It is a phone call from some stranger in Lima, Ohio or Lynden, Washington, frantic about a monstrous tax-free tribal casino plunging into their quiet community, uninvited and unwelcome. It is a call from a young mother whose beautiful 2-year old child has been abducted by a kangaroo tribal court and missing to her for over 115 days. It is Nebraska neighbors anguishing over the brutal beating of a fellow farmer on his own land - beaten by tribal police. It is the faces of U.S. citizens in Salamanca, New York, in the 1990's, forced to stand in long lines to sign "Surrenders" to the Seneca Nation of Indians, turning over to a tribal government, the deeds to their homes, with no compensation.
Long before a few colonists could imagine freedom, the yearning for it proved intolerable. Securing freedom became necessary in the 1700's. Daily engaging in the pursuit of freedom was a priority for which men and women risked their lives.
In this 21st century, we are in another necessary time for this country. Only it is not the British that are coming. It is tribalism, collectivism—federal Indian policy and extreme multiculturalism that has relegated U.S. taxpayers as muzzled, indentured servants who must remain politically correct and suffer escalating costs of political and financial support for ethnic systems taking this country apart.
Freedom and equality are losing the battle to a keenly orchestrated global Indigenous Movement spreading like a cancer through the United States. Like diabetes, the onset eludes us until the system has fallen.
Around this time of year, I tend to review beloved old documents like our Declaration of Independence. My life path has forced me through a complex internal debate. Descending from Cherokee ancestry, I grew up in Spokane, Washington, learned to sled on Manito Hill, and was a schoolgirl ardent admirer of Chief Joseph and Sacajawea. I equally cherished Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and Lewis and Clark. We can barely speak of these men in this new millennium.
Now in my early '60s, living within the exterior boundaries of a large Indian reservation has caused me serious discovery and reflection. I made a deeply personal decision to continue honoring my ancestry with reverence for Native American culture, while refuting every effort of a tribal government to govern, tax or regulate me or other U.S. citizens. I pledge allegiance only to the government that I elect and in which I may participate.
Our founders for whom it became necessary never dreamed that in a new and free United States, our own elected officials would delegate powers to sub-governments that remove Constitutional and civil rights of any citizen, much less Native Americans. Or mine.
So words in the beloved Declaration ring fearfully true these days, with simple substitutions:
"...That to secure these (certain unalienable) Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.
Such has been the patient Sufferance of these American Indians and citizens; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter federal Indian policy. The History of the present Congress is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these American Indians and other citizens.
Congress has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving Congressional Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation;"
A mere 50 States hosts 562 tribal governments, with 274 more "tribes" in line for federal recognition and their casinos. These tax-exempt governments that refute the U.S. Constitution, can ignore state and local laws, and are using millions of slot machines to initialize additional land and tax grabs, pushing far off reservations to the direct harm of one community after another. An annual 25 billion dollar gambling monopoly has not reduced federal funds paid by taxpayers to tribal governments. Mainstream American business is now forced to compete in a marketplace with an escalating tax-exempt, federally subsidized "National Indian Economy" rapidly overpowering the highly taxed and regulated, primary National economy.
Who can blame Native Hawaiians for demanding the same scheme? Almost every single elected official in the State of Hawaii, cowed by political correctness and in denial of their Oaths of Office, would literally dismantle the State of Hawaii they are elected to serve. Having recently lost a Congressional effort to tear apart our youngest state, radical Hawaiian politicos are ramping up a second assault to force a separate, race-based government, with a chant, "Last Star On, First Star Off!"
Here on the mainland, the Atzlan Movement certainly smells the money and power of future federally subsidized "separate Mexican Indigenous homelands." Somewhere around 12 - 20 million illegal immigrants is no fluke; they are most heavily populating the seven southwestern States at risk of disuniting when the Atzlan Movement challenges, and they will, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
As separatism seeps across the fabric of America, gated Muslim communities in Little Rock, Arkansas and Baltimore, Maryland are now in place. Simple planning tools such as homeowner or condominium association covenants, planned developments and land use guidelines, are being skewed to create further balkanization so that Muslims may create community enclaves in numerous zip codes where Muslim law trumps local law. Financed by substantial foreign investment, this pattern is also rolling out.
The insanity of Congress and the Executive branch of government is to spend billions and permit the spilling of blood of our young military to free whole countries of the tyranny of tribalism in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, while sanctioning and funding the rampant spread of tribalism and separatism across our 50 states—all this while radical ethnic mentalities give standing ovations to Ward Churchill when he rants that the solution to world peace is to get the United States "off of the North American continent." Our country's citizenship and borders either merit meaning and protection, or it will soon be over. I simply do not have another country. I only have this country that I cherish.
If only for my grandchildren and their heirs, it has become life-changing necessary for me to continue an aggressive allegiance to "On Nation, Under God, Indivisible, With Liberty and Justice For all." There is nothing within the preceding statement foundational to America's future that supports divisive race-based governments, even when created by Congress.
What was necessary in the 1700's is equally and urgently necessary today: "The History of the present Congress is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these American Indians and other citizens."
How long we continue to celebrate America's Independence Day depends upon whether citizens and their elected officials find it necessary to secure our guaranteed unalienable rights and the domestic tranquility.
Is anybody out there? Amidst the hot dogs, sparklers, boating and beer, please take a quiet moment and ask:
How would my future life look and where would I live, if this country implodes, and I did nothing to save it because I didn't find it necessary to get involved?
Elaine Willman is a City Councilwoman, in Toppenish, WA, and Chair of the Citizens Equal Rights Alliance (CERA), a coalition of community education organizations focused on federal Indian policy. She also authored a book entitled "Going to Pieces...The Dismantling of the United States." Reach her via email at mailto:mailto:toppin@aol.com
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