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Identity Economics

May 14, 2005 — Prometheus 6

Groups Lose Recognition as Tribes
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

WASHINGTON, May 13 - Two groups of American Indians planning to build casinos in Connecticut were dealt major blows on Friday when a federal panel reversed earlier decisions granting both of them recognition as tribes.

The decision by the panel, the Interior Board of Indian Appeals, affects the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation and the Eastern Pequot Indian tribe. Their cases will go back to the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs for more review, officials said.

The Schaghticoke Tribal Nation was recognized as a tribe by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 2004, and the Eastern Pequots in 2002.

Connecticut officials, who applauded the reversals on Friday, said they were significant setbacks for the Indian groups.

They said the appeals board had apparently agreed with their contention that the groups lacked basic requirements for federal tribal recognition.

Such recognition allows tribes to build casinos and provides them a host of other benefits, including tax exemptions. Both groups have said that they want to build casinos in Connecticut, a goal that concerned some political leaders and residents.

Many critics complain that major casino investors are spending large sums of money to help Indian groups finance campaigns for federal recognition as tribes, in the hope of grabbing a piece of the lucrative Indian gaming industry.

Comments

Isn't there something

ptcruiser - 05/14/2005 - 10:40am
Isn't there something faintly absurd and even racist about requiring Native Americans to establish their bona fides as a tribe before they can be recognized as a tribe?

The response will be, you

Prometheus 6 - 05/14/2005 - 11:41am

The response will be, you want to be a tribe, cool...but this is a purely economic decision.

Well, maybe political too.

 

They don't like the power

DarkStar - 05/14/2005 - 11:48am
They don't like the power these tribes are obtaining. It's about economics. That's the real power of this country. That's why is so asinine that a minority of vocal Blacks speak about the ills of capitalism, the ills of the U.S., the "lack of power" of Blacks, and then spout socialist nonsense.

See, that's the rub isn't

ptcruiser - 05/14/2005 - 1:50pm
See, that's the rub isn't it? On the one hand folks are told to get off their rusty-dusties, stop looking for handouts and go for what they know. So, Native Americans look at the playing field and decide that while it may not be level there is some room for them along the sidelines. They come up with a nifty bit of regulatory arbitrage that when properly implemented allows them to engage in a legal enterprise that produces a lot of long green for their team. The very same folks (or a reasonable facsimile of) who, however, have conquered these indigenous tribes and took their lands and then codified various arrangements, often ignored, that now make it possible for these people to move from poverty to dignity are throwing up their hands and hollering, "This is not what we meant! This is not what we meant at all." The message is that capitalism for some people is always a good thing. Capitalism for other people is only okay if the people for whom capitalism in any form whatsoever is always good agree to it. As for black people, I think that we need elements of capitalism and socialism. I don't believe that it is an either/or proposition for us. Sometimes we all need the government to help us the same way it helped sterling upright 19th Century Americans like Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, Collis P. Huntington and Charles Crocker. In America, everybody gets to feed at the public trough from time to time. Ask the owners of Halliburton or a former owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team who, along with his former partners, used public dollars to finance the construction of a new stadium. I want this kind of capitalism for everybody, at least once in awhile.


by Dr. Radut.