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It is invoked as though it has magic powers, like "allakazam!" But behind all the claims and misunderstandings, what about common sense? A civics question: Who represents the sovereignty of nations? Yankees, Bloomingdales, the Los Angeles Times, William Buckley? Of course every high school student is supposed to know that the sovereignty of the United States is represented by the United States government. Other groups constantly pretend to represent U.S. sovereignty, usually groups which claim to be patriotic. The KKK for example, has opinions about how U.S. sovereignty should be used, as do the John Birch Society and the Minutemen. Imagine for a moment what life would be like in the United States if the sovereignty of the U.S. was exercised by the Minutemen. How many adventures would the U.S. have to engage in? How long before the wars the KKK got into against non-whites would become the U.S.'s own wars? Chaos, as everybody knows, would ensue. That's why the government, not every individual or volunteer group, represents U.S. sovereignty. Indeed, the U.S. government and every government on earth have made it illegal, under penalties involving jail terms (sometimes death), for groups and individuals to act as though they and not the U.S. government exercise U.S. sovereignty. Controlling the fringe and opportunist elements of society is one of the responsibilities of the exercise of sovereignty! When the governments cannot exercise that sovereignty, then sovereignty cannot be said to exist. Imagine for a moment that entrepreneurs and not governments controlled the Mohawk Nation's sovereignty. Everyone knows, and has always known, that there are many classes of illegal transactions ranging from smuggling of arms, drug smuggling, smuggling of undocumented aliens, sale of drugs, prostitution, and on and on. The problem of the entrepreneur is to make money any way he/she can. Thus the entrepreneurs as a class are always on the margins of legality because that's where the profit margins are highest. First they sold candy bars without paying taxes and when nobody came to arrest them they then sold cigarettes. Some among them must logically keep going to the next business, raising the ante until somewhere along the line some foreign government is going to invade. The question is, will it be when the assertion is that sovereignty protects drug manufacture, drug growing, white slavery, or whatever? One thing is certain. Whatever the line that causes one nation to justly invade another will one day be crossed in the name of Mohawk sovereignty. The only question is when and for what activity. The entrepreneurs launched casino gambling in defiance of the state and federal governments, testing the water, trying to see how far they could go. They dared the state to tax them, dared the state to arrest them, defied the federal government to seize their slot machines or to shut down their gambling operations. When Mohawk governments tried to regulate them, the same entrepreneurs defied those governments too, thus crippling the effective exercise of Mohawk sovereignty. Entrepreneurs in this environment will constantly push against the limits of what they can get away with. Common sense reveals that if Mohawk sovereignty is invaded, it is invaded because some people defied the laws of governments and provoked the invasion. The very people who have provoked the situation, the entrepreneurs, knew the situation beforehand. They invoke the sovereignty of the Mohawk nation, but they are a version of the Minutemen and the Mafia wrapped up into one. If and when the federal or state government enters Mohawk territory it will be because of this provocation which is done, not as an act of a Mohawk government, but in actual defiance of all Mohawk governance. Common sense dictates that the gambling operators are the greatest threat to Mohawk sovereignty. Modern definitions of sovereignty hold that sovereignty is derived from the consent of the people. That is why governments represent sovereignty, not businesses. If individuals take actions that threaten the right of the people to exercise control of what happens in their country, the people, through their governments have the right, according to just about everybody's laws, to do whatever they must, including destroying the entrepreneurs businesses and banishing the individuals from the country. It is not an invasion of sovereignty, but an exercise of sovereignty, for a government to seek assistance of another government to exercise its will. Governments do it all the time. Check out the Philippines in December. Then there's the question of just to whom belong the profits of things like gambling and sale of gasoline. Everyone agrees the profits exist because Mohawk sovereignty exists. Mohawk sovereignty lies in the Mohawk people. Logic would have it the profits belong to the Mohawk people. Have the Mohawk people elected to provide a few individuals with the privilege of enriching themselves with these profits at the expense of all Mohawks? Defense of Mohawk sovereignty requires an exercise of common sense. The first order of business is: whose will prevails? Is it the will of the vast majority of the people, or the will of the few? The answer to that question will inform us of the quality of the sovereignty of the Mohawk Nation. That, and common sense. Not allakazam! =================================================================== Taken from "Akwesasne Notes", Vol 22, No. 1 Late Spring 1990 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- To have a current Center For World Indigenous Studies Publication Catalogue sent to you via e-mail, send a request to jburrows@halcyon.com http://www.halcyon.com/FWDP/cwiscat.html Center For World Indigenous Studies P.O. Box 2574 Olympia, WA U.S.A. 98507-2574 FAX: 360-956-1087 OCR Provided by Caere Corporation's OmniPage Professional