PROGRESSIVE DFL CANDIDATE SPEAKS FOR US

The Time Has Come To Assess If The Relationship Between Native American Indians, The Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party and The Minnesota Indian Gaming Association (MIGA) Benefits Native American Indians and Our Communities...



Because of casinos, more money than ever is coming into Native American Indian communities--- the question is:

What is happening to these tens of billions of dollars and where does it go?



Alongside this tremendous wealth we have the most disgraceful unemployment and poverty the result of institutionalized racism. How can this be?



John McCarthy heads up the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association and he produces a nice slick website leading us to believe gaming is the solution to our problems. McCarthy has become fabulously wealthy beyond our wildest imaginations. For McCarthy, a white man living in luxury, Indian Gaming has been good to him. He produces a website with Indians dancing and singing… it is all very nice. What we don’t see on this website is John McCarthy making trips to the bank to deposit OUR money into his account. Nor do we see how John McCarthy and the high-paid lobbyists he hires bribe every single Democratic Party politician in Minnesota to look after the interests of those who own the slot machines which are all owned by “investors” out of Vegas, Lake Tahoe, New Jersey and Boca Raton, Florida which has become home to those who inherited the Meyer Lansky “family business” which isn’t your typical “mom and pop” operation.

Not a single Indian owns any slot machines in the eighteen casinos in Minnesota--- because of the way John McCarthy and Stanley Crooks have set things up, the owners of these slot machines and the table games skim the cream right off the top of the take while leaving us with little more than to cover payments on the debts.

Debt means poverty for the people of any nations.

Nations heavily in debt to others are not sovereign nations because those to whom the debts are held dictate the terms of repayment of this debt along with how people will live. People who are debt poor cannot be sovereign people. Debt poor people become a pool of cheap labor for those looking to get rich and there is no better example than the Indian Gaming Industry in Minnesota.

Check out what John McCarthy and the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association have bribed politicians to do:

1.Create “Compacts” where casino workers have no rights. Most Native American Indians are working people. Look around you; how many casino workers do you find making real living wages? Here we are; told by John McCarthy and MIGA that we “own” an industry taking in tens of billions of dollars in profits and these casino managements are paying our own people and others poverty wages. Guess what you get paying people poverty wages? Poverty.
2.We are told these “Compacts” are protecting our “sovereignty.” In fact, these “Compacts” have destroyed our “sovereignty.” John McCarthy and his MIGA are paying off politicians who take our money and turn their backs on our problems--- problems from unemployment to poverty and affirmative action to running oil and gas pipelines and power lines across our lands without any participation by our people in the decision-making process; the peat mining taking place in the Big Bog is a perfect example. Native American Indians have opposed this environmentally destructive peat mining for years--- peat mining’s main opponent, Roger Jourdain, dies and only days later--- like vultures--- in move the white politicians elected with our money who could not have been elected without our votes assisting a Canadian multi-national conglomerate to destroy our lands and waters in the process of stealing our resources and they are assisted by Representative Brita Sailer, Senator Rod Skoe, Representative John Percell and State Senator Mary Olson--- all of whom would not be in office without our money or our votes as all other DFL legislators sit in silence as the destruction of our most vital resource takes place: fresh water. Where is our “sovereignty?” We were not part of the decision-making process.
3.In fact, in spite of the tens of millions of dollars of OUR money that John McCarthy and MIGA have doled out to elect these politicians, WE don’t have one single Native American Indian sitting in the Minnesota State Legislature defending our workers or our environment or our natural resources--- what kind of “sovereignty” do you call this? Not a peep out of any of these politicians who claim to be defending our “sovereignty” as they steal us blind leaving us in poverty as they refuse to demand full enforcement and implementation of affirmative action in hiring on massive public works projects for which we pay taxes without even being considered for employment--- where have John McCarthy, the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association and these white politicians they give our money to been while we have been excluded from employment in the planning, construction, staffing and maintenance of the Bemidji Regional Event Center? Is this “sovereignty” when Native American Indians are excluded by a bunch of white politicians from jobs we are entitled to by law?
4.These white politicians talk about how they are defending OUR “sovereignty” at election time and the only issue they know of involving “sovereignty” is the casino industry; an industry where we don’t even own the slot machines and others are running off after skimming the cream off the top of the take. These politicians don’t care that they have left our people to work in these smoke-filled casinos that the Indian Health Service says is the main cause of ill health among our people today. Some of these politicians are so arrogant they have the nerve to talk about the wealth these casinos generate for Indian people when most Native American Indians get nothing more than poverty wage jobs out of this casino industry.
5.These politicians being elected with our money and our votes don’t even know the meaning of the word “sovereignty” because if they did they would know that people without any rights in the decision-making process, people intentionally forced into poverty as a pool of cheap labor without any rights for these casino managements and the owners of the slot machines to grow rich as our lands are being destroyed by those stealing our natural resources sure as heck can’t be “sovereign” people. If people are not free to be part of a decision-making process which demonstrates the concern for the betterment of all there can be no “sovereign” Indian Nations.
6.We have Tribal governments; the form of which is constantly being dictated to us by the very politicians being bribed with our money so that others can steal our money from these casinos.
How else do we explain these white politicians elected with our money and our votes coming to us telling us how they are going to protect our casinos in the name of “sovereignty” when they turn their heads in indifference to all of our other problems? And when they aren’t turning their heads in indifference to racist unemployment, the racist poverty bred by unemployment which is fueled by institutionalized racism resulting in the failure to enforce affirmative action they start talking about how they are defending our “sovereignty.”

By perverting and distorting the meaning of “sovereignty;” MIGA and the politicians MIGA bribes are duping all Minnesotans--- Native and non-Native, all tax-payers and all those plunking their hard-earned money into slot machines.

Gregory W. Paquin

1511 Roosevelt Road

Bemidji, Minnesota 56601

Cell Phone: 651-503-9493

E-mail: hotpasstheketchup@yahoo.com

Please check out my blog: http://nativeamericanindianlaborunion12.blogspot.com/