Tuscarora tribal Clerk Leo Henry, already at the center of a scandal involving human rights violations, the coverup of criminal child sexual abuse cases, and the unknown fate of millions of dollars given to improve the lives of those living on the Tuscarora Reservation, certainly has his enemies, and does what he can to see to it that their lives are as miserable as possible.
Much of the land on the reservation is undeeded, and belongs to the individual families living on it by virtue of the fact that their parents and generations before them lived on it.
Families have invested heavily in building houses and outbuildings, digging wells and installing septic systems to modernize and improve these ancestral homesteads.
But Henry, along with the father-and-son team of Neil Patterson Sr. and Neil Patterson Jr., sees the traditional system as one that can be taken advantage of in order to punish those perceived as threatening or even a bit disloyal.
Letters sent out to enrolled Tuscaroras recently laid out the conditions for applying to have multinational energy giant National Grid provide or expand electrical service to a home, conditions many if not most Tuscaroras cannot meet.
"The Tuscarora Chiefs Council wish (sic) to inform you that to obtain electrical service from National Grid that you have to own the property that the electrical service is to be supplied to," the letter begins. "Thus, when you turn in the enclosed power application, please have the ownership paperwork with it, that you are the owner of the property and how you obtained said land. To get a telephone application, you would have to get that at the Tuscarora Environmental Office at 2045 Upper Mountain Road."
The Upper Mountain Road address is of interest, because it is the private residence of Neil Patterson Sr., a man who controls much of what happens on the Tuscarora Reservation, even though he has no title or authority among his own people. His repeated bids to become a Tuscarora chief have been rebuffed by other chiefs and clan mothers from throughout the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.
Driving by the Patterson home today, one can still see traces of the spray paint on the roadway in front of the house that dissident Tuscaroras used to proclaim the place the "DEN OF THIEVES."
As for the rest of the letter, it is typical of the semiliterate missive sent forth by Henry, who serves as the public face of an oppressive regime most on the reservation agree is controlled by the Pattersons.
Prominent Niagara Falls attorney John Bartolomei told the Reporter that companies like National Grid need to be held accountable for their roles in the human rights abuses occurring daily on the Tuscarora Reservation.
"Clearly, Leo Henry and the Pattersons are the ones actually involved in this abuse," Bartolomei said. "But without the complicity of these outside companies -- and in some cases, government agencies -- they would not have the power to do so."
Bartolomei become involved in the situation last September, when a group of Tuscaroras approached him and asked that he look into the fate of a $100 million settlement the tribe received from the state Power Authority.
As he became more deeply involved in the case, it became clear to him that the targets of any legal action would have to include not only Henry and the Pattersons, but the greedy executives of multinational corporations, whose insatiable quest for profits allows them to turn a blind eye on abject human suffering such as that taking place on the Tuscarora Reservation today.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Feb. 7 2012 |