The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, in Yakima Indian Nation vs. Yakima
County, Washington, that state and county governments have the "right"
to assess and enforce property taxes against Indian Reservation lands.
Many millions of acres of Indian Nation land were lost in the 19th and 20th
centuries when taxation was enforced against Indian Reservation land,
at the behest of covetous land speculators who wanted the Indians'
land. When an Indian failed to pay the tax assessed, the land was forfeit
to the state or to a land agent. This was the infamous era when the
title "Indian Agent" and "Land Agent" were virtually synonymous. As the
Kansas City Star of the era opined, "The Indian cumbered the land, and
was removed." Even official policies of genocide were perfectly
acceptable to pursue the aims of increasing European "living room."
The last time this discredited policy was tried it was known as "termination,"
and it was without exception disastrous to the Indian nations affected,
individually and corporately. The Congress and BIA finally owned up of
sorts to their grievous error, but obviously somebody forgot to tell the
judiciary.
Europeans have long chafed at the thought and practice of having to
pay compensation to American Indians for the unjust confiscation of their
lands. Now, in a sardonic turnaround, Indians are to be forced to pay for
the "privilege" of not having their remaining ancestral lands seized.
It's in line with the ruling a year or so back that the European occupying
power in the form of its various governments has the full right to regulate,
prohibit and punish the religious practices of Native Americans, regardless
of antiquity.
The overall aim of European government, always and everywhere, has been to
subjugate and subsume our people. Their authority is not God's - quite the
opposite - but they always seek to remake us in their own image, and then to
deface that image. Alexis de Tocqueville, astute 19th century French critic
of European America, though he could not understand the Indian, understood his
own kind well enough: "But it is the misfortune of Indians to be brought
into contact with a civilized [sic] people, who are also (it must be
owned) the most grasping nation on the globe."
The Europeans do not hear the God they only pretended to follow, for He says,
"Your Red brother's blood cries to me from the ground."
Must it be true that there can be no justice for the Red man until Europeans
no longer rule our - not theirs - land?
If so, may they one day be banished from the ground they have defiled.
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Peshewegunzh
peshe%mamia.UUCP@mthvax.cs.miami.edu
mthvax.cs.miami.edu!mamia.UUCP!peshe
peshe@mamia.UUCP
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