The United States continues to steal from Indians

[jaba187]

   
http://www.petitiononline.com/CrowCrek/petition.html



 To:  Bureau of Indian Affairs, President Obama, SD Governor Rounds, SD Senator Tim Johnson, SD Senator Thune,U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin

    On December 3, 2009 the Internal Revenue Service unlawfully auctioned off 7100 acres located on Crow Creek Sioux Tribal land.

    The land is owned by Crow Creek Tribal Farms, Inc. a Tribal corporation and distinct legal entity from the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe.

    According to the recent motion for temporary restraining order, filed by the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, the IRS seized and auctioned the land to recover $3,123,789.73 dollars in unpaid employment taxes. The document states, Because of erroneous tax advice received from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe became delinquent in the payment of employment taxes collected by the IRS beginning in 2003. The BIA had informed the Tribe that, because it was a federally recognized Tribe, it was not necessary to pay federal employment taxes.

    The Crow Creek Indian Reservation was created by the 1868 Treaty, Act of April 29, 1868, 15 Stat. 635, and by Section 6, Act of March 2, 1889, 25 Stat. 888.

    The Crow Creek Sioux Reservation encompasses Buffalo County and portions of Hyde and Brule Counties. Crow Creek Sioux Tribe is consistently documented as one of the poorest Reservations in the Nation, with 78% of their members living below the poverty line.

    This despicable and irreparable action from the IRS, could ultimately eliminate 20% of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribes Reservation lands.

    This action taken by the IRS could ultimately set a precedence, allowing the continual land grab on Tribal Lands. We must ALL UNITE and take a stand on this issue, to voice Tribal Lands are NOT for Sale!

    We the undersigned, hereby request the immediate return of the unlawfully auctioned Crow Creek Sioux Tribal Lands.

    Sincerely,

    The Undersigned

That's the US Government, the IRS is always looking too take property and money from people, but as long as they paid their taxes their is nothing that the Government can do to take their land.

[lynnc35]

I do not think anyone should be confined to a certain place, but we are all God's people, every one of us, created in His image. We all have to follow the bearacratic ways, so people of the indian decent do not choose this, and they can opt out, which makes them set apart, because we do not have that choice, but in general this is God's land, not anyone individual tribe, people etc. God created this land. land has been being taken over in every county, every nation, everywhere, just think about it, war after war, tribe after tribe, land has switched hands over and over and over. We are only indebted to Jesus Christ who gave His blood so we could be here, period.

[walksalone11]

I do not think anyone should be confined to a certain place, but we are all God's people, every one of us, created in His image. We all have to follow the bearacratic ways, so people of the indian decent do not choose this, and they can opt out, which makes them set apart, because we do not have that choice, but in general this is God's land, not anyone individual tribe, people etc. God created this land. land has been being taken over in every county, every nation, everywhere, just think about it, war after war, tribe after tribe, land has switched hands over and over and over. We are only indebted to Jesus Christ who gave His blood so we could be here, period.

hold that thought...we will revisit that later.....

[walksalone11]

http://www.poormagazine.org/index.cfm?L1=news&story=2427&pg=1&preview=1



A Mama Bear in the Woods

Andy Kreamer/PNN Indigenous Peoples Media Project
Friday, January 8, 2010;

“There might be things that you have a hard time doing, but that doesn't mean that its impossible” says Silvia Burley. Silvia is the Chairperson of the California Valley Miwok Tribe and she doesn't just say this in passing- but rather as her Tribe of mostly women and children prepare to lock themselves inside their Tribal Headquarters in Stockton, CA. This is the plan for January 15th, when the Sheriff is coming to forcibly evict them from their land because of foreclosure. Silvia adds: “These people have apparently never seen a mama bear in the woods, because then they would know how a mother is willing to fight and do anything for her child.”

Hoping to stave off the eviction, the California Valley Miwok called for a 2-day protest and speak-out gathering at the Bureau of Indian Affairs recently on January 6th and 7th. The BIA was targeted because they have been withholding funds that the CA Valley Miwok need in order to pay for their land, and also because the BIA could push the California Gambling Control Commission (CGCC) to also release funds due to them. The CA Valley Miwok don't have a casino, so under the Indian Gaming laws they are entitled to revenue that gets taxed off the Tribes that do have casinos.

“The event was a great show of Unity” said Quanah Brightman of the United Native Americans. “9 organizations came together for 2 days to show our support of the California Valley Miwok and also to bring up other issues that we all have with the BIA. Filipinos were there, the Brown Berets, Wounded Knee and the defenders of Glen Cove, several Miwok nations as well as other nations all came because when one of us is attacked, we are all attacked.”

Brightman, Burley, and a lawyer for the CA Valley Miwok were able to get a meeting with Troy Burdick, head of the Central CA BIA because of the commotion caused by the events. They demanded that the BIA tell them the reasons why the money has not been released to the CA Valley Miwok since December 2007. In addition to paying for their land, the money is needed for medical insurance, education, and the welfare of children. The group also brought up some other concerns that they want to BIA to consider and investigate: “In South Dakota the Crow Creek reservation is being sold by the IRS to pay off that Tribe's unpaid taxes- but Native Tribes are like non-profit organizations, we don't have to pay taxes, so why is the IRS involved with a Tribe at all?” questioned Quanah Brightman.

They also pushed the BIA to take a stand to protect Indigenous Sacred Sites, the traditional burial ground in Glen Cove, Vallejo, CA in particular. Finally, they demanded that the BIA grant 'Federally Recognized' status to all Tribes who currently have only 'State Recognized' status, because these people are being denied Federal protection of their human rights and desperately needed services. There are over 500 Tribes that are not Federally Recognized, and 76 in California. Many of these California Tribes need the Federal status so that the remains of their ancestors can be returned to them from anthropology museums across the State, including UC Berkeley and UC Davis.

Burdick didn't have anything to say for himself nor the BIA, and the meeting was interrupted quickly by a staff person interrupting and informing him that he had a 'really important phone call.'

On Thursday afternoon the lawyers for the CA Valley Miwok heard that there have been 2 meetings in Washington D.C., and the matter is being discussed very heatedly. The decisions will be made there by the new BIA director Larry Echohawk instead of in California. This is good news because folks have only gotten the run-around here at the California office of the BIA. Before their meeting with Troy Burdick about the funds from BIA and also the CGCC, Burdick has said that the “BIA doesn't have any authority to tell the CGCC to hold or release your funds because they are a State Agency that we don't have any control over.” This while the CGCC says that they cannot release the money without authorization from the BIA.

The BIA is a federal agency, and their only job is to look out for the welfare of Native Americans. Surely they have the ability to overrule State agencies when a Tribe's livelihood is at stake. Unfortunately, this current run-around is not different from the BIA's actions historically. “Over 1 billion acres have been stolen over the last 500 years by the US cavalry and the BIA,” says Quanah Brightman. Cesar Caballero, Chief of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok states that “families have been destroyed by children being moved away to BIA boarding schools, and forced relocation policies have broken spiritual connections to land. The few strong people who have survived all this are faced with the BIA providing no roads or utility infrastructure for the small lands that are left, often times leaving us to be shot at by our neighbors who don't want us crossing their land to get to ours.”

He continues, “Our tribes are made up of a lot of war veterans, and we have little education. The genocide that started with the Gold Rush into our Miwok lands is almost complete, but we are still here.” Silvia Burley says: “Us Miwok, we used to live on 10 Counties worth of land, now we are left with only 1.5 acres, and they are trying to foreclose that on us.”

The BIA's choice of doing nothing thus far to stop the eviction of the California Valley Miwok is not just a bureaucratic mistake of overlooking a small tribe while attending to a busy work schedule; it's much deeper than that. The local Central CA agency, and Superintendent Troy Burdick in particular, are corrupt and working with several casino investors and developers in a new tidal wave of colonization that is drowning Indigenous folks all over the Central Valley. Entrepreneur Chadd Everone/Ludwig has been recorded on tape describing the ways that he has been working with this local BIA office and the CGCC to discredit the Tribe and instate impostor leadership. They will then sign casino building deals with multimillionaire Albert D. Seeno Jr. who runs the giant Peppermill Casino chain and 30-40 assorted businesses in the Bay Area. Silvia Burley says that “Seeno was told by the BIA at one point that he couldn't have just one elder sign a deal for a casino.” Check out the audio archive at: http://www.californiavalleymiwoktribe.us/

Chadd Everone/Ludwig has gotten the BIA office to view the Leadership of the Tribe as 'in dispute,' which the BIA is now using as a reason to withhold funds; even though the BIA considered the leadership to be in dispute for years and released funds regularly for years, because the funds go to the Tribe and not the leader anyways. There are now an unknown, and growing number of people with CA Valley Miwok identity cards who have not registered yet with the legitimate Tribe nor the BIA. A group of these people came to the protest on Thursday and were reportedly paid $1000 each by Everone/Ludwig to be there, when they were questioned by a man who went to the protest about whether they wanted to build a casino or not they changed the subject.

“Straight up identity theft of Tribes' names is real, and it's happening” says Cesar Caballero, of a nearby band of Miwok called the Shingle Springs Miwok Tribe. His Tribe's name was stolen in the 1970's and 1980's by some people of Maidu/Hawaiian bloodlines who were living near Sacramento. A bit later they worked with two white guys from Vegas named Kevin M. Kean and Jerry A. Argovitz and the local BIA office to be instated as leaders of the Shingle Springs Miwok Tribe. Kean and Argovitz then arranged for a whole succession of deals to be signed by the Tribal Impostors, ultimately resulting in an agreement between the Tribal Impostors and Lakes Entertainment- a company that has deals with 4 'Tribes' in 4 different States.

“This identity theft issue is huge.” says Cesar Caballero. “I am part of a lawsuit right now, along with 5 other tribes across the United States, who are dealing with our Tribes being infiltrated by outsiders, who then go on to sign deals and build casinos. We filed it with the Supreme Court and they will decide whether or not to hear our whole case on January 15th. The BIA is facilitating this theft to happen, and the original Tribal members are being left out of even the basic healthcare services that we got before we were infiltrated.” You can see the case at: http://www.mklaw.com/mdewakanton.htm

The Original Miwok Tribes are coming together in a consortium, as they are all being similarly infiltrated. It is time to stand with the Miwok Tribes, and all Indigenous Americans, and fight off these attacks by greedy casino developers who seek to use the Tribes' ability to have casinos for their own profit-making. After all, Cesar states, “A typical casino deal looks like this: very publicly 50% of the profit goes to the private investor and 25% gets taken in taxes by the State. Of the remaining 25% only 5 or 6% goes to people in the Tribe, because some has to be used to do repairs on the casino, and a lot goes to the people who signed the deals with the casino company.”

The eviction of the CA Valley Miwok is currently scheduled for January 15th, in Stockton. A temporary restraining order and an injunction have been petitioned for, but not granted.

Silvia Burley pleads: “We are requesting that all people who know what its like to have an injustice done to you and who can remember how it felt for people to walk away without helping, or for those who had been wrongly accused and had to stand alone and fight through the tears and frustration to be ridiculed and finally justified in the end when the truth came out in the open, you are the ones that we are asking to step up and help us.'

'Please send letters, faxes, and or emails to your elected officials, and also leave voice messages regarding how appalled you are about the Bureau of Indian Affairs allowing such abuses to happen to a federally recognized Tribe, for this has gone on (years) too long!!! Do not allow the lies of Chadd Everone and his Gaming Developers (financial backers) to continue to cover up the truth of what they have been doing to destroy us. DEMAND AN IMMEDIATE INVESTIGATION INTO THE CRIMINAL ACTIONS OF THE LOCAL BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS/CENTRAL CALIFORNIA AGENCY, and SUPERINTENDENT TROY BURDICK, REGARDING HIS WORKING WITH CHADD EVERONE AGAINST OUR TRIBE.

For more information on how to help the Tribe, please contact us at the Tribal office at 209.931.4567 or by fax 209.931.4333