Jump to full article: Buffalo (NY) News, 2010-09-02
Author: Aaron Besecker News Staff Reporter
Intro: Seneca Nation leaders have renounced violence, urged calm and tried to dampen the emotion in the buildup to the state's attempt to collect taxes on cigarettes.
Even so, some emotion -- mostly frustration -- has bubbled up from the Cattaraugus Reservation.
With questions about potential economic harm from a successful attempt at tax collection, sometimes it sounds like a people's attempt at survival.
While two public, "peaceful" rallies are planned on the reservation this morning, tensions had been climbing, and the raw emotion has still shown its head.
The Senecas, who have been subjected to "continued aggression and encroachment from New York State," need to remain resilient, Tribal Council Member J.C. Seneca said Tuesday.
"I firmly believe that, like my father told me, the state government and the United States are not going to be happy until they eliminate us as a people. And this is the process of what they're trying to do," Seneca said.
In an advertisement in today's Buffalo News, a Seneca business group blasts Gov. David A. Paterson and New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg for their support for collecting the tax.
The ad, paid for by the Seneca Free Trade Association, tries to mock the perceived ease with which government officials "think nothing of sacrificing Native Americans" due to promises to special interests, or "when they create and pass unconstitutional laws to eradicate economies of sovereign nations."
"When Native Americans are beaten and killed in the days to come it will be easily defended as, 'We are just doing our jobs,'" the advertisement says.
Fierce language is exactly what some leaders hope to defuse.
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