To the editor:

In regard to Mr. Sundell’s push for a South Lawrence Trafficway referendum, this is not a case of the people’s voice not being heard. There could be symbolic votes for years to come on the SLT. However, these votes would have nothing to do with the constitutional and legal questions surrounding the SLT.

The reason this road is being fought is that many entities chose to look past federal laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Register concerning sacred sites and traditional cultural properties, and the Native American Religious Freedom Act of 1978, which falls under the First Amendment clause respecting the free right of worship, not to mention the violation of federal trust responsibility that the Bureau of Indian Affairs had to legally manage the assets or lands of Haskell Indian Nations University, whose campus was paid for by many tribes’ trust funds held by the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Treasury.

The congressional Civilization Act of 1819 promised to educate native children in return for the cession of the native lands that are now the United States. Haskell’s campus was paid for with tribal land cessions in treaties which are held to the highest law of the land, according to the U.S. Constitution.

With all of this obvious malfeasance, the writing’s on the wall. Misinformation and tactics of deception should never overrule the reality of one culture’s existence denied by another culture, in spite of federal legal protections.

Mike Ford,

Bonner Springs