Facebook Twitter Email
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2001

With his sights on Congress but his campaign still focused on an issue that brought him to prominence, author Jeff Benedict is once again calling for the termination of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation of Connecticut.

This time around, however, the man behind "Without Reservation" isn't labeling his solution with a term that would otherwise raise the eyebrows of potential colleagues on Capitol Hill. While acknowledging the idea is frightful, Benedict instead creates an entirely new name for terminating the federal trust relationship: "decertification."

"Decertification scares people," Benedict writes in a November 4 editorial published in The New London Day. "It shouldn't."

"Decertification means the Mashantucket Pequots would be reduced from a sovereign nation to a corporation," he continues, adding later that his proposal is not "anti-Indian" but "anti-fraud."

Those are heavy words coming from a candidate seeking the Democratic nomination to run for Congress. Yet for Benedict, who claims the Mashantucket Tribe cannot document its genealogical relationship to the historic Pequot Tribe, they are nothing new.

But considering that the last time he advocated termination -- in an editorial published in the same paper last year -- he didn't give his proposition an exact name, one might consider his latest salvo an improvement. And although he has said the Mashantucket Tribe isn't his only sticking point, his editorial makes clear it is the one on which he is banking his campaign.

"Never underestimate the resolve of one leader," Benedict concludes, after criticizing Gov. John Rowland (R) and freshman Congressman Rob Simmons (R), whose seat is being targeted come 2002, for not trying to terminate the tribe themselves.

Whatever the name, termination is yet another in a long line of failed policies, one that began in the 1950s as a way to assimilate tribes into mainstream society. The reservation system was holding Indian people back, the argument went.

The premise soon proved faulty, not to mention fatal. Some of the nation's most successful tribes, such as Menominee Nation of Wisconsin, went from wealth and self-sufficiency to new levels of poverty, all thanks to termination.

When the dust settled, more than 100 nations, tribes, bands, villages and rancherias lost their federal recognition. Some, like the Menominee, fought back and had their status restored, while others are still pushing.

For the Pequot Tribe, says Benedict, termination is the only "honest" solution to problems local communities have faced with the advent of the tribe's successful casino. Oddly enough, however, Benedict's position puts him in an interesting place politically.

After all, it took a Republican -- President Richard Nixon -- to stop termination and usher in a new era of self-determination. It took another Republican -- President Ronald Reagan, whose tribal policies are heralded today by the Bush administration -- to have the practice officially repealed.

And when the Washington State Republican Party last year passed its own termination resolution, it caused such an uproar that the Republican National Committee -- along with Sens. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), two key lawmakers on Indian issues -- wrote tribal leaders, promising that the policy would never be brought back. Even former Sen. Slade Gorton, the Washington Republican who fought tribes on a number of fronts, said termination wasn't an option, no matter how large the dispute -- and he had some big ones.

So where Benedict's campaign will go is murky. No doubt it will get him votes in his 1st Congressional District among those who oppose the Mashantucket Tribe's land-into-trust applications.

But beyond southeastern Connecticut, his views are likely to raise serious objections, should he make it to Congress. Although he says only the Mashantucket Tribe is the only target of his final solution, tribes will be there to "organize" against any attack, said one advocate.

"These things are cyclical," said former Assistant Secretary Kevin Gover. "This neo-termination movement that we see coming from New England will be dealt with and we'll move on."

Get the Editorial:
Jeff Benedict: Mashantuckets Shouldn't Get One More Acre (The New London Day 11/4)

Relevant Links:
Jeff Benedict - http://www.jeffbenedict.com

Related Stories:
Benedict campaign runs into problems (10/4)
Pequot Tribe targeted by candidate (10/1)
Democrats pile up for Conn. race (9/26)
Pequot author to enter Conn. race (9/25)
Opinion: Benedict heating up race (8/14)
Pequot author tackling Congress (8/10)
National GOP repudiates resolution (7/19)
Author advocates termination (7/17)