Thread: Indian Tribe wants all illegal aliens removed from their land in CA.

1/6/2015 1:29:00 PM CRIT members propose California Highway 95 and river restrictions for all non members Proposed ordinance would remove non-members, close river access

Image courtesy of wikipedia.commons Depicts CRIT boundary and CA Highway 95. Zachary Matson Today’s News-Herald A group of Colorado River Indian Tribe members are asking the tribal council to approve an ordinance to remove non-tribal members from disputed territory on the California side of the Colorado River. The proposed ordinance also calls for the closure of access to the area off Highway 95, patrol of the area with drones, the construction of security walls and restriction of access on significant parts of the Colorado River between Parker and Blythe, Calif. In a petition attached to the proposed ordinance - provided by CRIT member Michael Tsosie - the group uses fiery language, calling for the removal of "illegal aliens" who the petition says think of the tribal members as nothing more than "'brown trash' that keeps getting in their way." Moreover, the petition argues, CRIT members "find themselves under literal attack over our western boundary from many different non-Indian entities... whose sole purpose is to seek to dispossess the members of this tribe..." Non-CRIT members live in an area south or Parker and north of Blythe that CRIT argues is legally part of its reservation. The residents and the state of California have disputed these tribal claims and don't recognize CRIT's jurisdiction over the land. In October, California Attorney General Kamala Harris filed a brief in federal court supporting a resident's claim that he was unlawfully removed from his home. There has been a long dispute over the boundary of the CRIT reservation. CRIT officials say the dispute was resolved in the reservation's favor thanks to a 1969 order issued by the secretary of the interior. The proposed "temporary but necessary measures" call for the removal of all nontribal members living in the disputed territory by June 1. The tribe would also close the territory to any further leasing of non-members until the land dispute was resolved to their satisfaction. Furthermore, the resolution calls for shutting access off of California Highway 95 into the territory and considering removing the state's right-of-way through the territory for the highway itself. And it asks for the "entire river frontage on both banks" between Parker and Blythe to be closed to non-member "boating and other aquatic sport, fishing and enjoyment of the river..." The tribe would reassign personnel to patrol the area and could "consider the use of drones" or construction of security walls to defend against "incursions by illegal aliens and land hungry squatters," under the proposal. The proposal calls for the tribal members to begin settling in the disputed area after Feb. 1 to establish a stronger tribal presence. It even asks the tribal council to provide incentives and "make every effort to facilitate the settlement of the western boundary area by responsible tribal members." In an email, Tsosie said the petition was drafted by a "coalition of tribal interests," including "input from tribal members in all three voting districts." He said the petition had been sent to the council chairman and would hopefully be brought forward for council action by the end of the week. Attempts to reach CRIT officials weren't immediately returned. Parker Pioneer reporter Joan M. Travis contributed to this story.

http://paloverdevalleytimes.com/main...rticleID=20967

Greed fuels racism.

Mary Vansickle: Not happy with treatment by tribes

Posted: Saturday, January 10, 2015 11:28 pm | Updated: 8:54 am, Sun Jan 11, 2015.

Editor:
I just read that members of the Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) may consider a proposal regarding the land on the California side of the river between Parker and Blythe. The proposal calls for the expulsion and locking out of all “illegal aliens” (meaning non-CRIT members) from that land. That’s us, folks.

I remember some years ago when the tribe at Havasu Landing voided all old local property leases.

They expelled homeowners who had lived there for years. The same thing happened on the Apache Reservation in eastern Arizona.

If the tribes want something, they just say it’s “sacred ground” and take it.

I for one have made my last visit to casinos in the region. This “illegal alien” will not support anything connected to CRIT.

When CRIT kicks out all us “illegals” from “their” lands and we stop doing business with them, all I can say to them is good luck.

Mary Vansickle
Lake Havasu City

http://www.havasunews.com/opinion/yo...5ee35dc75.html

Opinion

Our View: CRIT, residents should welcome request for border ruling

Posted: Saturday, January 10, 2015 11:26 pm | Updated: 8:55 am, Sun Jan 11, 2015.

A tribal member's provocative proposal to shut down portions of a federal highway and the Colorado River was designed to be just that. Few believe the Colorado River Indian Tribes would even entertain the kind of extremist behavior outlined in Michael Tsosie's petition to the tribal council.

Tsosie’s letter contains strong suggestions designed to elicit a strong response, bringing attention to an important issue, not unlike the 1729 satirical essay "A Modest Proposal," in which author Jonathan Swift recommends that poor Irish ease their burdens by selling off their children as food for the rich.

Tsosie, who doesn't hold a seat on the council but claims to represent a coalition of tribal interests, sent his proposal to the tribal chairman last week. In the document, he calls for the removal of “illegal aliens” living within reservation boundaries and, among many other suggestions, closing US Highway 95 on the California side of the Colorado River and shutting down access to the Colorado River to anyone who isn't a tribal member.

It's unlikely that CRIT could proceed on many of Tsosie's suggestions even if it wanted to — Tribe Chairman Dennis Patch said in a written statement that federal and tribal law wouldn't allow it. But Patch also acknowledged that tribal leadership shares Tsosie's frustrations with the border dispute simmering on the reservation's western border.

And that's the real issue here. For about half a century, ownership of land on the west side of the Colorado River has been the subject of disagreement between the tribes and the non-tribal members who live there. The federal government sought to clear matters with the 1969 secretarial order by the Department of the Interior, establishing the reservation's western border in California. Over the years, the tribes have worked with residents in the area, converting ownership claims into long-term lease agreements. But even with the federal order, some residents held onto their beliefs that the tribes had no right to take over their homes and property.

As far as the CRIT and the federal government are concerned, these are issues that were solved long ago, and the tribes feel that they’ve been patient with those they’ve deemed “squatters.” But a political heavyweight’s entry into the dispute could reopen old wounds and perhaps turn the issue on its head. In October, California Attorney General Kamala Harris filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of one of the residents who had been evicted from his property. Harris says California isn’t sold on the 1969 ruling, and asks the judge to rule on the boundary dispute.

It’s no doubt a frustrating development for the tribes, and perhaps a glimmer of hope for the residents who continue to live in the area without paying rent to CRIT. But all sides should welcome Harris’ court filing as a chance to settle this issue once and for all — a way to move forward without extreme measures such as shutting down highways and access to the river.

— Today’s News-Herald

http://www.havasunews.com/opinion/ou...fdc371ea9.html

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Mary Vansickle: Not happy with treatment by tribes

Posted: Saturday, January 10, 2015 11:28 pm | Updated: 8:54 am, Sun Jan 11, 2015.

Editor:
I just read that members of the Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) may consider a proposal regarding the land on the California side of the river between Parker and Blythe. The proposal calls for the expulsion and locking out of all “illegal aliens” (meaning non-CRIT members) from that land. That’s us, folks.

I remember some years ago when the tribe at Havasu Landing voided all old local property leases.

They expelled homeowners who had lived there for years. The same thing happened on the Apache Reservation in eastern Arizona.

If the tribes want something, they just say it’s “sacred ground” and take it.

I for one have made my last visit to casinos in the region. This “illegal alien” will not support anything connected to CRIT.

When CRIT kicks out all us “illegals” from “their” lands and we stop doing business with them, all I can say to them is good luck.

Mary Vansickle
Lake Havasu City

http://www.havasunews.com/opinion/yo...5ee35dc75.html

Well, Mary, it is their land, and their sovereign territory by agreement with the tribes from long ago. No one has the right to squat on someone else's property and that includes especially Reservation lands. It is not you as a customer of their casinos they're upset with. It is others who trespass on tribal lands, not because it's "sacred ground", but because it's their property. No American should be offended by what the tribes are trying to do. Instead they should support them. This is the deal our country made with them and we should honor and defend it. Also, a "homeowner", on someone else's land is not a homeowner in our language, they are a squatting trespasser no matter how long they've lived there and exemplify the same attitude as illegal aliens who come into our country without permission or don't leave when they're supposed to.

All of this used to belong to the Indians.

They might decide to take it all back.

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

All of this used to belong to the Indians.

They might decide to take it all back.

No, it didn't all used to "belong to the Indians". They roamed the land. We settled it which stopped the roaming and we established property ownership. There were Wars with US over it. They even warred amongst themselves and with Mexico over roaming. They lost the Wars with US and have Reservation land, sovereign territory, and government trusts in lieu of roaming over land. All they want or are entitled to is for their deal to be honored which sounds more than fair enough to me. After all, that is the law, and Mary and her friends who don't want to honor that deal or abide the law, need to sit down and shut-up.

http://www.alipac.us/f19/congress-gi...w-ndaa-315620/

http://www.alipac.us/f9/native-ameri...whites-316198/

US should return stolen land to Indian tribes, says United Nations

UN's correspondent on indigenous peoples urges government to act to combat 'racial discrimination' felt by Native Americans


A Native American at his home on Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, which has some of the US's poorest living conditions. Photograph: Jennifer Brown/Star Ledger/Corbis

Chris McGreal in Washington
Friday 4 May 2012 18.46 EDT

A United Nations investigator probing discrimination against Native Americans has called on the US government to return some of the land stolen from Indian tribes as a step toward combatting continuing and systemic racial discrimination.

James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said no member of the US Congress would meet him as he investigated the part played by the government in the considerable difficulties faced by Indian tribes.

Anaya said that in nearly two weeks of visiting Indian reservations, indigenous communities in Alaska and Hawaii, and Native Americans now living in cities, he encountered people who suffered a history of dispossession of their lands and resources, the breakdown of their societies and "numerous instances of outright brutality, all grounded on racial discrimination".

"It's a racial discrimination that they feel is both systemic and also specific instances of ongoing discrimination that is felt at the individual level," he said.

Anaya said racism extended from the broad relationship between federal or state governments and tribes down to local issues such as education.

"For example, with the treatment of children in schools both by their peers and by teachers as well as the educational system itself; the way native Americans and indigenous peoples are reflected in the school curriculum and teaching," he said.

"And discrimination in the sense of the invisibility of Native Americans in the country overall that often is reflected in the popular media. The idea that is often projected through the mainstream media and among public figures that indigenous peoples are either gone or as a group are insignificant or that they're out to get benefits in terms of handouts, or their communities and cultures are reduced to casinos, which are just flatly wrong."

Close to a million people live on the US's 310 Native American reservations. Some tribes have done well from a boom in casinos on reservations but most have not.

Anaya visited an Oglala Sioux reservation where the per capita income is around $7,000 a year, less than one-sixth of the national average, and life expectancy is about 50 years.

The two Sioux reservations in South Dakota – Rosebud and Pine Ridge – have some of the country's poorest living conditions, including mass unemployment and the highest suicide rate in the western hemisphere with an epidemic of teenagers killing themselves.
"You can see they're in a somewhat precarious situation in terms of their basic existence and the stability of their communities given that precarious land tenure situation. It's not like they have large fisheries as a resource base to sustain them. In basic economic terms it's a very difficult situation. You have upwards of 70% unemployment on the reservation and all kinds of social ills accompanying that. Very tough conditions," he said.

Anaya said Rosebud is an example where returning land taken by the US government could improve a tribe's fortunes as well as contribute to a "process of reconciliation".

"At Rosebud, that's a situation where indigenous people have seen over time encroachment on to their land and they've lost vast territories and there have been clear instances of broken treaty promises. It's undisputed that the Black Hills was guaranteed them by treaty and that treaty was just outright violated by the United States in the 1900s. That has been recognised by the United States supreme court," he said.

Anaya said he would reserve detailed recommendations on a plan for land restoration until he presents his final report to the UN human rights council in September.

"I'm talking about restoring to indigenous peoples what obviously they're entitled to and they have a legitimate claim to in a way that is not devisive but restorative. That's the idea behind reconciliation," he said.

But any such proposal is likely to meet stiff resistance in Congress similar to that which has previously greeted calls for the US government to pay reparations for slavery to African-American communities.

Anaya said he had received "exemplary cooperation" from the Obama administration but he declined to speculate on why no members of Congress would meet him.

"I typically meet with members of the national legislature on my country visits and I don't know the reason," he said.

Last month, the US justice and interior departments announced a $1 billion settlement over nearly 56 million acres of Indian land held in trust by Washington but exploited by commercial interests for timber, farming, mining and other uses with little benefit to the tribes.

The attorney general, Eric Holder, said the settlement "fairly and honourably resolves historical grievances over the accounting and management of tribal trust funds, trust lands and other non-monetary trust resources that, for far too long, have been a source of conflict between Indian tribes and the United States."

But Anaya said that was only a step in the right direction.

"These are important steps but we're talking about mismanagement by the government of assets that were left to indigenous peoples," he said. "This money for the insults on top of the injury. It's not money for the initial problem itself, which is the taking of vast territories. This is very important and I think the administration should be commended for moving forward to settle these claims but there are these deeper issues that need to be addressed."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/04/us-stolen-land-indian-tribes-un