By MAUREEN CALLAHAN
Last updated: 11:34 am
October 6, 2008
Posted: 4:42 am
October 5, 2008
The Poospatuck Indian reservation is a little more than 60 miles outside the city, the entrance road tucked off a suburban side street in Mastic, LI. Upon entering, visitors see painted wooden signs advertising cheap cigarettes, then clusters of wooden smoke shops, then surveillance cameras, then residents who hover, take down license-plate numbers, and follow you around, conspicuously, until you leave.
There is no such thing as sightseeing. It is not encouraged nor recommended. White buyers drive up to the smoke shops nearest Mastic roads, dart inside, pay about $5 a pack, and scoot back into their cars and right off the reservation; there's no lingering, no conversation.
Poospatuck is not the bucolic ecosystem advertised on its Web site, which features a photo of a nuclear Native American family leisurely strolling on unspoiled land. The reservation - at least, the limited swath shown to The Post by Chief Harry Wallace - is riddled with corroded trailers and small, one-story homes.
This is the reservation that houses the eight smoke shops Mayor Bloomberg sued last week, claiming that their sales of untaxed tobacco have cost the city and state nearly $1 billion in revenue. It is hard to reconcile that figure with the abject poverty on display. As recently as 1988, indoor plumbing on the reservation was not common, and potable water was so lacking that Suffolk County set up a pipeline to provide it.
Tobacco sales, Wallace says, have allowed the tribe "to establish a number of funds for the benefit of our people. This was a welfare economy before we were able to develop viable businesses."
All Native Americans were made US citizens by the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. They pay taxes, are eligible for welfare, and they vote, but they are also eligible for tax exemptions in the selling and consumption of cigarettes and gas, and may legally operate casinos.
The sovereignty of his nation, Wallace says, is not in dispute; Bloomberg "needs a reality check. But he got good press out of [this suit], because cigarettes are a demonic product. And he has to deflect the fact that his cronies on Wall Street have f-ed up this economy, and somebody has to take the blame. Why not us brown-skinned people?
"We know this suit is going to fail, and he knows it's going to fail. You just can't impose your will by force. It won't work. Even [Governors] Paterson and Spitzer came to realize that. It's much more complex than they initially thought."
He's not kidding. To begin with, there technically is no such thing as "sovereignty" for any Indian nation. Those who want federal recognition petition the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and must meet seven specific criteria. When recognized by BIA, they are granted protections, and though granted an approximation of sovereignty, the nations recognize the supreme sovereignty of the US government.
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