A Few Thoughts About the Trial and Other things ...

ault Ste. Marie, Mi...A few thoughts about the trial...and other things.

1. It's amazing how people can turn right around and do to somebody else what they've just accused another person of doing...

...the second defense lawyer who spoke during closing arguments spent all his time attacking Mr. Aaron Payment and blaming him for all of the upheaval from 2002 through 2004. He called Mr. Payment all kinds of names and made all kinds of derogatory remarks about him and gave him all the credit for those turbulent years...blaming him for the cloud of mistrust and conspiracy which hung over the tribe then and for all the years since then.

Then moving on from Mr. Payment, he began to attack that big law firm of Horton, Miller and Canfield, saying how big it is and how Mr. Horton was using all of its legal prowess to beat up on and take advantage of the ordinary citizens...who had dedicated their life's to developing and building the tribe up to what it is today...

2. It's surprising to hear flaring rhetoric in a civil case in a courtroom. People just assume that trials in those somber sittings will be settled with reason and rational explanations...for what the defendants did or didn't do. . But when the case is over and you realize that it wasn't decided on the facts, but on the rhetoric of the lawyers and their emotional reasoning and the continual repetition of the views that they wanted the jurors to remember and the defendants crying over a job that they loss six years ago...then hey, it 's more than disappointing to anybody and it's downright disillusioning and it makes people lose faith in the system and think about throwing in the towel and letting the liars and criers win.

3. A tribal lawyer was asked why he didn't mention the elders while prosecuting the case and discuss how they had loss out on medications for themselves and health coverage for their nonnative spouses which was often the only health care coverage that they had access to. And he replied that he wasn't able to link it directly to the money that the defendants stole from the operating budget and therefore he wasn't able to enter it into the case...money in the operating budget comes out of casino revenue. So director Bouchour and the key employee knew what they were doing.

4. So the monies gone, they got away with it, we should be used to it by now, the big guys get away with stealing. Now it's six years behind us and for the most part its impact on the tribal citizens is over with. We really don't have any skin in the game anymore where it's concerned. So let them have it. They seem to be desperate for it. We're alright without it.

Where we won't be alright though, is in our loss of faith in the system and in our tribal leadership. Those people were elected to represent us but they're not doing it, they don't seem to have the courage to do it, they're more interested in fitting in with their cohorts and being a part of tribal government than taking a hard stand on the important issues that are causing so much dissension in the tribe.

Rather than taking responsibility for all of the dissension, our leaders our blaming it on the citizens themselves or certain bad types of citizens. They refuse them a vote on the new constitution after promising them they will have one and now they have a tribal government that isn't working. That's floundering. That's without effective leadership...and despite being told over and again that we need a three branch government...our leaders don't have the will or the courage to act on it and do the right thing...and conduct a vote on the new constitution.

Thank you, Charles Forgrave