Opinion: Anti-Indian forces lead anti-casino movement

Friday, September 22, 2006  

"An ugly courtship between anti-casino and anti-Indian political forces is emerging in western New York. In June, Coalition Against Gaming in New York Chair Joel Rose wrote to his members telling them there's ''good news on Turning Stone'' as he celebrated a N.Y. Court of Appeals decision against Cayuga and Oneida land claims.

Rose was excited, however, because the case could eventually lead to the closing of the Oneidas' Turning Stone Resort and Casino in central New York. If so, and if the Oneidas refuse to comply, it could also lead to some form of armed takeover of Oneida land - what we call war. Anyone cheering such a court victory is cheering the unilateral imposition of U.S. law on a sovereign nation. While it may lead to the closure of a casino, it's like nuking a city to kill one fugitive. The casino will be closed - but only after the Oneidas' identity as a sovereign nation is eradicated. That's nothing that any well-intentioned person should celebrate.

The United States was built on a foundation of racism. Employing words like ''savage'' and ''primitive,'' so called ''modern'' and ''civilized'' cultures unleashed a historically unprecedented holocaust upon the hemisphere. The map of upstate New York was drawn by racist officials who, after the American Revolution, sent the U.S. Army into Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) territory to annihilate Native populations. Cayuga Lake, for example, is circled by historic markers denoting Cayuga villages and orchards burned during the Clinton-Sullivan Campaign of 1779, next to others commemorating the first homes built by ''white'' men in the wake of that campaign. This racism was a land grab - with mass murder as its tool and anti-''savage'' racism as its justification."

Get the Story:
Michael Niman: Anti-Indian racism in New York's anti-casino movement (Indian Country Today 9/22)