Terry Nelson Lays it Down as Canada Attempts to Keep First Nations in Poverty

Injunction Backfires

May 30th 2012

A Manitoba Court granted an injunction sought by the Province of Manitoba against the Dakota Canupawakpa First Nation operating the Dakota Chundee Smoke Shop. Terrance Nelson, a former Chief of Roseau River First Nation who sold untaxed cigarettes twenty years ago stated, the province has just lost this case, over 50 First Nations in Manitoba worked with the province on Tobacco Tax Rebates for two decades, now that is destroyed by this case. Some of my Mohawk friends in the manufacturing of cigarettes agreed to support the Dakota in their battle with the Province. I will also step into this matter. The Dakota have 90% unemployment and we as warrior societies will protect them. We will begin by flooding the province with Mohawk cigarettes.  

If the province thinks that they won something today, they are wrong. If the RCMP create a "martyr" and blood is shed, we can guarantee that the entire First Nation communities across Canada will take action. We will shut down the economy of Canada if the RCMP kill a Dakota in this. This is an issue of regulation between governments not a criminal matter.. Imagine if we as indigenous people of North America went to Germany and took over their lands and resources and we set up a government that demands that the German people pay taxes to us and that government is not their own, what do you think that their reaction would be. I think once they stopped laughing at how absurd that idea is, they would kill us. Not only have the immigrants stolen all our lands and resources, they now demand that we the indigenous people pay taxes to them. This ends here, we need to stop the immigrants from their self serving imposed laws in our lands.

Chief Frank Brown was one of four people who attended the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa recently and is awaiting an invitation from the Iranian Government to attend Tehran sometime in June. This is about economic sanctions and we will seek support from other countries. Terrance Nelson said, I intend to give a bow to the President of Iran, the symbol is that the indigenous people of North American used stone age weapons to fight for their lands against the "crusaders", now Iran is being told they cannot defend themselves against the nuclear nations. So Israel can train over 100 nuclear weapons against Iran but Iran cannot have even one nuclear bomb to defend themselves. The United Nations is not impartial, it does not demand to search for weapons of mass destruction in Israel. In Wounded Knee South Dakota in 1890, the US 7th Cavalry killed 350 Dakota men women and children after they had stripped the Dakota of all weapons and had them lined up. This is the same concept, the Iranians are being told that they must face nuclear weapons targeting their people but they cannot develop any ability to have equal weaponry.

Terrance Nelson

204-451-0740

Chief Frank Brown can be reached at 204-851-2169

Enough with the BS. Let's Talk About the Real Issue.

For weeks we have heard nothing but the UN this and the UN that; the DRIP, the "Special Rapporteur", the Permanent Forum. All for what? So we finally can have our issues, Native issues, heard by the WORLD, the international community, responsible nations. And what do we talk about? Access to sacred sites, a 500 year old decree by the Vatican and, of course, treaties.

So even while the dust was settling from all this running around to DC, NYC and elsewhere, who was knocking on our doors? The IRS. It seems the illegal imposition of taxation, travel restrictions, use of roadways and anything else the the state and feds can throw at us to kill any chance for an economy didn't make the cut when we had the "World Stage". Even the much exalted chiefs councils of Onondaga and Tonawanda got served by the IRS.

A couple of years ago when the State Department was holding its "Consultations" on rethinking the US support for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples(DRIP), I turned to the audience in the auditorium of the National Museum of the American Indian, putting my back to the stage full of federal agency representatives and asked the room full of mostly tribal government employees why is it that they work for their own nations on their own lands yet pay a tax on their wage to another nation. In that session, I was they only one addressing US interference in Native trade and commerce as.

The single biggest problem on Native lands is poverty! All social ills come back to this. Can some of it be traced to the Discovery Doctrine or other means of stealing our lands? Sure. But today's genocidal policies are specifically about denying our own economic development. Taxation and the constant assault and/or interference with our right to freely sell our labor, goods and services is at its core. Every town, county, state and nation of the world markets its regulatory advantages to promote its economy, yet ours is criminalized. Even Native to Native trade, from one Native territory to another is under constant attack.

For anyone that would suggest; yeah, but at least we got casinos. Well let's look at that. When California failed in its attempt to shut down a small Native community's bingo hall in the Cabazon case before the US Supreme Court in 1987, what happened was a scramble by Congress to shove a law down the throats of the "federally recognized tribes" that placed both the states and feds squarely in the middle of the Golden Goose of "Indian Country" within the year. So the ONLY regulatory advantage that can be exploited is the one regulated through federally mandated gaming compacts with the states under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act which all too often has the states scooping large percentages from the till. Hell, even pull-tabs had federal agents snooping around on our lands under the authority of IGRA.

In spite of the President of the Seneca Nation's plea to the US Senate Finance Committee this week for tax reform or for an "experiment" in tax immunity, we do not need a Congress that does not represent us to change its tax laws that never should be applied to us to be rewritten to help us. We also do not need, as Mr. Porter suggested, for "federal Indian policy" to secure exclusive authority over all economic activity on Native lands to tribal governments as a matter of federal law. As a people who would never convey such authority to anyone, we view the right to sustain ourselves as our birthright. Mr. Porter must have forgotten that legitimate governments derive what authority they do have only from the consent of the governed, not from his idols in Washington. The people's authority to regulate their own economies is also the authority not to. It seems the concept of freedom without chaos has become almost forgotten, even by those who descended from those that taught the concept to the white man.

We don't need reparations, compensation, cash settlements, acts of Congress or rulings from a far too politicized Supreme Court. We need to have our trade, commerce and livelihoods left alone. The message the world should have heard from us over the last several weeks should have been some simple instructions to the most self righteous and hypocritical bastion of freedom and human rights: Stop your attempts to assess and collect tax, stop your seizures of our products, get out of our casinos, leave our paychecks alone, stop interfering with Native to Native trade and watch freedom work. Maybe something will be learned again. Or is that what everyone is afraid of?