|
Barbour's threats to Choctaws a real farce |
|
Written by Administrator
|
|
Tuesday, 29 June 2010 |
Barbour's threats to Choctaws a real farce
Sid Salter
June 27, 2010
Let's forget for a moment that the Choctaw Indians in Mississippi were robbed, raped, bought, sold, herded like cattle onto reservation lands and murdered with impunity in Mississippi between 1540 and 1900.
Let's forget that beginning in 1801, a series of treaties resulted in the taking by the U.S. government of over 25 million acres of land from the Choctaws and that today, the Choctaws own only about 35,000 acres of tribal lands.
In exchange for all that land, the European settlers brought the Choctaws dread diseases and forced them west to reservation lands in Oklahoma along the fabled "Trail of Tears."
Call it what it is Now comes the modern day Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians with a plan to build a small casino on tribal property in Jones County near Sandersville. Local opposition has come on several fronts - all legitimate - on moral, religious or economic grounds.
Tribal gaming brings little in the way of taxes to non-tribal governments, but many of the headaches. Jones County opposition to the proposed Choctaw casino is what it is.
I can't argue with that.
But much of the political opposition to the proposed casino - Gov. Haley Barbour calls it a "slot parlor" - is not based on moral or religious concerns or on concerns Jones County residents will bear some infrastructure costs.
In Barbour's letter last week to Choctaw Miko Beasley Denson, the governor made every possible threat to the Choctaws - lawsuits, regulatory hurdles from environmental challenges, public health concerns, potential damages to state and county roads and bridges - to stop the project. Barbour even lamented the dangers the development posed to "tortoises, fowl snakes, and plants" in the Pine Belt region. Please . . .
All that flora and fauna aside, it's clear why Barbour and other state officials want to stop the Choctaw's project - to protect the profit margins of the state-regulated casinos from competition.
The punch line?
But all the supposed worry that the proposed Choctaw "slot parlor" is causing Gov. Barbour over the poor little tortoises, fowl, snakes and plants isn't the truly funny part of the state's efforts to nix the Jones County casino. Here's the punch line from Barbour's letter to Denson: "Clearly, what the tribe has proposed in Jones County does not benefit or protect the citizens of the tribe and the state; rather, it appears this project will be at the expense of state and local governments."
When the Choctaws were broke, the state ignored and neglected them. Since the tribe began to create jobs and wealth, state government has been licking its chops to try to tax them with little success.
But one thing the state of Mississippi has decidedly not done is seek in any way to ever "benefit and protect" the Choctaw tribe - even after wild profits from the theft of tribal lands in this state.
http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20100627/COL0412/6270302/1171/OPINION/ |
