by William Peterson,
Selectman, North Stonington, CT
As a Selectman in the town of North Stonington, Connecticut, I realize that people not directly affected by tribal issues have often viewed our local disagreements with the Indians as just the latest maddening example of racism and intolerance emanating from the dominant culture. In fact, I am sometimes asked why we can't all just get along? I often ask myself the same thing, but I know of no way to answer that question other than to try to explain my own point of view regarding these matters.
No one can argue that federal Indian policy has been anything but a disaster for American Indians from the very beginning. But, in a poorly thought out attempt to compensate for past injustices our government has put all Americans, Indian and non-Indian alike, through divisive and expensive processes that are nothing less than a repudiation of the founding principle of our nation. This principle – equality of citizenship – is the basis for the American experiment in democracy. And yet, across the nation, this fragile concept has come under assault by those who condescendingly believe that Indians are not the same as their neighbors and require special sovereign rights as well as unique legal status in America.
A local tribal chairman recently said, in another context that, “…we are just like every other American.” In at least one very important way he's absolutely right. American Indians are citizens of the United States. In fact, far from being simple “hunter gatherers” living in innocent harmony with nature, as some Indian officials have argued – Indian citizens are now United States Senators, astronauts, renowned architects, and university professors.
In Connecticut, long before being federally recognized, Indians were Wall Street stock analysts, naval officers, business executives, mayors and selectmen in our communities, and fondly remembered educators such as my own fourth grade school teacher. Some tribal members proudly assert, with no little historical irony, that they also descend from the Mayflower Pilgrims! Where, based upon their Indian heritage, is the evidence for the economic or political disenfranchisement of these Americans? Where do you see the need for special consideration under the law much less for sovereign rights?
Why is this point so important? It is because sovereign rights are not simply affirmative action, which may have merit, for some Indians. It is the granting of exclusive rights, forever, to certain citizens and their descendants. This is an odd contradiction for a nation that fought an eight year long revolution, in part, over the issue of exclusively held inherited privilege.
Why are exclusively held rights unacceptable – even for Indians? This question goes to very heart of who we are as a people. Martin Luther King believed it was the content of a person’s character and not the color of their skin by which they should be judged as a citizen. The Declaration of Independence states with elegant simplicity that “all men are created equal.” Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address spoke of “a new birth of freedom” for all of the American people. He meant, of course, a rebirth of commitment out of the national trauma of a wrenching civil war to the founding principle of citizen equality.
Furthermore, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees, with no expressed or implied exceptions for Indians, equal protection and treatment under the law for all citizens. The Supreme Court in 1954 struck down the hideous racist concept of “separate but equal” in all of it's nefarious disguises including, in my view, Indian reservations, which are nothing more than out dated anomalies left over from a sad era of institutionalized racism. The hard won civil rights laws of the 1960's, that some of us once went into the streets to support, reaffirmed, once again, the founding principle of citizen equality. Every honest impulse in the American people's spirit is based upon our nations egalitarian ideals. Every impulse that is, except where it involves Indians? Here, blind paternalistic emotion, encouraged by limousine loads of crocodile teared lobbyists, continues to rule the day in influencing public opinion and policy.
While I understand and share the natural concern for the plight of American Indians, past and present, I also know from history that blind emotion can have catastrophic consequences on civil and human rights. Segregationists like the late Lester Maddox and “Bull” Connor in the 1960’s fought for special rights and racial separation their whole lives. It was wrong when they did it then and its wrong when Indians do it now.
Frankly, there isn’t a rat whiskers bit of difference in public policy between the “whites only” laws of 1960’s and the Indians only “rights” of today. It is racial segregation, pure and simple, and someday our representatives and jurists will look around the nation and see the unhappy divisions and conflicts that they continue to thoughtlessly perpetuate with their unworkable laws and contradictory legal decisions involving Indians. Land claims, tribal recognition, casino battles everywhere, tax free tobacco fiascoes, harpooned whales on the west coast, and all the rest of today’s Indian news, are predictable outgrowths from stupid policies that try to reconcile the sovereign status of one group of citizens within the whole. We are finding out the hard way that it can't be done. Until all citizens live under the same set of laws we will continue to argue uselessly and endlessly over “Indian issues”.
Sadly, our leaders in Washington have forgotten, if they ever understood, that the “first people” of our land must be no different than the most recent immigrant to our shores, the last people, when it comes to equal treatment under the law.
As a minor player, unhappily embroiled in this growing national drama, I could still enthusiastically support many things to compensate for historical injustices. But, I cannot be bribed, falsely characterized, or bullied into compromising my belief in citizen equality. It is much too precious and hard won as a human concept. Therefore, to ask me to “get along” with the idea of sovereign rights for a “unique” few Americans you must also ask me to abandon my core belief in equality and, I cannot do it.
People who somehow badly misinterpret this point of view as “closet racism”, “Indian bashing”, or “jealousy” have a shallow knee jerk understanding of a profound issue and are, perhaps, motivated by their own racist assumptions, or self interest. At it's core, the ever growing discord throughout the nation is the American people's inherent belief in equality colliding with sovereign rights for Indians. In the final analysis, it is not about race or intolerance at all. It is about the preservation in America of the one inspired idea that gives transcendent meaning to our nation and to the hope that someday we can all live in respectful harmony with one another.
With all the past prejudices and injustices understood, my sincere prayer is that “we the people” can find ways to honor and recognize Indians and Indian culture that do not make a mockery of the founding principle of our nation. Manifestly, as the recent situation in Rhode Island has underscored, it cannot continue to work as “E Pluribus Unum” – except for Indians.
Even, and perhaps especially, for the truly disenfranchised among us it is clear that sovereign rights for a few citizens are irreconcilably incompatible and destructive of civil rights for all citizens.