State and county lawyers told New York’s top court Thursday that officials can tax Indian cigarettes and prosecute sellers of untaxed smokes, The Associated Press reports.
But David DeBruin, a lawyer for the Cayuga Indian Nation, countered that authorities would be encroaching on tribal rights to impose the tax and that the Cayugas do not have to collect the tax for the state from non-Indian smokers.
“The liability for the tax is on the consumer,” he said.
About 100 Indian protesters gathered across from the courthouse in Syracuse where the Court of Appeals heard the case. They included Cayugas, as well as Senecas and Mohawks from western and northern New York. A few protesters drummed and chanted, while many carried placards. Some read: “Break a treaty, break a law” and “Whether we are poor or prosperous the treaties still stand.”
Nearly a dozen speakers addressed the gathering.
“Those lands have never lost what they meant. Our people were born to this land,” said Arthur Montour Jr. of the Seneca Nation. “We are being attacked today. We are nontaxable. We are not under the thumb of New York state. It’s up to us to decide. There is nothing to negotiate, no matter what those black robes say. We will be there to defend.”
More than one-third of the cigarettes sold in New York by licensed agents go without tax stamps to Native American merchants, according to state officials. If all were stamped and taxed, New York would have collected $825 million more in 2008. Seneca and Cayuga county officials estimate the Cayugas’s LakeSide Trading stores in Union Springs and Seneca Falls owe $485,000 in state excise taxes.
The court is expected to rule next month.
