Word: tribalized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Between the worn-out trailers and the HUD homes on the St. Regis Mohawk reservation sits an incongruous stretch of newly built mansions. From his patrol car, Wesley Benedict, the tribal police chief, points out a red brick palazzo and a white gabled mansion. "Most of those are built with smuggling money," he says. Around the world, word has spread that if you want to come to the U.S., the easiest point of entry is this barren reservation that cuts across both sides of the New York-Canada border...
...year ago, 35 people, including a tribal chief, were indicted for their part in an international ring that smuggled Chinese into the U.S. The Justice Department says it brought in more than $160 million--100 to 150 aliens a month at $47,000 each, with the Mohawks getting a cut. But St. Regis is still the route of choice for perhaps 20,000 illegals each year from the Middle East, Europe and Asia...
...Mohawk reservation appeals to smugglers because its status as a tribal reserve makes it a no-go area for law enforcement officials. Even the military has declared it a "red zone" and has refused to fly over it since a medical helicopter was shot down on a nearby reservation years ago. At the edge of the 16,000-acre reservation, a sign boldly warns the FBI, state police and IRS to keep out. "It is a jurisdictional and geographic nightmare," says Ashlaw, who only enters the reservation escorted by the tribal police. This year the border patrol has made...
According to tribal police and federal authorities, the smuggling took off several years ago when Canada lowered its cigarette tax. Until then much of the reservation's cash came from buying cheap cigarettes in the States and selling them illegally in Canada. "You could make 600% on a case of cigarettes," says Mohawk Charlie Little Tree. "When that ended, people became the easiest commodity." Little Tree is now facing charges for smuggling aliens; his son is already serving time for the same offense...
Webster Groves students' approach to romance may puzzle their parents, but it is familiar to any student of anthropology. Childhood friendships that naturally flow into sex as girls and boys mature are a common pattern in tribal societies, in which everyone knows everyone else and sexuality is taken in stride. So are sexual practices designed to avoid pregnancy, and a lack of desire to spend time with one's partner to the exclusion of other young people--just as at Webster Groves. Dating is a modern invention, which makes sense only among large groups of people who do not know...