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SALAMANCA, N.Y.
(AP) A meeting Saturday among members of all six Iroquois Confederacy
tribes the first such gathering in decades was organized to find ways
to preserve native traditions, but talk instead turned to casinos.
The casino issue
has divided the Senecas living on the Allegany and Cattaraugus
reservations. Most of those who spoke at Saturday's five-hour event
opposed casinos, The Times Herald of Olean reported in Sunday editions.
''People have
brought in things which create greed and individualism,'' Seneca
member Brenda Deegan said about casinos.
Organizers
expected 400 people at the first gathering of Seneca, Cayuga,
Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk and Tuscarora members in at least 50 years.
But only about 70 people, including a few non-Indians, showed up at
the public forum, 50 miles south of Buffalo.
Seneca member
Lloyd Jacobs blamed the low turnout on stolen signs and the presence
of Seneca marshals.
Several attendees
expressed their desire to keep New York state officials out of Indian
affairs. Others expressed outrage over their dwindling territory, due
to broken land treaties.
Danielle
Shenandoah-Patterson, of the Oneida Nation near Syracuse, recalled
her testimony in May before the United Nations, in which she accused
New York and Oneida officials of ''selling the heritage and lands of
my children for a treaty called a gambling compact and a share of
casino profits.''
The Oneida
Indians' Turning Stone casino near Utica, one of three Indian casinos
in New York, turns 10 years old this month. The Senecas opened their
Niagara Falls casino last New Year's Eve after reaching a
profit-sharing agreement with the state.
''The Seneca
Nation is not going to benefit from the casino in Niagara Falls,''
Seneca member Bobby Jones said at the meeting. ''Greed knows no color
or culture. The Apostle Paul said, 'The love of money is the root of
all evil.'''
Permission for the
Senecas to open as many as three casinos in western New York was
included in a gambling expansion approved by state legislators in
2001 as a way to make up for revenues lost after the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks.
While anti-casino
Indians at the Iroquois gathering blamed gambling greed for
destroying native values and beliefs, the Seneca Tribal Council met
next door to set a date for the Allegany Reservation casino
referendum. Seneca members will decide Sept. 9 whether they support a
casino on the reservation in Cattaraugus County.
Last month, the
state Court of Appeals invalidated a 1993 compact made by former Gov.
Mario Cuomo and the Akwesasne tribe. The judges said the pact, under
which the Mohawks' casino in northern New York opened in 1999, needed
approval from the state Legislature. Gov. George Pataki plans to
appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/193/region/Meeting_of_Iroquois_nations_fo:.shtml |
