Treaties

As I was trying to learn more about Native Americans and Native American Rights, I came across this site: http://www.narf.org/cases/manypaths.html

The Native American Rights Fund is launching a “Many Paths to Peace” initiative. Through this, Native American tribes are ideally supposed to return to more traditional means of peace-keeping amongst communities. I thought this was kind of interesting because it shows an element of cultural pluralism among Native American groups.

The following question has been on my mind since our conversation on Native Americans: “Why can’t we tax goods on Native American Reservations?” I did some research online and asked an accountant about taxing New Yorkers for goods bought on Reservations. Basically, the law states that New Yorkers ARE required to pay taxes on goods bought on reservations (as well as goods purchased in states without sales tax i.e. Pennsylvania). When we are all filing our taxes this year we are all technically supposed to be keeping track of goods we have not paid taxes on and pay the required NYS taxes. Now, of course nobody does this. So, if NYS was to tax New Yorkers buying goods on reservations they would not be violating any treaties—simply enforcing a law already in place. This would only be a violation of a treaty if NYS was to tax Native Americans for goods they purchase on their reservations, which NY has no intention of doing. I am interested to see if this tax law is enforced within this next year.