American Indian Land Sold Off By IRS To Pay Off Taxes
The Telegraph - December 4, 2009
US tax officials have sold off thousands of acres of an impoverished Indian reservation in what the tribe claims is a "shameful" and unprecedented breach of laws protecting Native Americans.
The 7,112 acres - or 11 square miles - of Crow Creek Sioux ancestral land in central South Dakota was auctioned off on Thursday by the US Internal Revenue Service to help pay off more than $3.1 million (£1.9 million) in unpaid taxes, penalties and interest.
The land, part of the tribe's original reservation established in an 1868 treaty, was originally held by the federal government in a trust for the tribe....
..."Members died and were buried on the land. Indeed, the lands were considered so important to the Crow Creek Sioux tribe that the tribe went into debt to acquire the land as part of its land consolidation effort to enlarge the Crow Creek Indian Reservation," the lawsuit argues.
HERE'S WHY IT'S TIME TO END THE ILLEGAL US OCCUPATION OF HAWAI`I
Native Hawaiians constitute roughly 22 per cent of the state population, but they represent 54 per cent of the prison population.
They also have the lowest per capita income, the highest poverty rate and the shortest lifespan of any ethnic group in Hawai`i.
Hawai`i public school students receive very poor education by any standard of measurement. They consistently rank among the lowest of any state in test scores.
Most of the bright students who manage to learn something in spite of the handicapped school system leave Hawai`i for foreign colleges and careers.
Tens of thousands of residents have no medical insurance at all.
In some cases, the lives of the working poor are worse than the unemployed.