By Kathleen Kern

Barring further postponements, lobbyist Jack Abramoff will report to prison at the end of June for fraud in the purchase of a Florida casino cruise line. As of this writing, he is awaiting sentencing for more serious crimes involving tax evasion, mail fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States government.

I was particularly interested in Abramoff’s bilking of First Nations who were running casinos or wanting to start them up. Abramoff advised several of these tribal clients to hire Capital Campaign Strategies, a public relations company owned by Michael Scanlon, without revealing that Scanlon was his business partner. CCS sent the Choctaw tribe a bogus invoice for $1 million, which the tribe paid, though their resources were tight at the time.

Abramoff also played tribal clients such as the Jena and Coushatta nations of Louisiana and Tigua nation in Texas off against each other — having them pay enormous sums of money to prevent rival casinos from opening. Abramoff gave former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed $5 million between 2001 and 2003 to rally Christian opposition to casinos and state lotteries that would have competed with the Coushatta Nation of Louisiana. In total, Abramoff and Scanlon may have swindled as much as $66 million out of their Native clients.

Abramoff and Scanlon are scoundrels in a line stretching over four centuries of Euro-Americans who cheated the First Nations out of land and resources. E-mails made public during Abramoff’s trials show the contempt they felt for their indigenous clients. In one e-mail to Scanlon, Abramoff wrote, “I have to meet with the monkeys,” referring to his Mississippi Choctaw dupes. In other e-mails he refers to indigenous clients as “morons,” “stupid idiots” and “losers.’’

Since several tribes victimized by Abramoff are in the Gulf states, I called Steve Cheramie Risingsun — who pastors Mennonite Native churches in Louisiana and Alabama — for his thoughts.

Abramoff’s doings have not been high on his list of priorities or those of his congregations. The Poarch Creek, Houma and Biloxi Chitimacha communities have been picking up the pieces left by four hurricanes and one tropical storm in a 19-month period. Hurricane Ivan alone damaged or destroyed 80 percent of the buildings in the Poarch Creek reservation.

Risingsun’s churches have also been preparing to host the North American Native Mennonite conference July 24-27.

Still, he was aware that Abramoff had played on the “hopeful desires” of the Coushatta and Choctaw nations. Risingsun reported that Abramoff told the Coushatta of Louisiana, a nation comprising only 600 people, that he could “get them in good” with President Bush and other high- level officials. Practically, that meant one of their leaders got to shake Bush’s hand in a photo. It cost them $1.4 million.

I asked Risingsun what he would say to Abramoff if they met. He said: “I’d tell him that I was sorry. Sorry that he thought his race and worldviews were superior and that we as indigenous people needed to be judged by his standards, rather than him trying to understand what we offer to other races and ethnic cultures. Sorry that he didn’t meet the best of our people but instead met those who let their greed for material possessions overshadow what they were taught. Sorry that in all the time he spent among Native people he didn’t see the richness of who we are, our cultural values and traditions.”

Wise words for all of us living on and profiting from what once belonged to the First Nations.