By Dustin Hurst, of the Idaho Reporter:

The Indian Affairs Council, a panel of state lawmakers and representatives from tribes around Idaho, met Wednesday in the Capitol and agreed to send a message to the House Revenue and Taxation Committee on a bill that would affect how cigarette taxes are handled on reservations: go slow.

The council approved a motion calling for the drafting of a letter to committee chairman Dennis Lake and Speaker of the House Lawerence Denney calling for the panel to wait until at least March 7 before giving the measure additional hearings.

The measure, introduced by Denney, a Republican from Midvale, would basically require that tribes match the state cigarette sales tax on reservations. Tribes would be able to acquire rebates of tribal cigarette taxes from the state and the measure would still exempt tribal members from paying the tax if purchasing on reservations.

The bill could counter smuggling efforts if lawmakers decide to hike cigarette taxes during the session, a plan in the works. Tribes are not yet required to hike cigarette taxes if the Legislature does.

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Here‘s the entire story from the Associated Press:

BOISE, Idaho (AP) – An American Indian tribe in Idaho wants to give its police more power.

The Couer d’Alene tribe introduced legislation Tuesday that would allow its police to arrest non-tribal members accused of violating state law on reservations. The measure was unanimously approved by the House Judiciary committee Tuesday.

Tribe lobbyist Bill Roden told the committee that tribal officers would have to be certified by the state police academy, as Coeur d’Alene tribal officers are now.

The legislation was prompted by a dispute between the Couer d’Alene tribe and a local sheriff.

Roden says Couer d’Alene police often address crime committed by non-tribal members because tribal members make up a minority of people living on the northern Idaho reservation.

Saying there’s no trust between local and tribal police, leaders of the Coeur d’Alene, Nez Perce, Shoshone-Bannock and Shoshone Paiute tribes have met with Idaho Gov. Butch Otter seeking a cabinet post dedicated to pursuing tribal relations.

Some 34 other states – including neighboring Montana and Washington – have such posts or similar ones, John Miller of the Associated Press reports here.

“Tribal economies in Idaho generate at least a half billion dollars annually, provide thousands of jobs, and pay millions of dollars in Idaho tax revenues that flows into state coffers,” Coeur d’Alene Tribe Chairman Chief Allan tells Miller today. “It only seems fair for tribes to have place within Gov. Otter’s administration.”
Miller writes:

This past decade, Idaho and its tribes have tussled over water rights, taxes on reservation gasoline, even Depression-era murals depicting an Indian’s lynching in the Boise building that housed the Legislature for two years.

Those were resolved, but other concerns remain, including cross-deputization of tribal and county authorities. The Coeur d’Alene Tribe has such an agreement with Kootenai County in northern Idaho that lets tribal authorities arrest non-tribal members, but a similar pact with Benewah County collapsed in 2007. That’s contributed to law-enforcement disputes on Lake Coeur d’Alene’s southern waters.

But Marc Stewart, a Coeur d’Alene Tribe spokesman, said such issues could be handled more efficiently if Otter had a cabinet member devoted to them full time.

“This is long overdue,” Stewart says.

Gwen Florio

The Coeur d’Alene Tribal Council didn’t mince words when it passed a resolution that
“condemns the purveyors of these new age programs that exploit Native American religious traditions without any knowledge, experience or understanding of the meaning or significance of these traditions and market Native American ceremonies and traditions for their own personal gain.”

The council’s action comes in response to the deaths last month in Arizona at a $9,000 “Spirit Warrior” camp run by New Age guru James Arthur Ray. Three people died as a result of a so-called sweat ceremony during the week.

The council’s resolution expresses sympathy to their family members and “hopes that this senseless tragedy will promote a better understanding of Native American history and foster respect and deference to Native American ceremonies and spiritual traditions,” Indian Country Today reports here.

Tribal Council Vice Chairman Ernie Stensgar says the resolution seeks to draw awareness to the fact that sweats are not to be taken lightly and certainly not to be exploited.

“As I read that story I thought about my grand uncle who was a medicine man and some of the other people that taught us the way of the sweat,” he says. “Those people would turn over in their graves if they heard that the sweat lodge ceremony was being exploited and being commercialized. That’s what offended me and a lot of people here on the reservation – that people would try to make money off that ceremony that has been so helpful to so many people.”

Now – if only people would pay attention.

Gwen Florio