An excerpt:
Porter’s a big guy at 6-foot-4. He has graying hair. He’s dressed casually for a president in a striped button-down and khakis.
Porter says Senecas enjoy universal health care, college tuition assistance, subsidized day care, new sports complexes. For a few years, there was even a program that paid Senecas 1400 dollars a year to lose weight.
In New York State, the Senecas and other native tribes are often portrayed as villains, getting rich off gambling and tobacco addicts.
Porter bristles at that criticism.
Right when we’re starting to recover from a couple hundred years of deprivation, I’ve even had members of Congress, their staff, tell us, y’know, you guys really should be getting into something else. This is really not something you should be doing, and I just can’t believe the hypocrisy of that.
Porter says some of the largest corporations in the U.S. are in the same industries. Almost all states raise money with lotteries.
Porter’s sued New York several times to prevent the state from taxing native tobacco sales. He’s pressing the state to pay millions in rent for two Interstates that cross Seneca land. Yet somehow, he hasn’t made many enemies.
Turtle Talk 