Tucked away along a waterway in Mastic, Long Island is Poospatuck, the smallest Indian reservation in New York State. It means “Where the water meets” and is home to 400 enrolled members of the Unkechaug tribe of Native Americans. It’s difficult to discern where exactly the reservation begins and ends. There are no visible signs to guide your way, no glow from a towering casino to mark the spot. Once you happen upon Poospatuck, however, there’s no mistaking you have arrived.
Large billboards advertising native-brand cigarettes adorn the façades of several homes converted to tobacco shops and traffic moves briskly in and out of parking areas. People are finding their way here for one reason only: cheap cigarettes.
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Harry Wallace is the elected chief of the Unkechaug Nation who has found himself at the center of one of the largest controversies facing Indian nations today. He is also the owner of Poospatuck Smoke Shop, a bustling retail enterprise nestled in a wooded area deep within the reservation. Hanging boldly from the deck of the quaint wood shop on Wallace’s property is a sign that reads “Sovereignty Yes, Taxes No.”
Behind the shop is an office where Wallace conducts the business of his enterprise and the tribe. On the right side of the office is a wall of legal books that remind visitors that Wallace is not just an entrepreneur but a lawyer, a skill that has proven vital to the survival of Poospatuck. As I enter, he is talking to his staff and admits to being slightly irritable due to a strict diet and having recently kicked the caffeine habit.
“I’m trying to take care of my health,” he says.
Wallace was recently diagnosed with diabetes, one of the most common diseases plaguing Native Americans. This affliction makes him a statistic. Harry Wallace hates being a statistic.
Born in Flushing, Queens, Wallace lived there until his grandmother’s house burned down, forcing his family to move to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. As a kid he would make frequent trips to Poospatuck and recalls a beautiful place.
“People built their own homes and kept the powwow grounds in good shape,” he remembers. “They had socials and there was this old dock with rowboats and you could actually swim in the river.”
In the early ’70s, Wallace got what was then a rare opportunity for a financially supported college education at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. This chapter in his life would change him forever and connect him with his heritage in a way he never conceived of before.
As it turns out, the Dartmouth years provided as much education as they did turbulence, as Wallace was at times confronted with blatant racism. “I ran into a conflict the first day I got there,” he laughs, recollecting a fight stemming from a racist comment made by a football player.
After college, Wallace moved back to Brooklyn to start a family and received his law degree from New York Law School. He began practicing law in New York City in 1983, which he did for nearly 10 years before returning to Poospatuck.
“My mother asked me to,” shrugs Wallace. “She said, ‘We need your help to take care of our land.’”
Upon his return he describes finding only “desolation.”
Gone were the pristine waters of his youth, sullied, he says, by industry and the refuse from duck farms at the mouth of the canal that Poospatuck lies adjacent to. The shellfish were gone and many of the residents who had existed on a marine economy had fallen into abject poverty; not an unfamiliar condition on reservation land throughout the country. Time and natural resources had run out for the inhabitants of this tiny reservation until the most unlikely of scenarios provided a dubious light at the end of a dark tunnel.
“It’s cigarettes, man.”
Because so many states have driven up the cost of cigarettes due to tax levies, they are cheaper to purchase from retailers on Indian reservations who don’t recognize government taxes on retail tobacco. The disparity has led to an economic boon that is creating newfound wealth and generating badly needed funds in some of the most poverty-stricken areas of the country.
But not everyone is happy about the burgeoning success of Native Americans. Many state and federal elected officials feel as though they are being cheated out of sorely needed tax dollars and anti-cancer advocates claim that tobacco consumption hasn’t decreased as a result of taxes; demand has merely shifted toward the unregulated Indian marketplace. Ironically, the biggest threat to the native cigarette industry may actually be from the cigarette companies themselves.
With the Great Recession as the backdrop to this unfolding drama, the stage is set for a David versus Goliath battle between Indian Country, the US government and Big Tobacco.
The price disparity between cigarettes available from reservations and traditional American-based retailers is at an all-time high. A carton of Marlboro cigarettes, the most popular brand in America, will run the consumer as much as $95 in New York City (NYC), where Mayor Michael Bloomberg has initiated an all-out war on smoking. The same carton costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $43 at a Native American-owned smoke shop on reservation land. This is the result of so-called “sin taxes” applied by state and local governments who use the additional tax to balance budgets and discourage consumption for public health reasons. While retailers and local municipalities have cried foul for several years about the inequity of cigarette pricing, it wasn’t until recently that these cries reached a fever pitch.
But the rise of the Native American tobacco entrepreneur has also contributed positively to the overall economic conditions on some reservation territories. The burgeoning Indian cigarette trade is having the ironic effect of creating tribe-funded public welfare systems that address health issues such as diabetes, drug addiction and heart disease that have crippled Native Americans.
Tags: Andrew Cuomo, BIA, Big Tobacco, Buffalo Creek Treaty of 1842, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Carl Kruger, Carol Amon, Cigarettes, Dartmouth, David Paterson, David versus Goliath, Eric Proshansky, George Pataki, Gov. Paterson, Gristedes, Harry Wallace, Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, JC Seneca, Kiyo Matsumoto, Michael Benjamin, Michael Bloomberg, New York City, New York State, NYS, Peter Kiernan, Philip Morris, Poospatuck, Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act of 2009, Queens, Robert Odawi Porter, Seneca, Seneca Nation, Tobacco, Unkechaug, William J. Comiskey, Williamsburg
Heya i’m for the primary time here. I came across this board and I find It really helpful & it helped me out much. I hope to provide one thing back and aid others like you helped me.
i’m a “card carrying Indian too Grayson. but that hasn’t stopped you from expressing a condescending elitist attitude toward my questions posed to you on other forums. i suppose you are one of those “card carrying indians” who looks a person over and makes character assessments based on the shade of complexion.
if i were to express the same opinion about ndns selling cigarettes you just did, you’d look at me and “oh it’s the Man” – no one likes a hypocrite
So, Nwe york is peeved about the loss of “their” cig tax dollars? maybe they should concider lowering their outragous taxes in order to better COMPETE with the Indians in the market place. Ya know, kinda like capitolisim, free trade, ya know, some of the things this country was founded upon.
Na, it’s all about the money.
what will be next? fuel sales (untaxed) on the rez. what about beer sales to non-tribal members.
ya know, come to think about it, what about all the lottery dollars “lost” to the rez.
my favorite part of this artical was “yea, we’ve been fighting terrorism since 1492″
Classic USA politics. money grubbing bastards!
After the 1960s, many Americans felt that people had evolved. We recognized the atrocities of war, the nobleness of the Civil Rights Movement, and we began to lament over our the worst sin in our history-the unjust treatment of Native Americans.
There was a revolution, the people stood up and despite the conflicts and violence, we won. That victory was more than political, more than a shining example of democracy at work. It was a moral achievement. We fought, not only for the freedom and justice of ourselves, but for all mankind. This was a great nation for a brief moment.
Looking back at our courage, how we joined hands and stood up against a government gone astray, against tyranny backed by greed and power, What happened? Have we become too old or are we just
afraid because of the new strategy of fear that those in power have thought up to paralyze us?
Have the young ones not studied our history or have they just lost any sense of moral integrity or justice.
Just pick up an American History book. It will most likely begin with The Revolution and the foundation of our political system of democracy. The slogan of the time was “no taxation without
representation.” This was the first cry for human rights.
Yes, cigarettes kill people
alcohol kills people
processed and genetically engineered food kills people
contaminated food from China kills people
chemicals in the big corporate farms kill people
fish from polluted waters kills people
pollution kills people
wars kill people
greed kills people
people are killing people and the planet
It’s not about the cigarettes. It’s money, man.
The use of the totem pole is totally incorrect, as I have said over the years that the Native American isn’t even at the bottom of the “food chain”…we’re not even on the food chain, being booted off by all the immigrants, legal or illegal, & other races who seem to warrant more attention than we do, simply because we have only wanted to be left alone. We’ve proven we’re here to stay, all efforts to assimilate us having failed.
Philip Morris claiming to be a Indian in Europe.
Industry resistance
Phillip Morris has already filed a complaint with the minister of justice in Finland, as legislation proposing such draconian laws may be infringing on EU directives. Lauri Mäkinen, head of BAT’s corporate and regulatory affairs in Finland, said: “Even though the ministry of social affairs and health does seem to have great confidence in getting rid of smoking by legislation, they seem to be overlooking the fact that, while there is a ban on snus in place, snus is in fact the only tobacco product in Finland which is growing. Smuggling and illicit trade in cigarettes is also illegal in Finland, and therefore the authorities have a full mandate to eliminate it, but still the problem persists and does not seem to be going anywhere. The bill is under review in the parliamentary constitutional committee, and we are waiting to see what the committee’s view is. One more issue is that the arguments of the government seem to say that the objective would mean that, when it comes to tobacco, there is less or no need to honour existing legislation or treaties that relate to tobacco. We think this is just wrong.”
[...] N.Y. (AP/Robert Mecea) We don’t much care for the “totem pole” headline on this story in the Long Island Press, nor the accompanying illustration – but the story itself is a [...]
Right to arm bears,
VERY VERY VERY well said. You sound like somebody with a brain and sence of right and wrong, something that a citizen should be like.
what about the massive crime behind all this? funny how that doesnt make the article about the poor indian reservation.
1) Bloomberg is mayor of New York City not, the der Führer. He doesn’t get to make policy across the state, nation or planet. His personal objections to smoking are not shared by the overwhelming majority of Americans. Suffolk County and it’s citizens should be telling Bloomberg to G.F himself.
2) Being overweight is substantially more dangerous to a person than is smoking, but tobacco companies are an easier target that the food prep, agriculture, biotech and marketing industries.
3) The jihad against smoking is a personal right issue. Smoking has never been illegal. Smoking is a matter of personal choice. It is a “Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness issue.
4) Tobacco is important to the religious beliefs of indigenous people.
5) The ridiculous taxes being collected on these products are not being used to support, maintain and improve the lives of any smokers, the majority of these funds goes to funding “other” items.
6) The government doesn’t care whether you live, die or grow mushrooms in your crack. They care about money, control and maintaining their hold on “power”.
7) If you want to die a horrible painful lingering death by way of tobacco, it’s your right to do so.
8) The lifestyle police are distracting citizens from the real problems facing this nation.
A) Economy Deficit,
B) Growth of Chinese economic dominance,
C) Erosion of personal rights, freedoms and liberty,
D) Political gridlock and the polarization of the electorate
E) Decline and demise of America the nation and America the society.
9) You don’t want someone else to smoke around you, is a much different issue from you don’t want anyone else to smoke anywhere. If the later is your preference, you can G.F.Y. Fascist.
If you allow the government to take this liberty from you, what liberty, freedom or right will be next?
Hey what happened to government for the people, by the people or are you to chicken-sh^t to stand up and give your life to defend this nation?
I guess you just want to send other peoples children to die so you can live your life free.
@ eli… did I miss something you ask…. Apparantly the whole article… lol
I am not an Indian, and this this really pisses me off to the point were I’m going to write my elected officials and tell them so. Big tobacco wins and Indians get the shaft, Again… What part of that did you not get?
did I miss something here…cigarettes kill millions people each year and is the number one cause for high health insurance rates in the United States….and yes, dont called me the man…I am card carrying Indian.
Well if more smoke shops carried those Crown7 electric cigarettes then then smoke shops wouldnt have to worry about taxes and stuff….I think those Crown7 e-cigs are the future of smoking!