Monday, April 30, 2007
Editorial: Grant state's natives their rightful place
Virginia's tribes are forced to give up potential sovereign rights to gain long overdue recognition.
From the RoundTable blog
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Nearly 400 years to the day that English settlers landed in Virginia, the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee finally recognized that people were here long before the tall ships crossed the Atlantic -- and, of modern-day importance, that Native American tribes still exist within the commonwealth's boundaries.
The recognition is long overdue, and the full Congress should agree. However, it would not have been granted if the tribes' chiefs hadn't relinquished future gambling rights. That provision unfairly demands of Virginia's indigenous people concessions to their sovereignty that no other tribes have been asked to bargain away.
Virginia's tribes repeatedly said they are not interested in gambling and have proved that by declining to host bingo games, even though they have had that right since the 1980s, when the commonwealth finally recognized their existence.
What the tribes desire is acknowledgment, so they can access the federal health and education benefits that should have been their birthright. For far too long, Virginia's Indians were stripped of any rights.
The commonwealth was particularly brutal during most of the 20th century when it believed the white race superior and decreed that it should remain untainted. Births had to be registered as white or "colored," leaving no room for American Indian. To declare such meant imprisonment or worse.
Native Americans were erased from paper but not from reality. Tribes, located mostly in Southeast Virginia, clung to their culture and heritage, even if in secrecy.
Ever since the commonwealth began to right centuries' worth of wrongs, members of Virginia's congressional delegation have attempted to persuade Congress to recognize the tribes as well.
Until now, they hadn't met with success.
Critics claim Virginia's Indians shouldn't request congressional action, but instead follow the Bureau of Indian Affairs process. That task would prove nearly impossible since Virginia wiped out records of their existence. The Racial Integrity Act of 1924, in existence until 1967, saw to that.
Complaints about procedure, though, are merely a smokescreen. Congress worries that the tribes are just angling for a way to build casinos. Virginia's Rep. Jim Moran knew his colleagues again would refuse to take the chiefs at their word, so he amended his bill to prohibit gambling.
The chiefs should not be forced to forfeit their tribes' rights as sovereign nations just to be recognized as such, but if that truce gains the tribes their rightful recognition, then Godspeed.
