Quoted: Mayor Bloomberg on “cowboying up and cracking down” on Natives

By Special Correspondent Jessica Yee

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg giving advice to Governor David Paterson on how to deal with the sale of tax-free cigarettes on sovereign Native lands within New York State;

“I’ve said this to David Paterson, I said, ‘You know, get yourself a cowboy hat and a shotgun. If there’s ever a great video, it’s you standing in the middle of the New York State Thruway saying, you know, ‘Read my lips – the law of the land is this, and we’re going to enforce it”.

So now I’d much rather quote my sister Tia Oros Peters, Executive Director of the Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development who said in response:

Indigenous Peoples remain the final “frontier” for colonization — where discrimination and a warped “civil religion” kind of thing permeates the american consciousness and allows, perhaps even encourages prejudice, suggestions of genocidal violence, and intention of direct harm with impunity – simply because of being Native. That’s the United States today, August 2010.