U.S. taxation of Indian lands

Peshewegunzh (peshe%mamia.uucp@mthvax.cs.miami.edu)
Thu, 13 Feb 1992 11:12:02 EST


> rclinton@lawnet-po.law.uiowa.edu wrote:
>
> Justice Scalia's opintion however is very troublesome since he takes aim at
> what he calls the "platonic notion of Indian sovereignty." I would not
> suggest looking for very many positive pro-Indian decisions from this
> Supreme Court or even most federal judges today. Nevertheless, the Yakima
> decision, while very troubling, is not as broad a disaster as the Boston
> Globe report would suggest since it did not involve a blanket authorization
> to apply any and all state taxes to Indian held fee patent lands within the
> reservation.

Nevertheless, the essential question is this: what happens to the land when
the taxes remain unpaid? Confiscation, and transfer to Europeans, I would
predict with a certainty.

This court has taken the firm tact that there is no higher moral authority
by which the state can be judged, and that the state (whether expressing
the majority will, or not) is supreme. Such is tantamount to legitimizing
totalitarianism, as has happened identically in other geographic and
historical settings. A sign of the times is that Time magazine is "troubled"
that East German guards who were "only following orders" of their state when
they murdered people trying to escape that nation, have been tried and found
guilty now that that particular lawless regime fell. In the emerging
American consciousness, it is "troubling" that there should be any higher
moral authority that constrains the state's will to power. That is
tantamount to legitimizing any action the state may choose to take, and
depriving any individual of the right to refuse to carry out wickedness.
No state system should think it a law unto itself, whether called a democracy,
a monarchy or a people's republic. Any time there has been a failure to
realize this, terrible atrocities have followed, without exception. And
unless such thinking is reversed, this continent will be no different, either.

The major problem is that such thinking is unlikely to be reversed, in the
absence of great consequent suffering, since the majority of people know
of no higher power than that of the state, moral or otherwise. This is
how materialism in the absence of spirituality leads inevitably into
bondage, as there is nothing left but pragmatism. Unfortunately, by its
very definition, pragmatism has no basis for any prior principles to guide
it, nor any ability therefore to gauge the consequences of its actions.
It expresses the essence of "no restraint" when it wields absolute power.

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Peshewegunzh

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