Indian gaming “benefits us all,” say the industry’s public
relations flaks. An Indian gaming television advertisement running
in California pictures a group of upstanding citizens in a
barbershop enumerating its many civic blessings. Gambling lords are
apparently the sturdiest pillars of a community.
Pols from both parties are loathe to challenge this obvious
scam, lest they appear “anti-Indian.” The result is a racket of
staggering proportions.
Last year in California, where Indian tribes pay no state or
local taxes on gaming, five new casinos opened, bringing the total
to over 50. Indian gaming revenue is now in the ballpark of $4
billion. Much of this money flows to a small network of hucksters
who live not on poverty-stricken reservations but in gilded
mansions. And millions of these profits go back to the politicians
who let these casinos clog and corrupt the state.
Time magazine reported last December the outrageous
case of Maryann Martin. She is a Californian who formed a
three-person “tribe” with her two brothers, then started up a
casino last year by moving a trailer onto an old Indian reservation
near Palm Springs. Martin discovered that her mother had been the
last surviving member of the Augustine Band of Cahuilla Mission
Indians. This not only allowed her to start up a casino but also
qualify for federal aid. “In 1999 and 2000 alone, government audit
reports show, she pulled in more than $1 million from Washington —
$476,000 for housing, $400,000 for tribal government and $146,000
for environmental programs,” reports Time. The tribe soon
consisted of one adult — Maryann Martin — after her drug-dealer
brothers got shot.
Other tribes, not much bigger than Martin’s, are also enjoying a
windfall in California, according to Time: “Christmas came
early [in 2002] for the 100 members of the Table Mountain
Rancheria, who over Thanksgiving picked up bonus checks of $200,000
each as their share of the Table Mountain Casino’s profits. That
was in addition to the monthly stipend of $15,000 each member
receives.”
But what if you are an Indian without a tribe or a reservation?
“No problem,” reports Time. Politicians will create them
for you. Time gives the example of California’s “Lytton
Band of Pomo Indians,” a group descended from Indians who had
disbanded in the 1960s so that they could sell off their
reservation. In the 1980s, the group decided to become a tribe
after hearing about the success of “high-stakes bingo halls in the
state.” It successfully “piggybacked” on an Indian lawsuit claiming
the Federal Government had “improperly” terminated tribes in the
1960s. Once a tribe, they then looked to get land for a
reservation. Not to live, of course, but to find an advantageous
spot for a casino. A Philadelphia financier found land for them in
the East Bay, a short drive from San Francisco. East Bay Democrat
Congressman George Miller then did the rest: “The ranking Democrat
on the House Resources Committee, Miller did what only a senior
member of Congress could: he plugged a three-sentence amendment
into an unrelated bill that gave the Lyttons their
reservation.”
Here is a new form of Indian reverence for land. How come the
Pomo Indians don’t want to live where their hallowed ancestors
lived? Because they didn’t have the sense to live near an
interstate? Evidently, ancestral sites can be terribly
inconvenient. The Upper Lake Band of Pomo Indians, reports
Time, would like to move its reservation for this reason.
It doesn’t want to build its casino where its ancestors lived,
because it is a two-hour drive from Sacramento.
Modern tribal chieftains, with their cell phones and Cadillacs
(the Los Angeles Times reports that one chieftain of a
Northern California tribe is a posh professor living near the
Southern California coast), should give ethnologists a new avenue
of study. They are certainly making political history. One
California tribe, the San Miguel Band, managed to spend $519,403
per member on lobbying the state, reports Time. In his
hour of need, Gray Davis is turning to the California Indian lobby
— which has already given him almost $2 million — for cash to
finance his anti-recall defense.
Indian gaming benefits us all? No, it just benefits a collection
of pols and operators who have made a career out of separating
fools from their money.
