www.swrpa.org/pdf_files/CasinoFinalReport.pdf

All told, I-95 is barely able to sustain current traffic and is already the main artery to the two casinos further up the coast. As it is a major trucking artery to points north of NYC and the Port of Newark, citing a casino in Bridgeport has the potential to be devastating well beyond .

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