No checkered flag for Oneidas (US checkerboarding American Indians again?)

[The Straight Story]

No checkered flag for Oneidas

Posted: June 17, 2005
by: Tom Wanamaker / Indian Country Today
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Analysis

ONEIDA NATION HOMELANDS, N.Y. - With all of today's slick computerized video games getting so much attention, we sometimes forget that simpler board games like checkers are still around. But the form of checkers most recently played in Indian country by the U.S. Supreme Court has much more serious implications than the kids' game with its dozen discs, alternating colored squares, jumps and kings.

''Checkerboarding,'' a practice used to break up Indian reservations in the late 19th century, has returned with a new twist likely to make it more harmful to Indian governments and their sovereignty than ever before.

In 1887, President Grover Cleveland signed into law the General Allotment Act, also known as the ''Dawes Act.'' This legislation provided for the allocation of 86 million acres of reservation land to individual Indians - 160-acre plots to heads of households, 80-acre tracts to single adults, and 40-acre plots to minors under age 18.

The idea was to remake Indians into farmers and simultaneously destroy the common tribal practice of holding land communally. It mattered little that most Indians at the time had no interest in agriculture or that the land allotted to them was of poor quality. Land not allocated to Indians was sold to non-Indians as ''surplus'' - the resultant alternation of Indian and non-Indian lands gave rise to the checkerboard metaphor. Allotment finally came to a halt with the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.

In y of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of N.Y. Supreme Court's ruling can be boiled down to a basic hypocrisy. The practice of checkerboarding Indian land was not only permissible but encouraged when practiced by the federal government at the turn of the 20th century. Today, however, when a recognized tribal government with a legitimate land claim tries to reacquire land from willing sellers, the resultant checkerboard pattern of Indian land ownership has somehow become detrimental to the undefined ''common good.''

http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?feature=yes&id=1096411099

[Double T]

1. Unfortunately when you collaborate with dirty dogs in government....

they usually will turn on you, once they have what they want.