And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Date: Sun, 02 May 1999 21:51:24 -0500 To: "BIA's incompetence is so extreme it remains a joke." From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Tribes fight back, Indians & the Kansas Enabling Act: Know! Tribes fight back At long last, Native Americans are finding some measure of justice in American courts. By The Capital-Journal editorial board The Indians declared war on the surrounding white man's society last week -- and won. On Monday U.S. Judge Sam A. Crow agreed that under the Kansas Enabling Act (creating the state), Brown County authorities appear to have no authority on the Kickapoo Indian Reservation. He issued a temporary injunction restraining the county authorities from repossessing vehicles and delivering wage garnishments. The case stems from an April 12 incident in which a sheriff's deputy repossessed a tribe member's minivan without notifying Kickapoo authorities. Crow agreed the enabling act "appears to exclude Indian land from the territorial boundaries and civil jurisdiction." His injunction put a kink in more than a century of practice, under which claims were routinely filed in Brown County District Court "without respect and in disdain for the tribe's sovereign right to self-government." That was just the first shot. The very next day the vice president of the Potawatomi Indian Nation Tribal Council affixed a Potawatomi Nation license tag to her car and went out to troll the highways to provoke a reaction from state authorities, since the Kansas Department of Revenue has no authority to recognize such a tag. So far the state hasn't bitten. The trolling results from a pair of recent court decisions -- one in Kansas, the other in Minnesota -- holding Indian tribal license tags legal. In the first case, the court said since Oklahoma recognized a tribal tag, all states must do likewise. In the second, a Minnesota court found a Potawatomi plate legal. This is certain to cause various bureaucratic headaches for officialdom and perhaps even a few more court trials, but the trend is clear. Native Americans are finally holding their own, and it's about time. For more than a century and a half, the invading white society has pretty much done what it wanted with Indian land, Indian property, even Indians themselves. The Bureau of Indian Affairs is supposed to be the guardian of the various tribes under terms of the many 18th and 19th century treaties. But the BIA's incompetence is so extreme it remains a joke. Now, with the aid of a few sympathetic courts and a re-examination of some original source documents, a few Indian entities are finally getting some measure of justice. Copyright 1999 The Topeka Capital-Journal ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
