Indian reservations a land of the freebie

Indian reservations a land of the freebie
By JENNIFER FERMINO

Last Updated: 10:11 AM, September 27, 2010


Bargain-priced butts, cheap gas and gambling casinos get all the attention, but life on an Indian reservation includes other lifestyle elements that are as foreign as the Wild West to most New Yorkers.

Step onto an Indian reservation and you're leaving the United States and entering a sovereign nation that includes free health care, a tribal justice system with its own courts, jails and police -- and even separate license plates and passports.

The state's knockdown, drag-out fight with Indians over untaxed cigarettes has thrust the debate over their sovereignty -- based on decades-old treaties between the federal government and the tribes -- back into the headlines.

The reservations operate as nations within a nation, with tribes dealing directly with the feds on a government-to-government relationship.

Indians who live and work on one of the country's 300-plus federally recognized reservations are exempt from paying state income taxes, but usually they are required to pay all federal taxes.

However, if a citizen of one of the 564 federally recognized tribes works off of the reservation, they are required to pay state taxes, no matter where they live.

Those who live on any reservation don't have to pay state property taxes, but they might have to fork over some kind of tribal fees.

And state sales taxes are not levied on Indians who make purchases on a reservation -- hence the low price of cigarettes and gas that attract non-Indians to the reservations.

Native Americans who live on reservations are also entitled to free health care from the federal government, thanks to treaties their forefather's signed with the United States shortly after the Revolutionary War.

The nation's courts have repeatedly found those treaties included an obligation by the federal government to provide health care.

Some Indians -- all of whom were granted American citizenship in 1924 -- use passports that identify them as members of a particular tribe, instead of as US citizens.

America's complex relationship with the Indian nations becomes even more complicated when crimes occur on a reservation. Certain crimes -- such as murder, rape and kidnapping -- are immediately kicked up to the feds, although New York is one of the few states that has the right to investigate major crimes on a reservation.

Lesser crimes committed by an Indian against another Indian are handled internally. But if the victim is a non-Indian, New York authorities prosecute.

"Most tribes have very sophisticated courts with law-trained judges," said Stephen Pevar, an ACLU lawyer and author of "The Rights of Indians and Tribes."

New York has seven federally recognized tribes -- including the upstate Seneca Nation, which is suing to stop the state from slapping a $4.35-a-pack tax on cigarettes sold to non-Indian smokers.

"It's not the cigarettes. It's the symbol that this is yet again another effort to exterminate us and put us on our backs economically," said Robert Odawi Porter, a lawyer and member of the Seneca Nation.

"We've been fighting with the colonists for years -- beaver pelts, gravel, salt, land and now the cigarettes."