ACQTC Challenges the Constitutionality of the new CT Commission on Indian Affairs

In a formal letter sent certified mail to a dozen State of Connecticut office holders, including the governor, several legislators, and heads of several agencies, the ACQTC has challenged the constitutionality of the newly legislated CT Commission on Indian Affairs. This commission is fatally and fundamentally flawed, and it deprives ACQTC of its Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection of the law under the U.S. Constitution.

HB7928 has provided carte blanch to a handful of people (half of Indian lineage, the others of appointment by officials) to speak on behalf of all Indian people living and conducting business in CT with the legally binding power to act for them in all matters that are deemed the purview of “Indian Affairs”. This effectively allows a handful of specially vetted lackeys to rubber stamp official CT policy.

The CIAC (Connecticut Indian Affairs Council), predecessors of this new Commission, became dysfunctional and inert in the 1980s after the Pequot had gained federal recognition and financial backers to sponsor a gambling operation. One by one the Indian chips fell by the wayside. The CIAC had not met or acted in almost 20 years and now the state of CT has found a panel of talking heads who will rubber stamp whatever is approved by Ed Sarabia, an Indian from a northwestern tribe who was appointed as the CIAC Coordinator and puppet-master several decades ago. Sarabia has been under heavy fire for crossing cultural lines. He has appeared at tribal functions playing the role of plastic medicine man smudging and making prayers in English. Sarabia is not a medicine man qualified by any legitimate Native American Medicine Society nor does he have any experience with Algonquian language, culture or tradition. This is the ultimate insult to the sovereignty and autonomy of the Quinnipiac.

The five so-called recognized tribes of CT are on this commission as are others appointed by the state. ACQTC objects because:

The Paugussett were a sub-tribal sachemship within the Quiripey socio-political, linguistic and cultural Sachemdom and are thus the offspring of the ACQTC.
The Schaghticoke did not exist until the son of Gideon Chuse Mawee married Sarah Mahwee, both of whom were born Quinnipiac; and the majority half of the Schaghticoke who descend from them are the offspring of the Quinnipiac.
The Pequot were never indigenous to Connecticut and only migrated to eastern CT in 1506. They have no claims to “aboriginal title to land” from “intimate use since time immemorial”, whereas the ACQTC does, having been descended and now representing the Quiripi who have an 8,000 to 12,000 year history in The Long Water Land of the Connecticut valley.
The Mohegan were never a tribe, but existed as a renegade band of the Pequot under Uncus who was passed over for Sachemship. His sons were converted to Puritan Christians and from then on their traditional language, religion and respect was lost.
These five so-called “tribes” do not speak their language or practice an aboriginal longhouse religion, rather, they are Christianized Indians.
These five tribal entities have never defended or represented the sacred landmarks of the Long Water land, its ecosystem, Indian trails, pictographic history, or cultural artifacts, whereas ACQTC has represented their offspring, the Schaghticoke, in the Connecticut Supreme Court, resulting in a favorable opinion in 1989; and has defended the sacred landmarks against city government and developers in Stamford Supreme Court in another favorable outcome.
ACQTC has exercised its sovereignty, autonomy and hereditary rights as the “grandfathers” of all Connecticut tribal entities as the hereditary gechanniwitank (land stewards) and the maweomi (central council fire) of the Wappinger-Mattabesec Confederacy.

These FACTS were attested to by Iron Thunderhorse, Thunder Clan Grand Sachem.

A federal civil rights complaint will be filed in March 2008 if the Commission and Connecticut fail to include ACQTC in the prominent seat of the Commission. “This is all a clever way for those in power to deny and exile the Quinnipiac, just as their Puritan descendants did in the 17th century by outlawing our culture," said Iron Thunderhorse. He will represent ACQTC in the litigation.

ACQTC, Inc. is organized exclusively for charitable, educational, religious, and cultural purposes within the meanings of Section 501 (C)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, with Group or Subgroup status identification to include all programs, memberships and institutions under the purview of ACQTC. The contents of this webpage (except where noted otherwise) are © 2010 ACQTC, Inc. All rights reserved.
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