A federal judge has ruled that the state of Nebraska cannot collect revenue from tobacco sales on the Winnebago Indian Reservation. U.S. District Court Judge John M. Gerrad ruled last week that the state cannot collect revenue from tobacco sales on the reservation under a 1998 settlement agreement between tobacco manufacturers and 46 states, including Nebraska. In his ruling, Gerrard wrote that the court “will not allow the state to infringe on the Winnebago Tribe’s sovereignty by allowing state authority over a lawful tribal business selling goods on its own reservation.”
South Dakota Representative Dusty Johnson, a Republican introduced a bill on Thursday, that would protect a 40-acre Wounded Knee memorial site on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The bill will allow tribes continued ownership, while also exempting them from paying taxes on the land where hundreds of their ancestors were murdered by the United States Army. Specifically, Johnson’s Wounded Knee Massacre Memorial and Sacred Site Act places the land into restricted fee status, held by the Oglala Sioux Tribe and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. Restricted fee status allows the tribes to continue to own the land, while exempting them from paying state and local government taxes on it.
Those are your headlines at this hour, I’m Colette Keith in the KIPI News center.
