Tribal
Law
Indian Policy Center
Should Be Independent
Day Staff Columnist
Published on 9/19/2003
Back in the late '90s, an exasperated worker at the understaffed Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C., told a Day reporter that he got more calls from this state than any other.
No surprise. The vast majority of American Indians live somewhere else, but the combination of big money and small country has made this a major legislative battleground.
So what better site for a policy center for eastern tribes than the University of Connecticut School of Law?
Law school dean Nell Jessup Newton, an expert in Indian law, has asked U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd District, to request $2 million in federal funding for the center. Good idea — and good luck, because she'll need it.
Newton has also requested funding from the state's federally recognized tribes, whose casino riches are the root of all local hostilities.
Bad idea.
A policy center for eastern tribes funded by the Mohegans, who have expressed interest, or the Pequot tribes would inevitably be suspect, and that's the last thing we need, whether the suspicions would be founded or not.
The policy center might as well take money from Jeff Benedict's anti-casino coalition, if that group had any to spare.
Newton has accepted money from tribes before, to update a federal Indian law handbook. But a policy center that would be called upon to analyze contentious issues such as taxes, land claims, business expansion and annexation is a whole other story.
I interviewed Newton when she first came to UConn, and found her to be extremely empathetic toward Indian tribes, both established and resurgent. This is her field, after all, and no one should be put off or scared by this.
Tribes don't necessarily conform to standard conceptions of nationhood, Newton said, and can be legitimate even if they are virtually invisible to the larger community. Newton also spoke passionately about the right of individuals to decide their own identity.
Although empathy can lead to bias, as can idealism and ambition, none of this sets Newton up as the automatic antithesis of State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, a.k.a. “the Indian fighter” in certain local Indian circles.
Newton has said she would make it perfectly clear to any policy center donor that influence wasn't part of the deal, and there's no reason to doubt her sincerity. It's not enough, however, to simply put your honorable intentions out in the open.
The real problem, of course, is that federal funding for what is clearly a federal issue affecting all the citizens of Connecticut is in short supply, while the common perception is that the state's tribes have more money than God.
Why notask the tribes to fund a legal center that their ambitions have made necessary, some might ask, along with road improvements necessitated by tribal casinos, etc., etc., etc.?
The answer is that money has a funny way of translating into ownership, no matter what good faith promises the spender or receiver makes.
All of us, including American Indians, pay personal income taxes to the federal government, and most of us pay taxes to the state of Connecticut, which supports our roadways and our state university system.
There's no law against making private donations to the UConn law school. But we shouldn't risk privatizing anything so potentially influential as a policy center for Indian law.
Let the tribes keep their money on this one.
