Viewing page 30 of 69

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Thank you, President Garry, members of the Executive Council, Friends of the Indians and members of the NCAI. As John Cragun mentioned to you, Mr. Robert Dellwo had an important part in this decision and had, [[strikethrough]] to [[/strikethrough]] priorto the decision in the capemin case tried [[strikethrough]] to [[/strikethrough]] and won in the lower court the Nicodemis case of which many of you have heard. Mr.Dellwo was scheduled to be here today to make some remarks to you concerning the effects of this Capemin decision by the United States Supreme Court. Unfortunately, this week he was engaged in the trial of a case which didn't conclude, which they frequently don't on schedule and it was just impossible for him to be here. He has, nevertheless, written a paper, explaining in his words the effect of this decision. I propose to read that paper today, verbatim. I don't ordinarily like to read things to an audience but these are Mr. Dellwo's own words and I think you should have them just exactly as they are written. After that Mr. Cragun and Mr. Payne, an attorney from Oklahoma you have mentioned here, with whom many of you are familiar, will assist me in attempting to answer any questions which you have. Mr.Dellwo writes this as follows: "All of you who attended the 1955 convention of the NCAI in Spokane, will recall the tax discussions of John W. Cragun and the writer, about the two major cases in the income tax fight of the Indians of the Northwest. Those cases were the cases of Squire vs. Capemin of the Quinalt tribe, and Nicodemus vs. the United States of the Couer d'Alene tribe. Last year, at the time of this meeting, both of these cases were still pending. The attorney for Mr. and Mrs. Capemin and the Quinalt Trible, Wilkinson, Cragun, Barker and Hawkins, had won the Capemin case in the San Francisco Circuit Court. We had won the Nicodemus case in teh District Court of Idaho (That's referring to the Couer d'Alene trbe and Mr. Dellwo) Since the Capemin case was ahead of the Nicodemus case in the point of time and a loss in the Capemin case would geopardize the Nicodemus case the Couer d'Alene tribe and the Affiliated Tribes of the Northwest Indians and our law firm teamed up with the Quinalt Tribe and their attorneys to do all that we could to defeat the government's appeal to the United States Supreme Court in the Capemin case. The Capemin Case involved the taxability of income from the sale