State to return tribe's cigarettes

The Nebraska Department of Revenue has returned nearly $14,000 worth of cigarettes seized last week from the Ponca Tribe, a tribal official said Monday.
"I'm pretty stoked," Ponca Chairwoman Rebecca White said. "They were flat out wrong."
Revenue Department spokeswoman Deepa Buss confirmed Monday that the state would be returning the tribe's cigarettes.
A statement posted on the Revenue Department website said that after further research and discussion with the offices of the Nebraska attorney general and the U.S. attorney, "the department will be returning the improperly seized cigarettes to the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska this afternoon.
"Tax Commissioner Doug Ewald, has been in direct communication with Rebecca White, chairwoman of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska. On behalf of the department, Commissioner Ewald apologized to Chairwoman White and the tribal council of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska."
Revenue Department representatives entered the tribe's Ponca Smoke Signals shop in Niobrara at about 11:40 a.m. Thursday, according to White. She said they informed the shop's manager that the shop had failed to affix its cigarette packages with a state cigarette tax stamp and began packing up the store's entire inventory of cigarettes.
The tribal smoke shop is on federal trust land owned by the tribe. The shop sells only Native-manufactured cigarettes and affixes its own tribal stamp on each carton, White said. She said the seizure violated the tribe's sovereign immunity.
A cigarette tax stamp is placed on each package of cigarettes sold in Nebraska as proof that a distributor has paid the state's cigarette tax, according to the Revenue Department's website. However, the Ponca Tribe is not required to pay taxes to the state for the cigarettes it sells, as it is a sovereign nation, White said.
The tribe's Niobrara shop opened in October and is the tribe's second smoke shop. The other, also named Ponca Smoke Signals, opened in December 2009 in Carter Lake, Iowa. The shops sell only tribal-manufactured cigarettes, including Seneca, Signals, Smokin Joes, Sky Dancer and Buffalo brands.
The tribe lost its federal recognition in the 1960s but regained it in 1990. The Poncas do not have a reservation, but they do have service areas spread across 15 counties in Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota.
White said the Revenue Department's decision to apologize and return the cigarettes "is our first step for having the state understand what federally recognized land in trust means and how our service areas are and should be recognized as reservation land."