(Newswire.net — August 14, 2013) New York, NY — Former Senator Byron L. Dorgan has written a NY Times op-ed piece calling attention to painful sequestration cuts to already inadequate funds supporting basic needs of Native Americans promised tribes in treaties with the U.S. Senator Dorgan’s piece comes within days of an Indian Country article alleging undue harassment of sovereign Native American tribesß by the IRS.
The Senator points directly to a “trail of broken promises to American Indians” specifically regarding health, education, and housing needs the Senator says were promised in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramier in exchange for Sioux nation lands. The Senator cites heartbreaking personal accounts of conditions he found in the sovereign Indian reservation of Pine Ridge. He sheds light on shut down youth programs, youth shelters, an abysmal housing situation, and an “Indian Health Service estimates that as a result [of sequestration] it will have 804,000 fewer patient visits this year.” The Senator asks “How can we justify such a thoughtless policy?”
Even as one sector of the U.S. Government reneges its sworn obligations to American Indian Tribes another, the IRS, has conducted numerous audits “that tribal leaders say not only violate tribal sovereignty, but are discriminatory, harassing, and almost always fail to find any tax abuse,” according the Indian Country. The media outlet dedicated to “serving the nations” of sovereign American Indians reports that the IRS has conducted such audits and compliance investigations for years now.
A former Oglala Sioux Tribe President spoke at a Senate hearing last year about the IRS’s harassment. He said that IRS agents had been arriving unannounced to conduct audits on Oglala Sioux’s Pine Ridge Reservation’s tribal government’s “expenditures that have not been and never should be subject to taxation – things like health care and education benefits, utility and housing assistance, even powwow prizes and funeral expenses.” That is the same Pine Ridge Reservation that former Senator Dorgan visited. That is the same Pine Ridge the government has been breaking its own lawful obligations to.
Members of senatorial budget committee have announced plans to monumentally reform tax code, which tribal leaders and Native American rights groups say does not make considerations about the treaty forged obligations the U.S. Has made to sovereign American Indian nations. Native American organizations have issued resolutions calling on Congress to clarify the sovereign standing of tribal nations in the U.S. And to clarify the U.S.’s obligations to respect treaties made with these nations. Whether Congress will act with consideration of these resolutions—and the people they represent– or if they will continue their “trail of broken promises” remains to be seen.