ICGPA

To:   All Native American Citizens

Fm:  The International Card & Game Players Union

Re:   Our sincerest apologies!

Dear Fellow Citizens,

Today is Martin Luther King Day:

“No one is free unless we are all free.”

We are passionate about equality and freedom. Freedom for the Sport of Poker and, equality for all U.S.citizens, including the Native American Indian Tribal communities. Our players union is battling for our freedom and liberty and, we are inviting your community to help us. We intend to ask our fellow citizens, who are languishing under government sponsored racial segregation and isolation, to join with us in attaining our goals.

Our union is attempting a quantum leap into the Twenty First Century. We are seeking your help in creating a new beginning. We are all aware the country has moved into a new era of social enlightenment, regarding integration, and cultural harmony. Unfortunately, tagging along under the protection of the government, is an unfathomable, antebellum institution, that should never have existed in the first place. It has survived far too long and, the time has come to remove the Bureau of Indian Affairs from the public trough.

The BIA’s hold and control over the Indian Trust Lands must be broken.

We ask that you contemplate what the protections within the Constitution requires and guarantees for all of us equally. As United States citizens, Native American Tribal communities have a substantive right to hold title to their property. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has never been lawful under our Constitution. There are no provisions within it permitting our government; to establish, or maintain, a government funded program, segregating, or isolating citizens by race or culture. None of us, whether Native American Indian or not, should even consider handing a racist society over to our grandchildren.

History has clearly established that the BIA is the single worst trustee ever to manage a trust. A fact highlighted by the outcome of Cobell vs Salazar. We want to encourage you to seriously consider supporting our effort, to remove the yoke of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, from the backs of the Native American communities. While many Tribal governments might fear losing the revenues of the gaming casinos, we doubt that will occur. Those facilities are the result of contracts and, are a distinct and separate issue, from property rights.

We seek your help in acquiring the rights and liberties, too long denied to Native American citizens, residing within the Bureau of Indian Affairs racial enclaves. We must do this for our fellow citizens, whose communities we have wrapped in barbed wire and, trapped in isolation from the mainstream of America. However, closing the BIA is as important to mainstream America, as it will be for Native American citizens. It is essential to our collective soul as a Nation that we stop racism in any guise. It is necessary for the dignity of all Americans; that we no longer pay citizens to live apart from us, simply and plainly, based upon their race and culture.

The notion that the Bureau of Indian Affairs is somehow protecting the Native American culture is utter nonsense. It has however, stunted the growth and evolution of the Native American culture since its inception. Which, if history is any indicator, has been its life long purpose. Only when Native American communities are provided their substantive right to control their own affairs and property, will their unique culture be able to evolve and develop naturally. Free of the BIA boot, the tribes can grow in harmony with the times in which they are alive; the here and now.

Recent events have made it even more evident; the racial enclaves mismanaged by the BIA from its inception, should be converted to fee simple titled land. So they can be handed over to Tribal governments to manage and control as private property. Native American communities can operate under State charters, along side all other communities, within the mainstream of cities and towns. Tribal lands owned and managed by tribal communities will then become assimilated, and equal under law, to all other communities. The time is long overdue for the tribal governments to gain their property rights, so they can assume responsibility for managing their own affairs.

An Emerging Global Enterprise

Involving the Indian communities in organizing the International sport of poker has long been a part of our business plan. We would like you to consider; having your community, take advantage of a paradigm shift in the global marketplace regarding the sport of poker. We seek the tribal communities support in assisting the union in its plans to organize the sport

We are reaching out to you, with the sincerest of hope, that your vision of the future will begin to merge with ours; where we are all united as a single tribe of human beings. All living equally under the law, rather than segregated and isolated from each other; having become victims of our own immoral laws. Perhaps we can make history, while freeing the country we love, of its last bastion of racism: The Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Please consider these facts:

Our union has had to endured a plethora of unethical and illicit shenanigans over the past five years. Those events forced us to delve into the source of the chaos our State’s political subdivisions have been undergoing. We have documented our bizarre saga on our blog www.icgpa.org. It is very unsettling to be the brunt of attacks from the gambling industry, but it has forced upon us a real education in civics and government.

Worldwide, with very few exceptions, the gambling industry is barred by voters, from conducting business in their communities. It is not so much the act of gambling that people scorn; it is the gambling industy. An industry with a very poor pedigree and, a deservedly shoddy reputation, regarding their business practices. A reputation reenforced over the last five years, by the conduct of their industry policing agency in Arizona; the Arizona Department of Gaming.

It is hard to warm up to a business that is amoral and has no written ethics. “Anything goes” is the mantra of the gambling industry. The industry invites any and all, regardless of personal circumstances, to visit their facilities and fill popcorn buckets with their hard earned money. When their guests arrive, they are then plied with cheap food and liquor. These so called “suckers” are watched from behind one-way mirrors, as they dump their hard earned coins, into gambling industry rigged machines. In some strange way it seems a kind of perverse voyeurism. The gambling industry is an easy industry for voters to spurn.

However, in the last couple of decades, despite the will of voters in 49 of 50 States, the chance gambling industry has managed to access most of the major metropolitan markets. Unbelievably, they accomplished this coveted goal, without ever having to submit to the ballot box or the control of State authorities.

The gambling industry in Arizona has even managed to acquire for themselves, a privately funded police force, which operates without prosecutorial control, within the State’s jurisdiction. Neither State, nor Federal prosecutors, appear to hold sway over their behavior. While attempting to enforce their monopolistic claims, they pay no heed to state prosecutors or licensing power of municipal governments. No doubt, this is not the last of the adverse social costs, for having allowed the gambling industry unfettered access to our mainstream markets. Especially, without the direct control of state authority or prosecutors.

For instance; has anyone thought to consider what harmful effects, might accrue to our children, from the 24/7 indiscriminate advertising of their bogus propaganda. The ads put forth the absurd proposition; that drinking and chance gambling constitute a quality life style. What affect upon youth might result from this constant flow of misleading ads? Flashy ads suggesting; anyone can acquire true wealth and happiness, simply by playing their slot machines. These false ads are not the ideas we wish to impart to our youngsters. However, my own grandchildren are already salivating to visit a casino.

Clearly at some point in the future, State government is going to have to control and police this industry. Most likely by state level regulation of gambling facilities. However, accessibility to those facilities will likely be determined by local government, as it reasonably should.

Congress requiring States to “act in good faith” with the BIA managed reservation system, forced the gambling industry upon the State, and against the will of the voters! This act of Congress clearly impinges on the right of the voters to control gambling in their own state. Would it be too ironic to suggest: Don’t bet on the gambling compact. It will have a very difficult time passing muster in the courts.

How did the gambling industry’s fortunes turn so positive for them? They owe it all to the Department of the Interior. Like all government agencies they are always in search of a revenue stream to augment their budget. They needed one badly, in order to maintain their racial purification program, overseen by their bastard child: The Bureau of Indian Affairs. The BIA is a 186 year old racist institution. It was immoral and illicit when created in 1824;  it has not become moral or legal, simply because it has survived too long.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs was created and has sustained itself, like all other criminal enterprises; upon lies, subterfuge, and greed. It has survived into modern times by continuing to proffer the same fraudulent names, titles, and misnomers it employed in its creation. Terms such as nations; for small tribal communities. Or, sovereignty to describe communities comprised of citizens; where a federal government agency maintains control of their property and affairs.

The BIA has survived since 1924 by holding U.S. citizens and their culture captive, within their own ancestral lands, via an unnecessary trust. A trust that should have ended with the Indian Citizenship Act of that same year. A trust the BIA has always abused from its inception. The BIA has been abusing and plundering the ancestors of these citizens continually since 1824.

The historical record of the BIA is replete with scandalous double dealing and abuses of their trust. A few weeks ago, the true character of the BIA was once again confirmed, when they finally agreed to settled a lengthy civil lawsuit with the Tribes.

The lawsuit was filed against the government for having mismanaged and mishandled Indian Trust lands for over a century. The cost to the taxpayers is a staggering 3.5 Billion dollars! Proving beyond a shadow of a doubt; that neither, the taxpayers nor the Tribes have need of this immoral criminal enterprise any longer, if in fact we ever did.

It is absurd to claim that these citizens are free to move off the reservation anytime they desire. Sure, they can leave anytime they want; if they don’t mind leaving behind their family and friends. If they don’t mind abandoning the grave sites of their ancestors. Sure they are free to leave but, on the condition that they leave custody of their property, and their tribal lands in the hands of the BIA.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs, throughout its long and sordid history, has committed every despicable crime from genocide, to fraud and theft upon their communities. It is true that inhabitants are free to walk away; if they are prepared to enter a society that has never invited them to belong, or encouraged them to assimilate. A society that has not only segregated and isolated them throughout history; but seems content to continue doing so into perpetuity.

The first question that must be asked of anyone attempting to defend the practice of racial and cultural purification of Native American citizens: Where is the authority found for allowing such conduct?

What moral theory exist within any civilized society, that would allow such blatantly antisocial and, immoral behavior to continue? Which branch of government has ever possessed the power or lawful authority to authorize the practice of isolation and segregation by race? Where is the law that justifies the continuation of a policy of separate but unequal? Certainly not Brown vs Board of Education. Which article of the Constitution sanctions apartheid?

The time has arrived in our history to break the Indian Trust and give the Native American communities fee simple title to their trust lands. Please help us to end this clearly improper government policy and return the Tribal lands to the Native American Tribes.

Warmest regards,

Justice Harold Lee (Retired)

Founder/Director International Card & Game Players Association, Inc.

Tombstone, Arizona

judgeharoldlee@gmail.com