Six Nations and NY: who owes whom?

Six Nations and the Empire State: Who owes whom?

Posted: June 14, 2007

by: Editors Report / Indian Country Today

It's ''day two'' in New York state. That is, last year's campaign rhetoric by now-Gov. Eliot Spitzer promising change beginning on ''day one'' has come and gone. He is now learning why his predecessors have never been successful at enforcing commerce laws, specifically the collection of gasoline and cigarette taxes, on Indian reservations. Stubborn will, inherent in Six Nations Iroquois people, has been the strongest weapon in support of tribal sovereignty. It is unlikely that Spitzer, a former hard-line state attorney general, will find the political success he seeks in his dealings with New York tribes, especially if the end-goal continues to be tax collection from Haudenosaunee people. The key to tribal economic survival is sovereignty and the inherent ability to regulate commerce, so it follows that taxation is not a matter of simple economics as legislators and activists for ''equality'' would have us believe. New York state's blood thirst for tax revenue from Indian gas and cigarette sales is famously unfulfilled. The money has become the elusive brass ring for politicians who insist that Indians pay their ''fair share'' of taxes, theoretically leveling the economic playing field. The hole in this argument is that the field has been systematically graded in the state's favor for generations through both crude and sophisticated methods of dispossession. It is only common sense that tribes fight to protect a basic element of sovereignty: the power to tax, which, understood by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall nearly 200 years ago, ''involves the power to destroy.'' Destruction of Indian cultural and economic resources is at the heart of the classic New York tax fight. The state barely acknowledges historical damages done to the Haudenosaunee people and lands as a result of political betrayal between sovereigns and land swindles instigated by both officials and civilians. A comprehensive examination of Indian lands illegally ceded or taken by eminent domain by the Empire State is due, perhaps as a strategic effort to persuade non-Indian supporters (read voters) to take up the anti-tax cause. Here is brief tour, summarizing each nation's ''contribution' ' to the enrichment of New York state. More ...