http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2009/04/11/news/20symposium.txt
From Bozeman Daily Chronicle
‘Ordinary justice’
Corporations, churches and even canasta clubs have more rights under U.S. law than American Indian tribes, and respect for human rights and basic fairness demand this must change, says a veteran Indian lawyer and rights advocate.
“All we want is ordinary justice,” Tim Coulter, a Potawatomi Indian and director of the Indian Law Resource Center in Helena, said Friday.
Coulter, who has battled for Indian rights for 40 years and has been honored by Columbia University for his work, spoke to a crowd of about 100 attending the American Indian Law and Resistance Symposium at Montana State University.
Congress has the power to take Indian tribal lands, seize millions of dollars from Indian accounts, take over tribal governments, and even wipe out the legal existence of tribes, Coulter said.
Injustice toward Indians is deeply imbedded in U.S. law, he said. The entire legal framework of U.S. Indian law is based upon the notion that the federal government possesses “plenary powers,” which aren’t written anywhere in the U.S. Constitution, but were invented by the U.S. Supreme Court, he said. That idea has been enforced by the government for the past 200 years.
Just as the black civil rights movement of the 1960s dismantled the racist “separate but equal” laws, Indians need to dismantle the racist framework of laws that deny their rights, he argued.
A key part of this legal construct is the basic idea that the federal government holds Indian lands as a trustee and oversees these properties on behalf of Indians.
The only people kept in permanent, involuntary trusteeships are “children, mental incompetents and Indians,” Coulter said.
This keeps Indian tribes in “second-class legal status,” he said, and it creates such legal uncertainty and instability on reservations that the business climate is “awful.”
“When you have this (legal) mess, it’s practically impossible for tribal governments to create a stable business environment,” he said. “This is a fundamental reason for ubiquitous poverty.”
The U.S. government cannot simply wipe out a corporation or break a contract with a private contractor operating in Iraq, he said. But it can and has wiped out Indian tribes and broken contracts and treaties with tribes.
For example, he cited the Sioux Nation, which has been fighting 140 years for the Black Hills, refusing to take monetary compensation offered to extinguish its claims to the land. In 1972, he said, Congress extinguished the rights of Alaskan native tribes to their lands with the stroke of a pen. The Western Shoshone of California and Nevada are fighting against land claims they contend are fraudulent.
To try to challenge U.S. law, Coulter said Indian tribes, led by the Six Nations Federation of New York and Canada, went to the United Nations headquarters in Geneva in 1977 to demand a statement supporting their human rights.
It took 30 years, but finally in 2007, the UN General Assembly passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It supports their rights to exist, to self-determination, to maintain their cultures and religions and to own their own lands.
The vote approving the declaration was 143 yes to four no, with only Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States in opposition. He urged people to write the White House in support of the declaration of rights or to visit the Web site, (www.indianlaw.org) and support the current effort to get the Organization of American States to recognize the rights of native peoples.
Coulter said he is optimistic that in the long run, Indians’ rights will be recognized as customary international law.
He added he has faith in the American people and their basic sense of fairness. When polled, 75 percent of people said it wasn’t right for the government to take Indians lands.
“I think the American people will be on our side,” Coulter said.
Also speaking Friday was Denise Juneau, Montana’s state superintendent of public instruction and, as a Mandan-Hidatsa, the first Indian woman elected to statewide office.
Juneau cited the enormous changes that have occurred since her great-grandparents were forced onto reservations. It wasn’t until 1924 that Indians were considered U.S. citizens; not until 1935 that Blackfeet parents won the right to send their children to local state schools instead of distant federal boarding schools; and not until 1954 that all Indians could vote.
Today, thanks to the 1972 Montana Constitution — and a provision authored by Bozeman’s Dorothy Eck that all Montana children should learn about the state’s Indian heritage — and thanks to the recent school funding lawsuit, all Montana schoolchildren are finally learning truthful, accurate information about Indians, she said.
“I think great hope lies with today’s kindergartners,” Juneau said. “Think how progressive our state will be in a generation.”
Turtle Talk 