Note: Dan David is Kanienke:haka (Mohawk) from Kanehsatake, Quebec. He's
chair of diversity at Ryerson School of Journalism in Toronto and a
journalist who's covered too many confrontations in Haudenosaunee territories.
As a journalist, I've watched and read as messages to this list and to other
lists poured in immediately after the recent confrontations in Mohawk, Seneca
and Onondaga countries over the NY taxation issue.
These messages, which I followed up with personal inquiries, provided me with
a ring-side seat to an all-too-familiar escalating pattern of tension: first
there is outrage; followed by one side or the other trying to put a
particular spin on the issue; and finally a sense of confusion as people try
to understand what it all means.
I won't recap the events except to point out some glaring inconsistencies in
the positions of all sides.
I'll begin with a news release dated April 24, 1997, posted by Allen Gabriel
(bf145@freenet.carleton.ca), and entitled the "Mohawk Nation Council of
Chiefs release on interim NYS agreement:
[ http://bioc09.uthscsa.edu/natnet/archive/nl/9704/0100.html ]
> (Akwesasne -April 24, 1997) There has been much information
> circulating over the past few weeks with respect to the Interim
> Agreement between the Haudenosaunee and the State of New York.
> The interim agreement has been described by some as a tax compact thru
> which the State will impose its taxes on our people and territories.
>
> This is not our understanding of the terms and intent of this agreement.
> The Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs would not support any tax
> compact. As the nation's government, we will ensure that the
> collective rights and responsibilities of the people are not eroded or
> undermined. We have always maintained a consistent position with
> respect to our status as a nation and we will continue to do so.
>
> We have made it clear that, although the Mohawk Nation Council of
> Chiefs is tentatively supportive of the current discussions with the
> State, we are not an active, official, participant.
>
> While the Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs supports the principles
> outlined in the beginning of the interim agreement, we will wait to
> study the actual text that will come out of current discussions and
> base our contribution to the public discourse on accurate and
> current information.
I've rarely read a better example of double-speak.
There's an "Interim Agreement between the Haudenosaunee and the State of New
York" to collect taxes from Indian businesses on Haudenosaunee territories.
The Mohawk Nation Council is a part of the Haudenosaunee and, yet, the
Council says while it's "tentatively supportive" of "current discussions," it
is not an "active, official, participant."
The Council supports the taxation agreement... but will "ensure that the
collective rights and responsibilities of the people are not eroded or
undermined."
How, when the Council says it's not involved in those negotiations? It isn't
possible. The Council is simply trying to deflect responsibility while
supporting the taxation agreement. The Council is either involved in
negotiations with NY State or it isn't. It either supports the taxation
agreement or it doesn't. It can't be half-pregnant.
At Akwesasne, this fudging of the issue angered a lot of people who did not
necessarily support the obvious opponents of the taxation agreement -- the
Warrior Society and the on-reservation businessmen. But, when opponents to
the agreement sought to get popular support in the community to act against
the "embargo" of oil, gas and cigarettes, they failed.
In the words of one person that I interviewed: "We were sick and tired of
these guys (the Warriors Society and businesses) always coming to us in our
community, to the Mohawks, to put ourselves on the line for something like
this. We get beat up and the rest of the Confederacy (Six Nations Iroquois)
sit back and watch. Then we get blamed for making their lives miserable. If
they believe in standing up for their rights, let them do it. But I'm not
putting my ass in a sling anymore just so I can get the shit kicked out of me
from both sides."
From there, opponents of the tax deal sought support in other communities.
They found some in Cattaraugus and in Onondaga. In both cases, the NY State
police reacted to protestors with batons, beatings and arrests. In other
words, the police acted in a stupid and brutal fashion which only served to
escalate tensions and to give the opponents of the tax deal the outraged
support they needed.
An unsigned message from a group calling itself the Mohawk Nation Office -
Kahnawake Branch <mnation@axess.com>, wrote on Tue, 20 May 1997:
> This attack by police follows on the heels of New York State losing
> its tax case this week against Indians and courts, and the condemning
> of the corrupt Iroquois chiefs council who signed a tax deal with
> Governor Pataki last month. Irving Powliss and Oren Lyons were
> directing the New York State Troopers.
The first real analysis of the issue took place when Tim Johnson
(native_americas@cornell.edu), executive manager of Native Americas Journal,
wrote on Thu, 22 May 1997:
[ http://bioc09.uthscsa.edu/natnet/archive/nl/9705/0060.html ]
> The fact that the agreement was signed after secret negotiations and
> verification that virtually no one in any of the communities who stood
> to be affected was consulted in formal processes or even informed as to
> its ultimate terms has put the Indian leadership in a boiling cauldron.
> Several of the Indian representatives who signed with Pataki are keeping
> low profiles and a growing opposition movement is gaining ground. If
> Pataki's aides had planned the disruption of the Indians' democratic
> processes and decimation of their financial markets, they could not have
> played a more significant role or hoped for a better outcome.
The issue here, Johnson points out, is one of failed "democratic processes"
on the part of both NY State and of the Haudenosaunee. Johnson adds that he
cannot get a copy of the taxation agreement to find out its details or to
find out who represented the Haudenosaunee in those negotiations. In fact,
Johnson writes later in his article, even some NY legislators can't get
copies of that agreement. Apparently they'd been trying to find out for
themselves what was going on with this Indian taxation issue and why it blew
up in their backyards.
In a followup article posted that same day, entitled "Sconiers' Supreme
Court Decision Sensible," Tim Johnson wrote about a judge's decision
throwing out the agreement as "illegal."
[ http://bioc09.uthscsa.edu/natnet/archive/nl/9705/0061.html ]
> Writes Judge Sconiers, in the memorandum decision: "It is ... clear,
> even to the casual observer, that the real interest underlying this
> recent extraordinary showing of the State police powers, is the desire,
> not to collect taxes, but rather to advance the commercial interest of
> "retail parity" and thereby defeat the previous competitive advantage of
> Reservation sales.
>
> "This Court is struck by how little has changed for the Indian over the
> past century and a half and believes that to the Indian respondents
> herein, it owes a responsibility of more than a simple review of the
> applicable authority cited by Petitioner [NYS] and must, at the very
> minimum, acknowledge the underlying inequities of which they complain."
However, it is in the next paragraph that Johnson returns to the issue of
failed democratic processes and the lack of accountability by both NY State
officials and Haudenosaunee representatives.
> This first cogent, intellectual analysis of the NYS and Indian tax
> conflict by Justice Sconiers goes a long way toward fleshing out the
> inconsistencies and inequities obscured by state and Indian negotiators
> in their zeal to first strike a deal and then sell it to the respective
> publics. But their emphasis on political expediency over the
> implementation of fully functional democratic processes has come at a
> great cost to hundreds of Indian workers across the state who were
> suddenly put out of work and back into the ranks of the unemployed.
Repeatedly, Johnson is trying to make clear that it is Haudenosaunee
officials who are, at least, equally responsible as NY State officials for
failing to inform people in their respective communities of the issues or to
get support for their position before entering into negotiations. And of
trying to make a deal as quickly as possible.
The next comment comes from John Mohawk (mohawk@buffnet.net), who teaches at
the American Studies Department at the State University of New York (SUNY) at
Buffalo. On Sat, 14 Jun 1997, Mohawk lays blame for the recent confrontations
in Seneca and Onondaga country squarely upon the "Warrior Society" and
Iroquois businessmen":
> The blockade was not unexpected and while the rhetoric was directed at
> the governor of New York, the underlying cause of what was indeed a
> crisis is found in a string of court decisions culminating in a decision
> by the U.S. Supreme Court. The fact pattern around how things came to be
> the way they are is centered on court decisions. A faction of Iroquois
> Indians which includes elements of the Iroquois Warrior Society and the
> Iroquois businessmen adopted a strategy to use direct action against the
> state, shutting down highways, to force the governor to cease trying to
> collect taxes and thereby to stop seizing trucks bringing these products
> to the Indian country. It is extremely unlikely that the State can or
> will accede to Indian demands that New York officials simply stop
> enforcing their tax laws.
[ http://bioc09.uthscsa.edu/natnet/archive/nl/9706/0023.html ]
To Mohawk, it is a simply a matter of case law, of taxation decisions by
various courts over the years which have created an environment of unfair
competition between Indian businessmen on reservations and white businessmen
everywhere else, and of out-and-out tax evasion. It is also the actions of
greedy Indian businessmen, putting individual profit before communal benefit.
To Mohawk, this makes inevitable a tax deal with NY State -- the aim of
which is to take a share of the profits from on-reservation businesses and
put it into the hands of tribal councils and Haudenosaunee officials instead.
At no time does Mohawk address the issue of "secret negotiations" or failed
"democratic processes" which has outraged more than just the "Warrior
Society" and "businessmen."
While most people I spoke with were concerned about the issues Mohawk writes
about, they're incensed by the lack of consultation. To them, it isn't just
a question of money or of how the pie is divided. It's a question of
fundamental democratic rights -- the right to make informed decisions and to
have their officials accountable to them. The democratic process, of which
Johnson writes, depends upon officials involving people into debate,
providing the information people need to consider various positions
rationally before any decisions are made. Or any agreement is signed.
This did not happen. They complained that this kind of informed democracy
has not taken place in Haudenosaunee country for a long time. This is why,
as Johnson put it, the Indian leadership found themselves "in a boiling
cauldron." They put themselves into that cauldron by trying an end-run
around the democratic process, cutting out the people, and then relying upon
State Troopers to disperse their opposition within their own communities.
The result, for people like Will Keihan, is confusion about who is right and
who is wrong. Will (frye@smtplink.ipfw.indiana.edu) writes on Wed, 18 Jun
1997:
[ http://bioc09.uthscsa.edu/natnet/archive/nl/9706/0035.html ]
> I must admit that I weigh out in the middle of this conflict as I can
> see some validity to all sides, but I also feel there are some important
> issues, for those involved, to discuss before a proper and just
> resolution to the conflict can occur.
The conflict could have been avoided if, as Will notes, "some important
issues" were discussed and debated in the first place. So, who's to blame
for the present situation, for the present conflict?
Is it the "greedy" businessmen? The "lawless" Warriors? It's easy to blame
NY State officials but they are, ultimately, answerable to their own voters
and to their own courts. Both the businessmen and the Warriors were cut out
of any discussions or debate along with people in the communities. And,
besides, they consider themselves answerable to no one. Most unfortunately,
however, so do Haudenosaunee officials.
So long as Haudenosaunee officials act as though democracy in our own
territories is too noisy, too difficult, too problematic to respect then the
Confederacy's biggest problem is not NY State or US Supreme Court rulings, or
businessmen or Warriors, but their own leaders' arrogance and disdain for the
Confederacy's laws and system of government.
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Dan David Ryerson Polytechnic University
dandavid@acs.ryerson.ca School of Journalism, 350 Victoria St.,
shmohawk@tvo.org Toronto, Ontario.M5B 2K3
Ph: (416) 979-5000 x 7194 Fax: (416) 979-5216
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