ICGPA

The following Email was sent to Glendale City Councilman Phil Lieberman. Glendale is in jeopardy of losing a sizable amount of tax revenues, when and if, the Department of Interior approves the request to build a reservation casino within current City limits. The State of Arizona will also loose a  good deal of tax revenue as well.

Dear Councilman Lieberman,

Sometime back, I had the pleasure of enjoying a lunch with you, and my long time friend Joel Thompson. I am retired Justice of the Peace Harold Lee. A co-founder of the International Card & Game Players Association of Tombstone (ICGPA). I am also in the process of forming an integrated organization called Tribe of Human Beings Unlimited. Our venture will have a primary goal of freeing tribal communities from U.S. Government control over their property and affairs.

As you might recall, our union has been attempting to wrest control of the sport of poker from the gambling industry for several years. While the State authorities appear to have accepted the players right to organize the sport of poker under Arizona law; the gambling industry forces have continued to ignore that decision. That highly scorned industry has found a safe refuge within the BIA reservation system.

Our organization has suffered much abuse from an industry that is universally deemed to be amoral and, whose conduct is considered felonious in forty-nine of fifty states. In fact, most civilized societies on the planet have statutorily banished the privately owned and operated industry, from their mainstream markets.

In spite of this fact, and without having to acknowledge authority of voters or their political subdivisions, the industry has managed to invade Arizona’s mainstream markets. All thanks to the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs.

However, the sad result is now Arizona is suffering greatly from our lack of diligence to the fundamental precepts by which we live. We have become a society afflicted with a deep cultural malaise. Quite simply, it is due to our continued support of a 186 year old antebellum racist policy. A government institution that we refuse to notice violates fundamental Constitutional guarantees, as well as, basic human morality: The Department of Interior’s BIA is a racist organization.

No race on Earth has paid a higher price, for their piece of the Earth, than the Native American Indians.

The BIA’s racial and cultural purification programs are prohibited by the Constitution, as well as the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It also appears to violate the International Crime of Apartheid. The 186 year old Bureau of Indian Affairs is not now, nor has it ever been, a legal or moral, entity. There is simply no authority available within the Constitution; providing any branch of government the power or authority to establish, fund, or maintain segregation, and isolation by race or culture.

Shame on the legal profession that has allowed this fraud and subterfuge to continue unchallenged for nearly two centuries.  Some day we will look back upon these racist policies, with the same amount of shame and contempt, we eventually developed for slavery. Legal treatises such as; Felix on Indian Law will be justifiably viewed as fundamentally wrong thinking.

One day that silly racist claptrap will take its place in judicial history, alongside the Dread Scott decision, as a shameful failure of the judicial system. A woefully inept effort by the law profession to meet its obligation of protecting the Constitution while, securing the individual rights and liberties of all Americans.

Now your city (and our State) government are threatened with the loss of a sizable tax base. Along with that tax base we will experience an even greater amount of lost tax revenues to that BIA managed compound. A substantial loss of business revenues from the local community’s entertainment and amusement industries, along with their tax revenues, are not the only losses that will be born by taxpayers. We, of course, will continue paying taxes to maintain these racist compounds.

BIA reservations have always had a single purpose; to exclude Native American Indians from mainstream society. We are paying for tens of thousands of Native Americans, to subsist at Third World poverty levels. To what purpose? So the gambling industry can operate among us with impunity?

In attempting to comprehend the Indian perspective of government policies toward them and their communities, I have spent a good deal of time communicating with reservation residents. Seeking to discover a reason why this one single race of people should be excluded from the rest of humanity. What benefits accrue to society, or anyone for that matter, from isolating and segregating our indigenous people, and their culture, from the mainstream of humanity?

What possible benefits exist in reserving any race or culture for posterity. What are the costs to the whole of humanity for excluding Native Americans from the times in which they are living? We must ultimately conclude, that the costs are too great and, quite frankly, there are no benefits that derive from racism.

The fanciful idea that we can preserve a culture, without stunting its development, is both idiotic and cravenly cruel. Attempting to hold an entire culture in abeyance from evolving and developing with the rest of the Universe, is quite possibly, the highest crime against humanity and the Creator.

Our assumption that the Indians do not want to hold title to their lands, or manage their own affairs, falls right in line with most of our unfounded assumptions regarding the true feelings of these good people. I have spoken with dozens of Native Americans on and off of the BIA’s reservation system, not one will defend the BIA. Frankly, most feel the Indians can handle their own affairs and would relish seeing this fraudulent government agency removed from their back.

That is not to suggest that they trust non-Indians to deliver on their promise of equality and justice for all. Frankly, many do not trust non-Indians in the least. Sadly, our history provides them too many reasons to be reticent. We have never lifted a finger to help bring equality and fair treatment to the tribal communities. Instead, we curse their communities with the many unpleasant tasks that we spurn doing ourselves. We have dumped everything from, landfills and uranium mining, to the gambling industry upon them, merely for our own convenience and/or amusement.

We find it very convenient negotiating with these U. S. Government controlled, deeply impoverished, tribal communities, who are willing to handle the unpleasant tasks, that mainstream communities shun doing. We continue to turn a blind eye to the criminal abuses of their age old nemesis the BIA. We support with our taxes, the BIA in its lifelong efforts, to isolate and plunder the tribal communities.

The BIA has been systematically defrauding and swindling tribal communities from its inception. It was created to handle the so called “Indian problem” in 1824. Since that time, the BIA has employed every wicked and depraved act, from fraud to genocide, in furtherance of their goals, which are simply:

To isolate and segregate indigenous Americans from mainstream society and, to control their lives and property on into eternity. They have been far too successful in attaining those goals.

However, the abuses of the BIA are not limited to past histories; they have been perpetual and ongoing from the beginning. For example; combining the six-hundred million dollars awarded by the Supreme Court to the Sioux Nation, for our having ripped off the Black Hills, along with the 3.5 Billion dollar settlement in the Corbell vs Salazar case, the taxpayers currently owe the tribes over FOUR BILLION DOLLARS!

Both the tribes, and the voters, have every reason to expect the immediate closure of the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a trustee of anything.

We must remove the government from their lives, so Native Americans and their culture can grow and evolve into the future, along side the rest of humanity. If any of us, the Tribes included, ever hope to see a healthy society, we all must be free to develop our cultures and communities. Develop them unburdened by a federal government bureaucracy mishandling and mismanaging the affairs of our local communities.

Society must insist that the tribal communities be admitted to the mainstream society and receive all their rights and liberties; including their right to hold title to their tribal lands. If Congress ever had the power to establish racial enclaves, which seems unlikely, it forfeited such power and authority with the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. Having granted universal citizenship to Native Americans, Congress clearly lost any power or authority to control their communities and manage their property.

The true dealings with Native Americans, and the BIA reservation system, was only minimally related to the so called Indian Wars of genocide. However, it had much to do with removing an entire race of people (and their culture) from the rest of humanity. It must be stopped and, the battle over the Glendale casino provides a clear opportunity for us to do the right thing, and force Congress, or the Courts, to close the BIA.

We would like to ask the City of Glendale, along with the State of Arizona, to join together and insist that our Native American citizens be granted all of their rights and liberties under the Constitution; including their substantive right to hold fee simple title to their tribal lands.

Further, that their communities be granted charters to incorporate their communities. That they be provided lawful authority to maintain a local government and control of their affairs. Powers equal to that of all incorporated cities and towns in Arizona. Along with, all amenities associated with municipal governments including, an integrated police and court system.

Councilman Lieberman, regardless of your position concerning the BIA, we hope we can count on you to help us bring this issue before the citizens. I will make myself available to meet with anyone, anywhere, that you deem necessary.

Sincerely,

Justice Harold Lee (Retired)

P.S. This Email will be copied and forwarded to as many community leaders and politicians as we can locate. Please feel free to forward or post on blogs and websites.