Connecticut: Some Indians are inconvenient

Some Indians are inconvenient

Published 5:18 pm, Thursday, March 6, 2014

When is an Indian not an Indian?

In Connecticut, apparently, the answer is: When the Indian might be able to open a casino.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has asked President Obama to throw his not inconsiderable weight in blocking proposed changes in the criteria used in the federal recognition process for Indian tribes.

The troubling aspect of the objections in Connecticut -- from the governor to U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Attorney General George Jepsen -- is that they are driven by the fear that a newly recognized tribe might try to open a casino.

The heart of the question -- How are Indian tribes that were recognized by the state of Connecticut for centuries, no longer Indian tribes? -- is not at the heart of the objection.

What, pray tell, has been the function all these years of the state entity known as the Connecticut Indian Affairs Council? The state, in fact, has had a long, supportive relationship with its Indian tribes long before the federal legislation went into effect that gave federally recognized tribes the right to operate casinos.

Suddenly, some of the Indian tribes became an inconvenience.

If the possibility of casinos was not in the equation -- and potential financial complications springing from the lucrative agreements among the state and the casino-operating Mohegan tribe and the Mashantucket Pequots -- would there still be objections?

What's set off the latest barrage of official objection to the Golden Hill Paugussetts, of Trumbull; the Schaghticoke in Kent and the Eastern Pequots in Stonington, is a proposal by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs -- presumably these are the experts we've put in charge of dealing with such things -- to change the criteria they use for recognizing tribes.

If casinos are the problem, address the problem.

Don't tell a group of people you've recognized for centuries as Indians that now, with dollars at stake, you don't think so anymore. When the tattered remnants of these long-recognized tribes moved on to state reservations generations ago, it wasn't because they were plotting to open casinos.



http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Some-Indians-are-inconvenient-5294892.php