I find this letter to the editor of Capitol Weekly to be especially poignant. The writer is from Connecticut, home of the so-called Pequots and the largest casino in the world - Foxwoods. Connecticut is where it all started - where the huge loophole in the law was created for all these 'tribes' to get their own casino - following the blueprint created in Connecticut by the Pequots. An excellent book - Without Reservation by Jeff Benedict - details the convolutions within our government that created the debacle of Indian casinos.
Letter to the editor
By Capitol Readers (published Thursday, January 10, 2008)
Dear Editor,
With all this money being spent by tribes lobbying for a vote outcome, it’s time to revisit this concept of creating these “tribal nations” based on the theory that they are perpetually poor and “in need.” Firstly, we’ve all known many neighbors who were 100 percent U.S. citizens before a tribe was created for them to join, thereby allowing them to claim they were due to be exempt from the laws (they previously followed) because they had been discriminated against.
Give me a break! Many groups try for decades to find one shred of evidence that they are not part of the mainstream. When the BIA (who always wants to increase its authority) ignores reality and grants federal recognition, we hear how we “owe” these folks money, land, tax exemption, you name it, because of … discrimination. Yet the mainstream have always seen them as part of the country and it is the “tribal members” themselves who work so hard to discriminate themselves from the rest — in order to get their hands on our tax dollars.
When people have to prove a racial distinction in order to own and operate certain businesses (tax-exempt casinos), we had better review our founding documents. We had better realize that a government cannot have a treaty with its own citizens.
Betty Perkowski,
North Stonington, Conn
Friday, January 18, 2008
Message from Pequotland
Monday, January 14, 2008
The stench gets stronger
This has to be one of the greatest WTF moments since props 94-97 have been put on the table.
From SignOnSanDiego:
What's changing: A 45-day period lapsed, giving the lucrative compacts automatic approval, even though they never received federal review. Despite questions about the unusual circumstances, Interior has not conducted an internal investigation.
The future: On Feb. 5, voters will consider measures to block the agreements. Even if they are rejected, the federal approval could open the door for legal challenges.
Four California Indian gambling agreements, deals worth perhaps more than $50 billion, went missing for nearly three months after they were sent to Interior in early September.
Disappearance of casino deals called 'mistake'
By James P. Sweeney
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
SACRAMENTO – In June, on the day after the No. 2 man at the U.S. Department of the Interior was sentenced to prison for lying about his role in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne issued a new ethics policy for the agency.
Kempthorne's guidelines vowed to make the troubled department “a model of an ethical workplace” with integrity as a “core value.”
But that commitment has been called into question by the department's failure to take a hard look at another major embarrassment and potential scandal unfolding from within.
The disappearance forced the agency to approve the agreements automatically without any review, even though they still face a statewide vote on California's Feb. 5 ballot.
Interior officials have dismissed the blunder as a mistake by an unknown employee. But they cannot explain how they determined it was an innocent oversight if they don't know who did it.
“Somebody made a mistake; we don't know who,” said Nedra Darling, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a branch of Interior. “This is a very busy office. There was a mistake made and we're moving on.”
Some within the agency and longtime critics have been surprised that Interior has not launched an investigation into the disappearance of such lucrative compacts for tribes that also are major campaign contributors.
“I don't think accidents like this happen,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog that has been critical of Interior in the past.
On Friday, Kempthorne said he has asked Carl Artman, assistant secretary for Indian affairs, to find out what happened.
“We don't know where they went. . . . Apparently an address had been incorrect,” Kempthorne said. “But they've been reviewed; they're released, so it's now back in the state of California's hands.”
Kempthorne said he has seen nothing to indicate “anything improper” occurred.
The compacts authorize one of the largest gambling expansions in state history for four of California's most successful tribes – Sycuan of El Cajon, Pechanga of Temecula, Morongo of east Riverside County and Agua Caliente of Palm Springs.
The deals negotiated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger allow the tribes to add up to 17,000 more slot machines, a 29 percent increase over the 59,000 already in the state .
Referendum measures on the February ballot would nullify legislation that ratified the compacts. But even before those measures qualified for a vote, Interior had expressed misgivings about one of the compacts: Sycuan's.
The agreement authorizes the tribe to build a second casino on lands that are not yet part of the reservation or in trust, the status necessary to conduct gaming. Two years ago, officials at Interior declared the agency would no longer consider gambling agreements for lands not yet in trust or otherwise eligible for gaming.
If voters reject the compacts, the legal weight of the premature federal approval would become the subject of a long legal fight, several attorneys predicted.
In Washington, the four tribes' political clout has been developed through generous campaign contributions to members of both parties. Over the past decade, Morongo, Pechanga and Agua Caliente have consistently ranked among the top 10 tribal contributors to federal candidates, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
During that span, the three tribes contributed nearly $3.5 million to federal candidates and campaigns. Sycuan contributed $274,000.
Agua Caliente also was one of Abramoff's clients. The tribe paid the disgraced lobbyist $10 million. J. Steven Griles, the former No. 2 at Interior, was sentenced to 10 months in prison for lying to senators about his relationship with Abramoff.
That triggered the pledge by Interior leadership to make certain that actions within the agency were above board.
The four tribes have said they didn't even know their compacts were pending in Washington. California Secretary of State Debra Bowen sent them to Interior without the tribes' knowledge, several tribal representatives said.
“We were just as surprised as everyone else, pleasantly though,” said Roger Salazar, a spokesman for the four tribes.
Aides to Bowen said she was simply following a legal requirement to submit the compacts, even though the referendum measures suspended state ratification of the agreements.
Indian Affairs spokeswoman Darling said the compacts were misplaced after they were sent to the wrong office, Room 2070 of the main Interior building. That is the former office of George Skibine, head of the bureau's Indian gaming management branch and the man who reviews most gambling agreements.
The office now houses Interior's Accessible Technology Center, which supplies equipment for handicapped employees. A staffer there has told officials she clearly recalled receiving the compacts in a Federal Express package and promptly delivered them to Artman's office.
“Apparently no one there will acknowledge or remembers getting the package,” Skibine said. “That's where we lose the trail.”
The compacts turned up 80 days later in Skibine's in-box. It's unknown who dropped them off or where they had been, Skibine and others said. But the long hiatus left the agency with few options.
Federal law gives Interior 45 days to act on a proposed compact. If the secretary neither approves nor rejects a compact during that span, it is deemed approved.
In early December, Interior deemed the compacts approved. Skibine was still hopeful the department could delay final approval, which requires a notice published in the Federal Register. There is no deadline to do that.
But Skibine was directed by his superiors – he won't say who – to send the approval notices through the process. They were published Dec. 19.
In addition to the compacts' disappearance, Interior officials can't explain why the same thing didn't happen to another California compact that was sent to the same address in October.
The compact for the San Manuel band of suburban San Bernardino, another expansive agreement authorizing up to 7,500 slots, reached Skibine on Nov. 6, a week after it was mailed to his old office. At that point, Interior officials had no reason to change any procedures because they did not yet know the other compacts were missing.
San Manuel's deal was negotiated with the other four but ratified later and does not face a referendum. Unlike the others, it had become largely noncontroversial and was widely expected to receive federal approval.
All five compacts – San Manuel's and the other four – were sent in packages directed to Artman's attention.
Artman, a member of the Wisconsin Oneida tribe and a former Washington lobbyist, was appointed by President Bush. He declined to be interviewed. But he is no stranger to the big Southern California tribes.
While Artman served as his tribe's general counsel, the Wisconsin Oneida developed two hotel projects with San Manuel and the Viejas tribe of Alpine. The hotels are in Sacramento and Washington, D.C.
Artman did request an internal review of what happened, Darling said.
“I don't know how deep it was. I know Mr. Artman had some questions . . . on the tracking of where things were and they were found and things moved forward at that point,” she said.
Whether the compacts' disappearance was an accident or a deliberate act would be something for the agency's inspector general to investigate, Darling said.
The inspector general's office has made some preliminary inquiries, but it has not opened an investigation and probably won't without an allegation of fraud, spokesman Roy Kime said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., one of the few California political leaders who has been willing to challenge the powerful tribes, said she will review the matter.
“I have not been briefed on this,” Feinstein said through a spokesman, “but I've asked my staff to look into it. In general, I am not a fan of expanding gaming in California.”
In the bucolic Dehesa Valley, where the federal approval could permit Sycuan to more than double the size of its gambling operation, some residents feel betrayed.
“It's just amazing to me that this can happen,” said Pat Riggs, president of the Dehesa Valley Community Council.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Another offsite casino bites the dust
Another tribe's plan for an off reservation casino has been denied - this time the Jemez Pueblo of New Mexico. Also a smaller casino proposed by the Tiguas of El Paso was rejected. In the article below 65-year-old Jesus Aguila whines "That casino was going to be the future of this community,". No Mr. Aguilar, the Interior Dept. just saved your community (inadvertently of course). The crime, the graft, the division of community that arrive with the casino are not worth the low-end jobs the casino brings in.
Interior Department rejects trust land for Jemez Pueblo casino
By Jose L. Medina/Sun-News reporter
LAS CRUCES - The U.S. Department of the Interior has denied two proposals to build off-reservation Indian casinos in Doña Ana County.
The department on Jan. 4 sent a four-page letter to Jemez Pueblo of northern New Mexico denying an application to acquire in trust a 78-acre parcel to build a 48,000-square-foot casino in Anthony, N.M., nearly 300 miles away from the Jemez reservation in central New Mexico.
The tribe applied for the land on Dec. 23, 2004.
The Interior Department also denied a proposal by the Tigua Indians of El Paso to build a smaller casino near Chaparral. In a letter also dated Jan. 4, the department said it denied the Tigua proposal because the application was incomplete and no new information had been submitted in more than a year.
Federal law allows Indian tribes to build off-reservation casinos if the Interior Department is convinced that the casino will benefit the tribe. In the Department of the Interior had approved the proposal, the governor would then have also had to approve it.
In the letter denying the much-debated Jemez proposal, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Carl J. Altman wrote that a casino in Anthony would not address the pueblo's unemployment problems and could have a detrimental effect on the tribe because of the distance from the reservation.
"Because the proposed gaming facility is not within a commutable distance of the reservation, resident tribal members will either: a) decline the job opportunity if they desire to remain on the reservation; or b) move away from the reservation to take advantage of job opportunities."
The news was met with sadness by casino supporters who had hoped it would create jobs.
"We just need more work, more future," said 65-year-old Jesus Aguilar, an Anthony, N.M., resident who said his two sons have left the area because work opportunities are lacking in the community.
"That casino was going to be the future of this community," he added.
But opponents of the casino reiterated that its potential economic and social benefits had been overstated.
"We're very pleased with it," said Joe Monahan of the Committee to Protect Doña Ana County, a group opposed to the Jemez proposal and backed by Sunland Park Race Track and Casino owner Stan Fulton. "It's been a long, hard struggle."
The tribe had planned to build the casino off Interstate 10 in conjunction with Santa Fe developer and art dealer Gerald Peters. A call placed to Peters' chief of staff was not returned Monday.
In the three years since it was introduced, the plan had been met by opponents who argued the casino would draw away from local businesses and would open the door for other off-reservation casinos.
Supporters argued that the casino would bring tourist dollars to the area and provide an income stream to the Jemez Pueblo, which has an unemployment rate thought to be about 50 percent or possibly as high as 66 percent.
In a statement, Jemez Gov. Paul Chinana said he would not comment further until the decision was reviewed by the tribe's lawyers, but he did say that the ruling ignored the Pueblo's job creation plan, which would have benefited both the tribe and Anthony.
"Under our plan, the pueblo leadership would identify the needed jobs, which would include needed teachers, health-care professionals, nursing-home personnel, child-care workers, policemen, and a host of other needed tribal service providers and occupations," Chinana said. "Pueblo members would choose their vocations, obtain their education and training via a casino funded scholarship program, return to the reservation and provide needed but currently unavailable services to its own tribal members."
In the statement, Chinana said that a day prior to the letter being issued, the Interior Department issued new guidance regarding land into trust applications where the proposed site exceeds a "commutable distance" from the reservation.
The pueblo preferred the off-reservation proposal because Jemez is too far from a population center and faced too much competition from already established Indian casinos near Albuquerque.
The casino would have provided direct competition to Sunland Park Race Track and Casino, owned by Fulton. He has promised to give New Mexico State University 50 percent ownership in the casino upon his death, but only if no other casino exists within a 50-mile radius of his casino. NMSU President Michael Martin said he respected the department's decision, but otherwise repeated his previous stance not taking sides in the issue.
"The way the Interior Department phrased this, this is a firm rejection of off-reservation gambling," Monahan said.
The New Mexico Indian Gaming Association opposed the pueblo's request in December 2005, saying it did not object to a tribe entering into gambling or seeking economic development, but did not favor any proposal for off-reservation gaming in New Mexico.
The same year, the Doña Ana County Commission voted 3-2 to support the proposed casino, but six state legislators from the area asked the Interior Department to reject it. Gov. Bill Richardson never took a formal stand for or against the casino.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Something is rotten in the State of California
As the vote for propositions 94, 95, 96 and 97 approaches - information is surfacing as to how these props will actually (not) benefit the state. Initially they seemed to be the silver bullet for the Governors budget crises, and as the hype grew - giving four casinos almost 20,000 more slot machines would do everything from pump millions into schools to cure arthritis! This of course was not being put out by researchers - it was being pumped by public relations specialists hired by the tribes. Careful scrutiny however reveals a different story, as seen in the SY Valley Journal. Something else to keep in mind: recent history has shown us that an Indian Casino can claim sovereign immunity at any time - and simply do not have to abide by any agreement they enter into.
CASINO REPORT
By India Allen, Staff Writer
With the California State budget still being negotiated and the 2006 Tribal Compacts awaiting approval by California voters in a slugfest characterized by claims from proponents that the compacts will guarantee additional funding for the state’s schools, a new study claims there is no direct connection between compact approvals and funding for public schools.
Strategic Education Services, a Sacramento based lobbying, consulting and advocacy firm, issued an Analysis of the 2006 Tribal Compact and Their Impact on Education Funding. Contrary to various pro-compact campaign advertisements that assert that compact approval will provide billions of dollars to California schools, the study not only claims there is no guarantee that money distributed by tribes from gambling operations will directly benefit California’s public education system, but also that even with extra money coming from Indian tribes as a result of compact approvals, the Governor and State Legislature will most likely distribute the extra money to other programs.
“If approved by voters under the false impression they are voting to ‘provide billions to California schools,’ these gambling compacts could further the misperception that schools are receiving adequate funding from gambling measures -- a measure that already plagues efforts to provide genuine revenue increases to California schools,” reads a statement in the analysis.
Because public school funding is issued and managed through Proposition 98, a school funding formula that derives money for schools through proceeds of taxes, such as property tax, the study further claims that since tribes are sovereign nations, the state cannot levee taxes on their economic ventures. Therefore, compact payments cannot be considered proceeds of taxes and would not be included in a public education funding calculations.
“All revenues from past compacts have been allocated to non-Proposition 98 expenditures,” the analysis states. “There is nothing in these compacts to suggest that such practices will be any different than current policy.”
Roger Salazar, media representative for Yes on 94, 95, 96 and 97, refutes the report’s findings, stating that since 40 percent of California’s general fund is required to go towards public education, an increase in money to the general fund would also increase the amount of money distributed to public education and other programs.
“Any time you put additional resources in the general fund it relieves all areas. I don’t see how adding more money into the general fund wouldn’t benefit schools,” he said. (ed~possibly because that is not your job? YOUR job Mr. Salazar is to sell it to the California voters - not point out the flaws eh?) “It benefits all state programs including schools. It’s a technical argument that Strategic Education Services are trying to make.
“We are not in a position to make the promise, but what we have said is that these agreements will allow $9 Billion over two decades to be applied to the California budget. We’re facing some very tough budget times, and what these tribes are trying to do is contribute to part of the solution.”
Though the Legislature can decide to apply extra money the state receives to education, it has a track record for only applying the minimum 40 percent to schools.
In May 2007, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger added an additional $427 million to the public education fund, which was more than the minimum 40 percent, and the Legislature reduced the funding by that exact amount -- applying only the minimum 40 percent.
The analysis questions how funds from compact agreements would be guaranteed to benefit public education since the legislature historically has applied the minimum 40 percent to schools, regardless of budget revenues.
While Salazar acknowledges this fact, he remains optimistic that the additional money from compacts would be applied toward public education and other vital programs.
“The folks on the other side are trying to do everything they can to mislead the voters to make them think that the compacts will not help the budget,” he said. “While nothing in life is guaranteed, what is guaranteed is that the state will receive hundreds of millions of dollars each and every year to help with its budget problems and fund vital services such as education, and that’s a good thing.” (ed~ such a telling statement~nothing in life is guaranteed, would that include even your "guarantee" Mr. Salazar?)
The Governors Office could not be reached for comment.
Planet Seminole the Money Hole
Recently the Miami Herald did an expose' on the Florida Seminole Tribe who have been siphoning millions from those Florida retirees, displaced Cubans and "snow birds" via their casinos with facimile (class II) slot machines and high stakes Bingo games. The paper was prompted to investigate because the Seminoles (rather the now fractional descendants of the original tribe) just bought the Planet Hollywood resort and restaurant chain for a mere nine hundred million dollars. Well it wasn't just that, you see the tribe wants Florida and the Feds to let them open full-on, Las Vegas style, class III gambling casinos, so they can siphon even more money from the unsuspecting non-Indian gamblers who think they have any chance of actually winning more than a free trip to the buffet line. Their investigation took them to the gated mansions of the tribal government officials where gardeners, chauffeurs and maids worked dilligently to polish up the Mercedes and BMW's parked on circular driveways and to keep their multi-million dollar "teepees" looking as good as any estate you might find in Scarsdale or Purchase, New York. What the rewporters found out in their investigation was, not only was this tribe of "Indians" making tens of millions from those gambling casino profits, but also that they still recieved over seventeen million in federal welfare and grant monies every year. In this day and age when so many governments are crying poor how is it that the federal government is still pouring millions of non-Indian tax dollars down the Seminole money pit? What planet are these bungling bureaucrats from? Better still, what insanity prompted Congress to unleash unregulated Indian casino gambling on the rest of the country without regard for the safety, welfare and quality of life of the other 298 million Americans?
Thursday, January 10, 2008
It is a whole new year...
...and it looks like we will be going into it minus a few "hoped for" casinos. It appears that the federal government is taking a fairly firm stand in denying tribes off-reservation casinos. Tough luck for three tribes in California near Barstow. How the mayor can feel 'disappointed' stretches one's imagination though. He has not realized that the feds just save his town. From the Desert Dispatch.
Federal government rejects tribes' casino plans
By Jason Smith, staff writer
BARSTOW — The plans of three Indian tribes to build off-reservation casinos in Barstow have been rejected by the federal government further stalling the projects over the objections of tribal and community leaders.
The Los Coyotes Band of Cahuilla and Cupeno, Big Lagoon Rancheria and Chemehuevi tribes were sent letters from the Department of the Interior informing them that their applications to put land near Barstow into a federal trust, a step necessary to build casinos, had been rejected.
Barstow Mayor Lawrence Dale said he was disappointed by the ruling.
“You know, it’s aggravating to say the least. The city has worked for five years on this project in good faith. To have the Department of the Interior change the guidelines as we were approaching the finish line is unconscionable.” he said. “The ruling as far as I’m concerned is a slap in the face to the Governor, and a slug in the stomach to the people of Barstow.”
In similar, but separate letters to the tribes dated Jan 4., Carl Artman, the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs, acknowledged that the tribes would receive economic assistance from the development of a casino, but stated that benefits were outweighed by the drawbacks because the proposed sites were not within “a reasonable commuting distance” of the tribes’ reservations.
“(T)he negative impacts on reservation life could be considerable,” the letter stated. “The potential departure of a significant number of reservation residents and their families could have serious and far-reaching implications for the remaining tribal community and its continuity as a community.”
The Chemehuevi’s reservation in Havasu Lake is 135 miles away, the Los Coyotes reservation is 115 miles southwest of Barstow in Warner Springs. Big Lagoon’s reservation occupies an environmentally sensitive coastal lagoon in Humboldt county 550 miles to the north of the casino site.
Tom Shields project spokesman for BarWest Gaming, which proposes a dual casino project by the Los Coyotes and Big Lagoon tribes, objected to the commuting distance clause in the department’s decision.
“These rules are arbitrary from the Secretary and certainly will be challenged if not by the Los Coyotes then by other tribes,” he said. “There may be a class action suit here.”
Shields said that the company stands behind its Barstow proposal and along with the Los Coyotes tribe, is negotiating with the governor’s office for a revised casino agreement. He said that although no decision has been made, the tribe can resubmit its land to trust application with additional information, appeal the ruling to the department, or file a lawsuit.
Shields rejected the idea that the development of a Barstow casino would negatively affect life on the reservation.
“(The Secretary) is basically saying the tribes are better off on their reservation unemployed,” he said. “Eighty-nine percent of the Los Coyotes don’t live on the reservation because there aren’t any opportunities to them, there’s nothing even close.”
The Big Lagoon Rancheria and Los Coyotes Indian tribes applied in March 2006 with the Department of the Interior to use 40-acres of land to build a joint casino near Lenwood. The Chemehuevi tribe applied with the department in February 2006 for permission to use a 40-acre parcel nearby to build a competing casino.
The Department of the Interior sent letters to 22 tribes across the country with pending land into trust applications. The department denied 11 of the applications, including the three tribes with Barstow casino plans, but asked the other 11 tribes to resubmit their applications with additional information.
The federal land into trust decision comes as the second setback to the Big Lagoon and Los Coyotes casino proposal in recent months. In September, the tribes’ agreement with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for the dual casino project expired without being passed by the state legislature.
In a press release from the Los Coyotes, the tribe blasted the decision from the Department of the Interior calling the denial illegal. Tribal members objected to the decision because the department had not completed its environmental review of the project or visited Barstow before issuing the ruling, the release stated.
Jason Barnett, spokesman for the Big Lagoon Rancheria tribe that while the tribe is moving forward with its plans to build a casino on its Humboldt county reservation, said it has not ruled out building in Barstow.
“(Tribal chairman) Virgil (Moorehead) has always said that if we can find a way to make the project work in Barstow, we will,” Barnett said.
The ruling also stalled plans for the Chemehuevi tribe to move ahead with their casino proposal.
The tribe’s chairman, Charles Wood said that he’s not sure how the decision will affect the tribe’s Barstow plans or if the tribe will continue with the project.
“We’ll have to take that into consideration and see what are options are,” he said. “I can’t comment at this time as to what those may be.”
Despite the new obstacle of the Interior Department’s ruling, Dale said still supports a casino in Barstow and expects one to be built someday.
“I still have faith that we will get the casino, but it will take real hard work on everyone’s part,” he said. (ed~not if people start reading sites like TribalWatch)
Council member Steve Curran said that he only recently learned of the decision, but said he doesn’t think interest in bringing a casino to Barstow will fade.
“It will happen as long as there is profit to make and there are people willing to work on it,” he said.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Disenrolled Pechanga's Tale of Woe
I wonder if it has occurred to any officials of our government that in allowing tribes to proceed with building casinos and establishing gaming empires - they have allowed the creation of precisely the type of dictatorships we have been sending our troops to fight (and die fighting) overseas. These little "Hugos" and "Mahmouds" on their sovereign land waste no time in excising any dissident opinions from their midst, and keep who is left in check with intimidation. Part of an excellent article by Marc Cooper originally posted at the LA Weekly follows. Links are provide to the rest of the article - and it is worth reading.
Tribal Flush: Pechanga People "Disenrolled" en Masse
On the eve of what could be the largest gambling expansion in U.S. history, a tale of power, betrayal and lost Indian heritage
By MARC COOPER
John Gomez Jr. parks his silver family van in the back row of one more anonymous strip mall off California’s Highway 79, an hour and a half southeast of Los Angeles, on a windswept ridge overlooking the Temecula Valley. Gomez, his dark hair barely betraying a sprinkling of gray at his temples, steps out of the van and walks away from the mall, to a barren dirt lot marked off with adobe walls.
“This is where Pablo is buried,” he says as we peer over the locked iron gate.
Pablo is Pablo Apis, the celebrated 19th-century “headman,” or chief, of the Temecula/Pechanga Indians, who was given more than 2,000 acres of land in exchange for his work at the Mission San Luis Rey. Gomez, who is a direct descendant of Chief Apis, jiggles the lock on the gate. He has no key.
“This is where a lot of our people were buried,” Gomez continues, “including those killed in the famous Temecula Massacre.” He’s referring to the killing of several dozen Indians by Californio militias in the closing days of 1846. Apis survived and, indeed, the 1875 treaty between the Temecula tribe and the U.S. government, though never ratified, was signed at the chief’s village adobe home.
Today, on a corner of Apis’ original land grant, a few minutes down the road from the desolate burial ground, towers the $350 million Pechanga Resort & Casino, the glittering 14-story pleasure dome so familiar to Southern Californians from the promotional and political-advocacy commercials in near-constant rotation on local television stations. With 522 rooms, 185,000 square feet of casino floor, 2,000 slot machines, more than 150 table games and seven restaurants, along with Vegas-class showrooms, nightclubs and comedy lounges, the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, as the tribe is now known, runs the largest and perhaps most profitable of California’s nearly 60 Indian casinos. And now, under terms of a deal negotiated by Governor Schwarzenegger, ratified earlier this year by the Democratic-led state legislature and set to go before voters in the February 5 primary election, the Pechanga and three other Southern California tribes may soon triple their battery of slot machines, allowing each of the four Indian groups to operate twice as many slots as any Vegas casino. If the referendums go through, the four tribes — Morongo, Agua Caliente, Sycuan and Pechanga — will be responsible for the largest expansion of gambling in recent U.S. history.
Gomez, a 40-year-old paralegal, helped birth the Pechanga mega-resort, which opened in 2002 and today grosses as much as $1 billion a year. He worked as a legal and cultural adviser to his tribe, a representative and lobbyist, and, along with several of his family members, served on key tribal committees as the Pechanga moved, almost overnight, from obscure poverty to a position of awesome political and economic power.
But it’s Gomez’s tribe no more. At least as far as the tribal leadership is concerned. Gomez and 135 adult members of his extended family (and 75 or more children) have been purged from formal Pechanga membership; they have been “disenrolled.” They were accused of no crime, no misbehavior, no wrongdoing, no disloyalty. But a series of tribal kangaroo-court hearings, bereft of even the pretense of due process, ruled that one of the family’s deceased elders was not an authentic tribe member and, therefore, not withstanding their years of service to the tribe, they were all to be banned.
And so today John Gomez can only stand outside the cemetery where Chief Apis and his other forebears are buried. “My family’s history is the history of Temecula and the Pechanga,” says Gomez. “But now, somehow, we have become traitors.”
As we drive from the cemetery and cruise by the city park named for Chief Apis, Gomez says, “I loved my job. I loved my tribe. But growing up... growing up, man... I would never, ever have thought our tribe would come to this.”
What it’s come to goes beyond tribal pride. As a result of the disenrollment, many in the Gomez family, which accounts for some 10 percent of the total Pechanga tribe’s membership, have lost their federal standing and benefits as American Indians. Some have lost their jobs at the resort. All of the adults, including Gomez, lost the generous per capita monthly payout, derived from casino profits, that was given to each adult of the tribe. When the Gomez family’s expulsion was finalized in 2004, that was about $15,000 per month. Currently, for those who remain members of the tribe, the figure has risen to about $40,000 per month.
The sharp increase is due in part to a second wave of purges, finalized last year, which disenrolled another extended family, this one descended from Paulina Hunter and representing yet another 10 percent of the tribe. That second purge went ahead despite a tribe-commissioned expert probe that concluded that Hunter was, in fact, a Pechanga. Simply put: The fewer the tribal members, the bigger the payout.
Some of the elderly disenrollees found themselves cut off from tribal clinics they helped to build. Some of the younger ones lost their education subsidies. What all the disenrollees have in common is not only the sudden loss of significant income but erasure of their collective cultural history and identity.
“Yes, we lost homes and cars. Some went into bankruptcy,” Gomez says. “But mostly I was saddened for my family and for Indian country in general. It’s not just your money they’re taking away but also your heritage and your future.”
With Indian gaming revenues now near the $30 billion mark nationally, disenrollment has rocked and divided Indian reservations from coast to coast.
“Gaming has brought in the dominant culture’s disease of greed,’’ Marty Firerider of the California American Indian Movement told the Indian Country Today newspaper.
In Oklahoma, just to cite one example, 2,800 descendants of “freedmen” — former African-American slaves who were “adopted” by the Cherokee — are now being expelled. But the epicenter of the disenrollment crisis is in California, where more than a dozen gaming tribes have already purged as many as 4,000 members. Little recourse is available to the disenrollees because state and federal courts have so far ruled that under the cloak of sovereign immunity, the tribes alone can serve as final arbiters of membership. Likewise, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has mostly defaulted to the tribes. And the media has been met with a virtual stonewall from the tribes, which claim they have no need to justify their internal affairs. As a result, stories about the disenrollments in local media stir little public outrage. One exception took place this past Labor Day weekend, when Bill Cosby canceled a scheduled performance at the Chukchansi tribe’s casino outside Fresno. Over the past year the tribe has purged a whopping half of its 1,200 members, and the Coz wanted no part of the increasingly ugly dispute.
But now, with four powerful Southern California tribes ready to make literally billions of dollars over the next two decades if the Schwarzenegger-negotiated gambling expansion is approved in the February 5 primary, the disenrollments have taken on a new timeliness. Gomez and his allies have emerged as leaders of a growing national movement to legally and politically challenge the tribal purges, which were first set in motion among the Pechanga in 2002, 127 years after the 1875 eviction of the tribe from its ancestral land by Temecula ranchers. Not coincidentally, the case of the disenrolled Pechanga could move to political center stage over the next few weeks.
“Don’t be surprised if you see Gomez or some of the other disenrollees show up soon in some TV spots,” says an activist supporting the ballot initiatives (Propositions 94 through 97, one proposition for each tribe) that would cancel the expansion deals. “They are the faces of everything wrong with the runaway power of the tribe.”
Gomez first got into trouble with his Pechanga tribe in 2002, when, as a trusted legal adviser, he was elected to the tribal-enrollment committee, along with a cousin and a member of the Paulina Hunter family. These were sensitive positions. After the tribe won its first minor gambling concession in 1996, and after California voters approved major Indian gaming rights four years later, it was only natural that there would be an increase in those suddenly claiming membership.
“As soon as we were elected, we found that the committee was doing all kinds of strange things,” Gomez says. “On the one hand they weren’t adhering to an enrollment moratorium and on the other they weren’t properly processing the minor children of those already enrolled.”
Gomez and his new allies began an investigation.
The boom quickly dropped on them. Within weeks a letter emerged from a group called Concerned Pechanga People, a small faction closely allied with the tribal leadership and its chair, Mark Macarro, which accused Gomez and his family of not being legitimate Pechanga. By the end of the year, Gomez’s extended family were notified of pending disenrollment. During an internal process that lasted more than a year and a half, Gomez put together binders of documentation proving — at least to virtually every outside observer who has reviewed them — his Pechanga ancestry.
But the tribal leadership, in closed-door sessions that adhered to no formal due process or rules of evidence, held to its position that one key elder in Gomez’s lineage — Manuela Miranda — had left the traditional village after her marriage and, therefore, her descendants weren’t really Pechanga. The claim, according to several experts, is prima facie absurd, as the history of American Indians is based on such dispersion and diaspora.
“No matter,” says Gomez. “Their minds were made up. The tribe could provide no solid evidence to back their claim against us. We were just out, period.” Among those disenrolled with Gomez were his brother Marc, the executive chef for the casino; his father, John Gomez Sr., a major figure in tribal outreach; a cousin who was a top financial adviser to the tribe; a cousin who headed the tribal fire department; a cousin who was chief of the casino’s human resources; and a cousin who was an assistant in the same department.
The final disenrollment of the Gomez clan in 2004 sent shock waves through the Pechanga community. After all, Gomez had been very tight with Chairman Macarro, known broadly to Californians as the public face of Indian gambling. With his leather vest, ponytail, youthful good looks and soft-spoken tone, Macarro has been the prominent figure in tens of millions of dollars’ worth of pro-Indian-gaming advertising.
“Mark spoke at my uncle’s funeral. His brother sang at my son’s dedication to the tribe,” says Gomez. “I thought we were pretty close when we were lobbying together for the tribe. But then, as our power grew — and let me tell you, we have a lot of power in Sacramento — I could see this sort of Napoleonic complex emerge. He loved to send out BlackBerry messages with, like, ‘Fuck you! Fuck you, you guys. You don’t know what you’re doing.’ He became a control freak.”
Ironically, Macarro’s own lineage seems blurry, and he was not a significant presence on the reservation until after gaming was legalized in 1996.
Chairman Macarro, consistent with the tribe’s usual stand on these matters, refused to comment on this story. When KNBC produced a story on disenrollments last year, the tribe bought a pre-emptive rebuttal commercial designed specifically to air just before the news segment, then at the last minute granted a brief interview to reporter Colleen Williams. “This has never been about money,” Macarro told Williams in response to accusations of greed on the part of tribal leadership. “This is about the integrity of tribal citizenship here at Pechanga. If there was a corn field instead of a casino, these same challenges would have taken the same path to the same conclusion.”
