I said as much at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.  Wednesday, May 12, I was invited to speak to leaders of Citizens Equal Rights Alliance, United Property Owners, Upstate Citizens for Equality, and One Nation. These organizations represent over a quarter of a million Americans citizens who have personally lost money, property, business, and basic civil rights as the result of aggressions by the Indian casino industry. (Not to mention the income counties and states lose to tax-exempt “Indian” casino business.) 

As an American Indian, a Comanche from Oklahoma, I care about the public image of the Indian. I value being Indian. Though my tribe isn’t guilty of encroachment on anyone’s rights, it is a vital concern to me that, nationally, the “Indian” casino industry is destroying the pride and meaning of being Indian.  

I therefore have a stake in the cause of these American citizens’ organizations that met in Washington. I’ve called myself an American Indian patriot since I began writing as a FrontPageMagazine columnist, speaking for Young America’s Foundation, and managing my own website, BadEagle.com. Therefore these citizens’ organizations called me to Washington to talk with them, and to them. I wanted to know how they really feel, and what their real goals are.

Of course, most Indian leaders regard these organizations as the enemy, especially those Indian leaders involved in the casino industry. CERA is serious threat. “This group has a history of attacking tribes,” said David Simmons, Director of Policy and Research for the National Indian Child Welfare Association. In a typically anonymous and inflamatory editorial in Indian Country Today, all these groups are called “anti-Indian organizations,” and “hate groups,” “focused on destroying the bases of Indian sovereignty on the basis of United States law.” 

But these groups are not anti-Indian. They are anti-casino.

They’re against the federal government forcibly setting up a casino in their face when they didn’t want it. They’re offended that the federal government shows preference to syndicated contractors and managers, morally crippled politicians, and a handful of criminally-minded tribal leaders – instead of honoring the rights of honest American people. They feel betrayed when federal government completely denies the very idea of equal protection under the law, and suspends the whole concept of private land ownership.

These citizens’ organizations are against the idea that through this syndicated, politically corrupt gambling industry, irresponsible Indian leaders suddenly acquire land and have power and jurisdiction over American citizens who have owned and developed that same land for generations, and have paid taxes on their lands, properties, and businesses for decades.   

They are against the idea that their rights as American citizens should be taken from them, and that the federal government should declare them foreigners on what was their own land.

Indeed, they don’t want what happened to Indians to happen to them!

And why should they? It’s their people that created America, not Indians. Only a diabolically self-righteous liberal politician would take America out of the hands that created it, and give it to those who either lost it, or never had anything to do with it. 

But this is what’s happening. It’s really an internal war, not between Indians and whites, but between whites and other whites. It is a desperate power struggle, and Indians are being used by liberals as the arrowhead to strike deep into the heart of American values.

Yet the white blood flowing is the purest I’ve ever seen. These citizens I met in Washington have no resentment towards Indians. There wasn’t the slightest trace of animosity, nor a hint of anger or racism toward Indians

I heard rather a noble cry for America, a heartfelt prayer for the country.

That set my heart aflame. I was proud of them.  I was proud to be with them. In a way, I was proud that Indians are the catalyst of a fundamental American reformation.