Oren Lyons is no newcomer to the political battles on Indian territories. Even with a time-weathered face, he still doesn't look his age -- 67. For 30 years, he has sat as a chief of the Onondaga Nation. commissions and committees of the United Nations as a representative of indigenous peoples. He has heard all the criticism lobbed at the traditional chiefs like himself. Yet he insists the interim agreement hammered out by the chiefs with the state over tax-free sales on Indian lands represents an important victory for the Indians -- and their economy. "The main thing is we dodged a bullet Marlboro Cigarettes," he said in an interview last week. "We dodged the tax bullet. We either capitulated (on other points), or we were out of business." Under the agreement, the Indians will become their own distributors. "What's important here is that the money will go to the Nation, not to the individuals who are making millions now," Lyons said. "They were hiding behind the sovereignty, yet nothing went to the people except maybe minimum-wage jobs." Lyons hammered away at two other points throughout a 45-minute interview: The agreement allows the Native Americans, with the state's blessing, to control their own trade and commerce. It also allows most of the profits on cigarettes and other items to flow back to the Indian nations -- not to a small band of entrepreneurs on the reservations. Lyons' views don't seem to be shared by a majority of Indians on four local reservations. To many business people and residents of those territories, Lyons' views are heresy. They see, instead, the loss of gasoline sales, increases in cigarette prices to a less-competitive level and the possible layoffs of nearly 1 Newport Cigarettes Website,200 Indians at trading posts, gas stations and cigarette shops. Many Native Americans have cried foul about the interim agreement, claiming that they had no voice in the negotiations and that they have yet to see a copy of it. "All these chiefs' councils have been working for the people for years," Lyons said. "It's an unpaid position. It's a lifetime commitment. It's due process through the clan system. We don't have anyone on the councils who wasn't put there by the people." Lyons says he believes the Indians had no choice but to negotiate with the state. Supreme Court ruled in 1994 that the state has the right to collect taxes on reservation sales to non-Indians. And convenience-store owners and other business interests have pressured Gov. Pataki to restrict those tax-free sales and recover lost sales-tax revenue Newport Cigarettes. Chiefs from five traditional Indian nations across the state -- including the Tuscaroras and the Tonawanda Senecas in Western New York -- have approved the 30-day interim agreement, which is not a treaty, Lyons emphasized. It is scheduled to be replaced by a long-term agreement that would have an eight-year sunset clause. The Seneca Nation, on the Cattaraugus and Allegany reservations, has not approved the agreement. But four of the five traditional Indian nations that approved the agreement have agreed not to sell gasoline on their reservations. And these traditional nations -- not the state -- will grant licenses to sell cigarettes on their reservations. "The agreement helps get us on our feet and hopefully establishes a process that we should have had 100 years ago," Lyons said. "A government-to-government relationship that has been pretty rhetorical for the last (few) years is taking on some reality and practicality Cigarette Tobacco For Sale." When negotiations began last spring, Pataki's representatives told the Indian negotiators that the state had lost some $300 million per year in sales-tax revenue from reservation sales. That was a highly inflated figure pulled out of the air, Lyons and others have said. State negotiators first asked for 90 percent of the lost sales tax, then scaled their demands down to a smaller percentage. "We said Cheap Cigarettes Free Shipping, 'You don't understand. We're not going to pay for any of it. We will not pay,' " Lyons said. The agreement Marlboro Lights, besides keeping reservation sales tax-free, protects these Indians nations' rights to monitor all trade and commerce within their territories. Lyons was asked what he thinks of Indian entrepreneurs like Smokin' Joe Anderson of the Tuscarora Nation. "They're very dangerous to the continuity of the Indian nations," he said. "They've already compromised their thinking to work for themselves and their personal wealth. Our mandate is to work for the Seventh Generation. I wouldn't have stuck with this if I didn't believe in the process. The value of the Haudenosaunee is just so far beyond money. It's a legacy and it's a future." While Pataki has come under heavy fire from many Native Americans for trying to restrict tax-free sales on the reservations, Lyons praised the governor. "To the credit of Gov. Pataki, he's a businessman," Lyons said. "He looks at things practically. He doesn't carry a lot of baggage -- like Gov. Cuomo, Gov. Rockefeller and Gov. Harriman -- about controlling the Indians. He said, 'Let's get an agreement.' " Lyons knows many Native Americans don't share his views. "Many Indian people don't realize how fortunate they are to have a territory that's different from the United States, where they don't pay taxes and where nobody can come and take things from them."
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