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Seeking resignation

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Friday, 20 August 2010

Seeking resignation Seneca to file human rights and hate crime violations against NY Mayor Bloomberg By Gale Courey Toensing Story Published: Aug 18, 2010 IRVING, N.Y. – The Seneca Nation council has authorized the nation’s president to file a human rights violation and a hate crime complaint with local, state and international bodies against New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg for making “derogatory racial statements” against the nation and its citizens. Council member J.C. Seneca put a resolution called “Condemning Statements of Mayor Bloomberg” before the council Aug. 14 regarding comments the mayor made in an interview Aug. 13 with New York Daily News. “In his remarks, Mayor Bloomberg included derogatory racial statements, against the Seneca Nation and its members, including a statement encouraging (New York Gov. David Paterson) to, ‘you know, get yourself a cowboy hat and a shotgun’ and to commence an armed occupation of the nation’s Cattaraugus Territory for the purpose of making a video of the governor standing on the NYS Thruway with said cowboy hat and shotgun,” the resolution says. Seneca’s resolution said the mayor’s remarks disparaged the Seneca Nation’s “treaty protected tobacco economy.” As the Daily News described the interview, “Mayor Bloomberg, channeling his inner Wyatt Earp, shot himself in the foot Friday.” “I’ve said this to David Paterson. … If there’s ever a great video, it’s you standing in the middle of the New York State Thruway saying, you know, ‘Read my lips – the law of the land is this, and we’re going to enforce the law.’” The tough-talking mayor, who has long exhorted Paterson collect taxes on cigarettes sold on sovereign Indian land was again encouraging Paterson to get tough on collecting taxes from the Indian nations whose territories are contiguous to or surrounded by New York state. The response from the Seneca Nation followed swiftly with a statement from President Barry E. Snyder Sr. “It’s obvious Mayor Bloomberg is supportive of religious freedoms and not sovereign rights,” Snyder said, referring to a controversy over plans to build a Muslim community center and mosque near the site of the destroyed World Trade buildings. “It’s precisely this kind of cavalier attitude that has led to the past breaking of treaties by various federal and state governments. Maybe Mayor Bloomberg could use a refresher course on the U.S. Constitution and the need to honor Indian treaties,” Snyder wrote. “As an elected leader sworn to uphold all laws of the land, does he feel he has the right to pick and choose which parts of the Constitution he favors because of his clearly biased beliefs? Regrettably Mayor Bloomberg has made some reckless and insensitive statements to the people of the Seneca Nation, all Native Americans living in New York state and throughout the country.” Asked to comment on Snyder’s charges that the mayor’s comments were “biased, reckless and insensitive,” Bloomberg’s press secretary Stu Loeser said, “These arguments have nothing to do with the federal law, which applies to tribes.” It was not clear which federal law Loeser referred to. Bloomberg’s comments spread quickly to Native communities across the country. On Aug. 18, Lance Gumbs, senior trustee of the Shinnecock Indian Nation on Long Island, N.Y., and National Congress of American Indians vice president for the northeast region, alerted the organization of the mayor’s comments. NCAI is the oldest and largest organization representing American Indian and Alaska Native communities and individuals in the country. “This is unacceptable. We can no longer stay silent on issues like this that make Native people and our communities fair game for any politician who wants to control our tribal economies.” Jefferson Keel, NCAI president and lieutenant governor of the Chickasaw Nation, responded with a formal letter to Bloomberg, characterizing the cowboys and Indians stories of the Wild West as a “dishonorable” part of the past used to justify the “brutal massacres” due to Western expansion and colonization of tribal territories. “It is particularly offensive that you revisited these derogatory stereotypes in a current dispute over tobacco taxes. It is insulting that a tribal government defending its legal rights today is threatened with the brutalities of the past,” Keel wrote. He asked for a meeting with the mayor and for an apology “for his choice of words and to return the discourse to the level of civility that we all deserve.” The Seneca resolution authorizes Snyder to file a complaint alleging a human rights violation and a hate crime with the New York City and New York State Human Rights Commissions, the United States Commission on Civil Rights, the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples. “Bloomberg’s cavalier attitude and inflammatory remarks, by which he encourages armed conflict as a means for resolution, evidences tremendous disrespect to those nation members and New York State Police officers who, to this day, bear the scars and trauma of the actual – not hypothetical – conflict that has twice occurred on the nation’s territory, is considered by the council to be a hate crime and violation of human rights,” the resolution said. It also contrasts Bloomberg’s position of support for religious freedom and the building of the Muslim community center and mosque with his attitude toward Indian nations. “Mayor Bloomberg’s contradictory positions regarding the constitutional protections afforded to those involved in the Islamic Center and Mosque, versus those afforded to the nation and its members, are demonstrative of the continued ignorance of the nation’s own constitutionally protected treaties as the supreme law of the land, which provide the underlying protections for the nation’s tax immune status on which its economy is based,” the resolution states. The resolution says Bloomberg’s “hypocritical” support of constitutional protections only occurs if the protections don’t impact the city budget. That hypocrisy, “coupled with his uneducated and uninformed statements on the issue, serve to fan the flames of aggression, and undermine the potential for peaceful resolution of these matters, while perpetuating a long dormant policy of Indian termination which dates back to the days of General Custer’s failed Battle of Little Bighorn, the resolution says. Based on Bloomberg’s “inflammatory and racially insensitive” remarks, the resolution calls on the mayor to resign immediately or to issue a formal written apology to the Seneca Nation and its citizens that provides evidence of his “tolerance and respect” for the nation’s treaties. It also calls on Paterson to publically condemn and distance himself from the mayor and his comments. http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/home/content/Seneca-to-file-human-rights-and-hate-crime-violations-against-NY-Mayor-Bloomberg-100982824.html

 

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