"Sovereignty and Common Sense" by Oren Lyons and John Mohawk
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DOCUMENT: GAMBLE.TXT
SOVEREIGNTY AND COMMON SENSE
by
Oren Lyons and John Mohawk
Sovereignty! Sovereignty! We hear the word all the time.
It is invoked as though it has magic powers, like "allakazam!"
But behind all the claims and misunderstandings, what about common
sense?
A civics question: Who represents the sovereignty of
nations?
Yankees, Bloomingdales, the Los Angeles Times, William
Buckley? Of course every high school student is supposed to know
that the sovereignty of the United States is represented by the
United States government.
Other groups constantly pretend to represent U.S.
sovereignty, usually groups which claim to be patriotic. The KKK
for example, has opinions about how U.S. sovereignty should be
used, as do the John Birch Society and the Minutemen. Imagine for
a moment what life would be like in the United States if the
sovereignty of the U.S. was exercised by the Minutemen. How many
adventures would the U.S. have to engage in? How long before the
wars the KKK got into against non-whites would become the U.S.'s
own wars? Chaos, as everybody knows, would ensue. That's why the
government, not every individual or volunteer group, represents
U.S. sovereignty.
Indeed, the U.S. government and every government on earth
have made it illegal, under penalties involving jail terms
(sometimes death), for groups and individuals to act as though
they and not the U.S. government exercise U.S. sovereignty.
Controlling the fringe and opportunist elements of society is one
of the responsibilities of the exercise of sovereignty! When the
governments cannot exercise that sovereignty, then sovereignty
cannot be said to exist.
Imagine for a moment that entrepreneurs and not governments
controlled the Mohawk Nation's sovereignty. Everyone knows, and
has always known, that there are many classes of illegal
transactions ranging from smuggling of arms, drug smuggling,
smuggling of undocumented aliens, sale of drugs, prostitution, and
on and on. The problem of the entrepreneur is to make money any
way he/she can. Thus the entrepreneurs as a class are always on
the margins of legality because that's where the profit margins
are highest. First they sold candy bars without paying taxes and
when nobody came to arrest them they then sold cigarettes. Some
among them must logically keep going to the next business, raising
the ante until somewhere along the line some foreign government is
going to invade. The question is, will it be when the assertion
is that sovereignty protects drug manufacture, drug growing, white
slavery, or whatever? One thing is certain. Whatever the line
that causes one nation to justly invade another will one day be
crossed in the name of Mohawk sovereignty. The only question is
when and for what activity.
The entrepreneurs launched casino gambling in defiance of the
state and federal governments, testing the water, trying to see
how far they could go. They dared the state to tax them, dared
the state to arrest them, defied the federal government to seize
their slot machines or to shut down their gambling operations.
When Mohawk governments tried to regulate them, the same
entrepreneurs defied those governments too, thus crippling the
effective exercise of Mohawk sovereignty. Entrepreneurs in this
environment will constantly push against the limits of what they
can get away with. Common sense reveals that if Mohawk
sovereignty is invaded, it is invaded because some people defied
the laws of governments and provoked the invasion. The very
people who have provoked the situation, the entrepreneurs, knew
the situation beforehand. They invoke the sovereignty of the
Mohawk nation, but they are a version of the Minutemen and the
Mafia wrapped up into one. If and when the federal or state
government enters Mohawk territory it will be because of this
provocation which is done, not as an act of a Mohawk government,
but in actual defiance of all Mohawk governance.
Common sense dictates that the gambling operators are the
greatest threat to Mohawk sovereignty.
Modern definitions of sovereignty hold that sovereignty is
derived from the consent of the people. That is why governments
represent sovereignty, not businesses. If individuals take
actions that threaten the right of the people to exercise control
of what happens in their country, the people, through their
governments have the right, according to just about everybody's
laws, to do whatever they must, including destroying the
entrepreneurs businesses and banishing the individuals from the
country. It is not an invasion of sovereignty, but an exercise of
sovereignty, for a government to seek assistance of another
government to exercise its will. Governments do it all the time.
Check out the Philippines in December.
Then there's the question of just to whom belong the profits
of things like gambling and sale of gasoline. Everyone agrees the
profits exist because Mohawk sovereignty exists. Mohawk
sovereignty lies in the Mohawk people. Logic would have it the
profits belong to the Mohawk people. Have the Mohawk people
elected to provide a few individuals with the privilege of
enriching themselves with these profits at the expense of all
Mohawks?
Defense of Mohawk sovereignty requires an exercise of common
sense. The first order of business is: whose will prevails? Is
it the will of the vast majority of the people, or the will of the
few? The answer to that question will inform us of the quality of
the sovereignty of the Mohawk Nation. That, and common sense.
Not allakazam!
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Taken from "Akwesasne Notes", Vol 22, No. 1 Late Spring 1990
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