Remember when George Bush couldn’t define “sovereignty?” Maybe it wasn’t his fault. How would you describe sovereign lands where US extraction and exploitative industries can operate without regulatory oversight, and tribes can issue identification papers unless they mean to travel somewhere. When the original Indian treaties were signed, US destiny was manifested with promises that the former landholders’ sovereignty would be respected. The Iroquois Lacrosse team have just learned tribal sovereignty means carrying the occupier’s passport.
The US State Department at first refused to grant travel permission to the sovereign Iroquois because they didn’t have the newfangled, traceable, trackable, American passport. When congressmen intervened on behalf of the Iroquois who did not wish to submit to United States stinkin’ papers, the government relented, granting a one-time exemption.
How do suppose they mean to explain that? A just-this-once exception on the sovereignty whatsit.
But the lacrosse team’s destination was England, and British bureaucrats held firm on the original argument that the sovereign Native Americans required non-Native American passports. Post 9/11 days are no time apparently to permit international travelers to pass themselves off with rinky dink documents issued by who knows what maize-republics. The USA may foist whatever charade it wants on its captive vanquished aborigines, that doesn’t mean England has to play dumb too.
Maybe the British are mindful not only that the Iroquois were among the inventors of lacrosse, but that they once used the pretext of a game to successfully storm an English fort. Is that among their worries, Post 9/11?
Post 9/11 is no time for the pretense of sovereignty. Whether schoolchildren can grasp its contradictions or not.
Here’s Bush again, doing his best Miss South Carolina:
“Uh, tribal sovereignty means that. It’s sovereign. You’re a, you’ve been given sovereignty and you’re viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities.”
One of the Bushwhacker’s first acts as governor was to use every power the governor of Texas actually has. Which are few. Very Few. One of the Few is setting the statewide curriculum in public schools, so he was able to hand Brother Kneel,Bush! a fat commission for the textbook publishers he represented.
The next and even worse is dealing with Indian Treaties.
There’s only a couple of tribes in Texas that are recognized, the Tigua at Pueblo Ysleta del Sur which isn’t in the city of Ysleta but the neighboring township of San Elizario. Confusing from the start. And the Alabamu-Cushatta.
In the Oilfield Regions between Houston and the Louisiana border.
Sovereignty was the question and he sicked the Attorney General on both tribes quicker than you can yell “Thief!”
The Tigua don’t have much. No oil, no casino, and their tribal allotment/reservation is so small it looks like a corner of El Paso.
And a claim on Hueco Tanks east of El Paso, an extinct formerly undersea volcano which is Sacred Ground for every tribe in the southwest. Which was what Bush contested.
Their sovereign interests are also recognized by Mexico. Legally their land is in both countries.
Like the Algonquin lands at Barriere Lake http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20100611133507588 it’s a test case of sovereignty.
In the Algonquin case it’s one where the Canadian government insists they can force Tribal government elections to follow the imposed British version of “democracy”. No word yet on them demanding the English Queen step down in favor of a strictly democratic (or republican) (or communal) Executive.
The Tigua case was over what was claimed by the Wells Fargo as THEIR watering stop, (it’s one of the few places in the region where there’s year round fresh water) all the Native groups, and the State of Texas as a State Park. And a badly mismanaged (by the state) and overly vandalized Religious Center for the Native groups, who had appointed the Tigua and the White Mountain Apache to be caretakers.
The notion that the Tigua had unlimited cross-border control of Their OWN Land and the Alabamu-Cushatta have oil lands that Halliburton-owned Tidewater Oil has to actually PAY to lease is a thorn in the Bushi’ite regime side even today. But that wasn’t the basis for the lawsuit challenging Tigua sovereignty. It was Hueco Tanks. Because the state had declared it a park and a historical monument (not for the much longer Native Spiritual history, but because the Wells Fargo Line had a stage stop there.) There’s also the idea that the Army and Air Force can’t do unlimited fly-overs and or point guns in the general direction thereof and pull the triggers.
A State park trumps all international treaties, at least according to the former and current Bu’ush Regime.