[IPSM] AIM activist on the Abramoff scandal

[samir]

American Indian Movement activist on the Abramoff scandal: 
One of many racists out to defraud Native tribes
 
Socialist Worker Online
January 27, 2006 | Page 4
 
 
GEORGE BUSH and his Republican buddies are scrambling to shift attention
away from a scandal that could send some of the most powerful people in
Washington packing--if not land them behind bars.
 
At the center of the scandal is Jack Abramoff, a longtime Republican
Party operative who became a high-powered lobbyist in the 1990s.
Abramoff goes way back with important Republican leaders (former
Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed was a college buddy), and he
became increasingly powerful as the right-wingers like ex-Majority
Leader Tom DeLay took over in the House of Representatives.
 
Because of his connections to DeLay and other prominent
Republicans--such as Ohio Rep. Bob "Freedom Fries" Ney--Abramoff was
able to offer his lobbying clients inside access when their interests
were threatened by legislation pending in Congress. In return, Abramoff
got filthy rich.
 
But Abramoff isn't in hot water for selling political influence. He got
caught ripping off his clients--in particular, Native American tribes
who run casino and gambling operations.
 
The tribes would hire Abramoff to lobby for them over gaming issues, and
Abramoff would tell them which politicians to make political donations
to.
 
What he didn't say was that he and his business partner Michael Scanlon
were sometimes working for groups whose interests were directly opposed
to the tribes. For example, in 2002, Abramoff and Scanlon worked for
religious conservatives lobbying the state of Texas to shut down a
casino run by the Tigua of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo in Texas--at the same
time that Abramoff was charging the Tiguas millions to lobby for the
casino.
 
Abramoff had nothing but contempt for his Native American clients. In
e-mails exposed a few years ago, Abramoff called tribal members
"trogdolytes" and "morons".  "I have to meet with the monkeys from the
Choctaw tribal counsel," he wrote to Scanlon.
 
Overall, the Abramoff scandal is offering a glimpse of how political
power is bought and sold in America, but this particular aspect is
shining a light on a small part of an injustice that dates back even
longer--the U.S. government's genocide against Native Americans, its
theft of their land and the crushing of anyone who stood in their way.
 
HISTORICALLY, RACISM has characterized and justified unscrupulous
behavior toward Native Americans. This attitude has kept us in poverty
and ill health since the inception of the reservation system.
 
The long historical racist mentality, accentuated through the doctrine
of Manifest Destiny, has allowed countless political types and racist
individuals like Jack Abramoff to defraud Native tribes of billions of
dollars.
 
This theft is consistent with congressional double-dealings that
manipulate away profit, land, natural resources and enterprising
attempts by Native American tribes to make their nations economically
and socially independent.
 
When tribal people stand up in self defense, as they did in the 1970s,
when thousands marched across North America on the Trail of Broken
Treaties to Washington, D.C., to protest tribal corruption sanctioned by
federal policies and congressional acts, we were met with clubs and
violence.
 
Before federal treaties removed tribes from their traditional lands,
they lived a rich and abundant life for thousands of years. Since then,
congressional acts have kept tribes locked in poverty and ill health to
the present day.
 
The federal government's programs enacted by Congress have whittled away
millions of areas of reservation land for profit, and continue an
ongoing policy that sanctions thefts of Indian land and natural
resources. The gaming industry represents a continuation of
congressional manipulations that erode tribal sovereignty and continue
to plague the quality of life for Native people.
 
We have fought the land rush, gold rush and oil rush. Now comes the
gaming rush, which has created more corruption in our tribal governments
and animosity among Native Americans. Congress passed the Indian Gaming
Regulatory Act in 1988, and it has only brought money-mongering
politicians scurrying in from Washington, D.C., sniffing out casino
profits.
 
Governmental reports alleging that gaming revenue has been used to
"reduce poverty and unemployment rates, build schools and hospitals,
paved road and construct sewer systems, preserve and revitalize cultural
traditions and build responsive and responsible government institutions
such as tribal courts" are a smokescreen for the United States to escape
its treaty obligations.
 
If these treaties had been honored decades ago, the Native American
communities would have enjoyed the same opportunities and the same
standard of living as mainstream America.
 
The United States is the wealthiest country in the world, with a higher
poverty rate than any other progressive nation. Native Americans rank
the poorest in health and economy due to federal "Indian policies."
 
The government has attempted to mask these policies as good and
wholesome, but in reality, they are bent towards genocide, ethnocide and
land and resource theft in the name of divine "manifest destiny" to
spread civilization by territorial expansion and subjugation of American
Indians.
 
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THE AMERICAN Indian Movement fought against tribal corruption in the
1970s, which resulted in us being labeled "terrorist" and wholesale
federal attacks on us by their political police force, the FBI, which
used its counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO) to destroy our
legitimate protest movement.
 
The Church Committee declared that these methods were in violation of
the constitutional protections. Despite the Church Committee's findings,
the federal government declared war on the American Indian Movement,
resulting in over 300 assaults and homicides by a corrupt tribal
government that was armed and protected by the FBI, an agency of the
Department of Justice.
 
The USA PATRIOT Act is today using similar methods against us. The
federal government justifies such acts through scare tactics that label
threats under the name "terrorist." Leonard Peltier, a victim of the
COINTELPRO program, has served 30 years in prison to date, and there
seems to be no end in sight to his continued incarceration.
 
Congressional acts are passed to regulate the lives of Indian people
into oblivion. One of the most outrageous congressional acts passed was
about freedom of religion. Why did we need a special act protecting our
religious rights when the U.S. Constitution alleges to protect
everyone's religious freedom and rights?
 
Just as the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) controls the lives of tribal
people through corruption, so too does the casino business create and
maintain corrupt tribal leadership. Tribal leadership is now using what
remains of our sovereignty as a weapon against their own people.
 
Many American Indians now view the Gaming Act as just another
congressional act of genocide, similar to congressional acts like the
Relocation and Termination Act. These were attempts to remove Indians
from their remaining lands and make them disappear into the melting pot
of North America.
 
Many California tribes, in order to get a bigger share of the profits,
have been thinning out their population by arbitrarily kicking hundreds
of members from tribal roles and/or denying them enrollment. The
Enterprise Rancheria kicked out 75 members, while still other tribes
corrupted by the money are kicking out hundreds.
 
The real kicker is that when these tribal members attempt to appeal
these outrageous acts of genocide by their own Nations through the U.S.
Department of Justice, tribal sovereignty is recognized. It is clear
that institutions of the federal government continue to manipulate
tribal sovereignty to the disparagement of Indian people.
 
Tribes began as sovereign powers, which are recognized by treaties
between them and the United States of America. Congress has historically
limited tribal sovereignty by passage of such congressional acts as the
Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which are cloaked as progressive economic
opportunities for tribal nations, while they are, in fact, designed to
take from the tribes' control of their lives, by expressly limiting
tribal sovereignty.
 
--
ROBERT ROBIDEAU is co-director of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee.
Along with Leonard, his cousin, Robert was an activist in the American
Indian Movement, an organization formed in the 1970s to demand civil
rights and defend Native Americans from government violence.
 
Robert was accused along with Leonard of killing two FBI agents on the
Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975. Robert was acquitted; in
a separate trial, Leonard was convicted and sentenced to prison, where
he remains unjustly to this day.
 
Robert has continued the struggle for Leonard and for Native American
rights. He wrote this aticle for Socialist Worker in response to the
Abramoff scandal.
 
 
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