A couple of letters to the local daily newspaper suggest that only those who pay taxes should be allowed to vote.
The premise for this suggestion may be traced to a common misconception: Indians do not pay taxes. Without question the Indian vote in states with large Indian populations remains a significant target for Democrats and Republicans.
The recent loss of the Senate seat by South Dakota Democrat Tom Daschle does not alter that premise. After all, Daschle lost by a mere 4,500 votes in the more than 100,000 votes cast in a state that is heavily Republican. Slightly more than 50 percent of the eligible American Indian voters turned out. If even 70 percent had turned out Daschle would still be South Dakota's senator.
My guess is that the letter writers suggesting that only those who pay taxes be allowed to vote assume that Indians in South Dakota and other states do not pay taxes. This is a myth that needs to be addressed along with other misconceptions about the status of American Indians. My own father was 30 years old when he was awarded the right to vote in America. He did pay taxes.
First of all, turning out in large numbers to vote in national elections is new to most Indian people. Considering that the majority of the Indian people did not get the right to vote until 1948, is it any wonder we have come late to the political process? Also consider the fact that many of the Indians serving in World War I and II were not even legal citizens of the United States.
Most Indians became citizens in 1924, but two states with very large Indian populations, Arizona and New Mexico, did not ratify their citizenship, and thus their right to vote, until 1948. It was only after the returning Indian veterans, including the Navajo Code Talkers, protested vehemently that their state governments ratified the amendment making them legal citizens of America. Ironic, huh?
But for a couple of generations after U.S. citizenship was granted, Indians did not appreciate the significance of participating in national elections. Most voted in local elections made possible by the Indian Re-organization Act of 1934. But when nationally elected politicians began to create laws and enact legislation that took away land, mineral rights, and tribal rights the Indian people began to look for a way to halt this process and even reverse it.
They saw the political process as one way and uniting as a people as another. The National Congress of American Indians, founded in 1944, was one approach. But the organization has never been able to get 100 percent membership or participation by the majority of the Indian nations. This had prevented a single organization to speak as one voice for the Indian people.
And through all the years, white America is still living under the misconception that Indians do not pay taxes. America also is blinded to believe we are cared for from cradle to grave by a benevolent government. The only thing an Indian does not pay taxes on is the land he lives on. The United States holds Indian land in trust.
Indians pay sales taxes. Ironically, most Indians shop off of the reservation and the taxes they pay for those items do not come back to them but go into the coffers of the state government and local municipalities.
Indians pay all of the federal taxes paid by all Americans. They have FICA; withholding, Medicare and all of the other taxes deducted from their paychecks every payday. They pay taxes every time they fill their vehicles with gasoline. They are taxed when they purchase a refrigerator or a washer and dryer.
Many of the so-called benefits they receive in the way of health care or education were guaranteed under the terms of the treaties they signed with the United States of America in exchange for millions of acres of land. The treaties signed between sovereign nations in the late 1800s have never been abrogated and are still the laws of the land.
Through it all the funds held in trust by the U.S. government have been so badly mismanaged, stolen, or lost that it has become an accountant's nightmare. Eloise Cobell, the Blackfeet Indian woman who brought a lawsuit against the United States for accountability, estimates the money lost to the Indian people amounts into the billions of dollars.
And what great American lawmaker is going to stand up and fight for the return of these billions of dollars to the people from whom it was stolen? Cobell said the United States doesn't have to find the money to pay the Indians. "They have the money already because they stole it from us," she said.
When the Indian people are ready, they will start turning out in numbers as high as 90 percent to vote. They still have fears and doubts about the process and so they have not fully participated, but that day is coming.
In the meantime, those who would suggest that only people who pay taxes be allowed to vote had better get a handle on their obvious misperception that Indians do not pay taxes. If they fear the Indian vote that much they should be finding ways to bring it to their side rather than trying to deny it.
-- Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, is former editor and publisher of Lakota Media Inc.
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