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Gov. Pete Wilson's deal with the Pala Indians to control gambling on
reservations has infuriated California's Indian tribes, and rightfully so.
This deal follows a centuries-old tradition on this continent of unfair
treatment of native people by government.
It's not that the deal is unworkable. Most tribes could conform to it with
only moderate economic consequences. And tribes in remote reservations
where casinos are impractical could even profit.
But Gov. Wilson, like so many representatives of government before him,
showed callous indifference and complete disrespect for tribal people who
have lived on this land for thousands of years.
Just because American Indians on reservations today live in houses, drive
cars and work at jobs just like everybody else doesn't mean they are just
like everybody else. Indians have special status in this country -- and for
good reason.
We all know how conquerors from Europe nearly wiped out the Native American
population in a series of violent acts that history calls the colonizing of
America and the taming of the West.
We all know how the federal government signed treaty after treaty with
Indians only to violate them whenever white pilgrims needed more land.
And we know government tried to force assimilation on Indians by taking
children from reservations and sending them to schools where they were
forbidden to speak their language or learn about their culture.
What happened to Indians in San Diego County was no better and no worse
than what happened to their brethren across the continent. The fact that
the Kumeyaay and other tribes exist at all is not due to any human
benevolence, but simply that a few survived the centuries of assault on
their culture.
When Europeans first set foot on what is today San Diego County, about
10,000 Indians thrived in this hospitable land. They grew crops, hunted,
fished and lived in their ancestral villages. Yes, tribes and bands
sometimes fought and killed each other, but no differently from what
so-called civilized people did, and still do.
Missionaries tried to "civilize" the local Indians. What the missionaries
might have called liberation from savagery, others call enslavement. No
matter, the effect was the same -- the complete degradation of the Indian's
society and culture.
Mexican and American settlers in the region didn't bother with the
hypocrisy of trying to civilize the Indians. They simply killed them or
herded them onto reservations with no water or any way to support
themselves.
One Kumeyaay band kept its ancestral villages on the banks of the upper San
Diego River in the Capitan Grande Indian Reservation. But in 1932,
government decided it wanted that land, and moved the Capitan Grande
Indians out of their villages, paying them about $2,000 per person. The
hundred or so Indians didn't want to leave but knew they had no choice. The
bulldozers moved in and built the El Capitan Reservoir, flooding out the
villages.
The villagers pooled their money and bought two nearby ranch parcels that
became the Barona and Viejas reservations. When they first arrived at
Viejas, they were forced to live in horse barns with no electricity or
running water. They burned their corral fences to keep warm the first
winter. Babies died of pneumonia, elders of broken hearts.
The Indians lived in poverty at Barona and Viejas for decades. Only in
recent years did gambling begin to provide a good livelihood for them.
Then along comes Gov. Wilson, oblivious to the tragic history of the people
whose land he now governs. In fact, he's antagonistic toward them. He shows
no respect for what they have endured. He turns his back on the notion of
Indian sovereignty. All we hear from his office about Indians is that they
run illegal slot machines.
Never mind that there's no moral demarcation between the Indian's illegal
gambling machines and the state's legal gambling machines that we find in
almost every grocery store in California. The governor won't countenance
illegal slot machines, we're told again and again.
Fine. He could easily negotiate a compact with all the state's tribes that
simply required gambling machines to meet specific parimutuel, lottery-type
specifications in conformance with state codes. But Wilson didn't do that.
Instead, he engaged in exclusive negotiations with one tribe, and put a gag
order on participants. He came up with a compact that strayed far from
gambling, instead invading sovereignty issues by forcing local and state
government regulations on the reservations.
He set limits on the profit Indian tribes could make by setting limits on
the number of gambling machines allowed. He pitted tribes against each
other.
Finally, Wilson gave tribes a Hobson's choice: Either submit to government
intrusion into Indian affairs or shut down their casinos.
Last week, in an act borne out of extreme anger at their mistreatment by
Wilson, California's most powerful bands of Indians unanimously rejected
the Pala compact.
Many Californians can't understand why, reasoning that the compact isn't
too bad a deal. But then, most Californians don't have the history of
suffering at the hands of government that Indians have.
As much as we like to complain about government, most of us have clearly
benefitted from it, from the roads we drive on to the Social Security
checks we receive after we retire.
For Indians, however, government benefits will never eclipse the damage
done.
The Pala compact is just another affront, another assault, another outrage
against the Indians. It's another unfair government act to take away from
Indians the wealth and resources they've built with their own hands. In
other words, it's business as usual.
15-Mar-1998 Sunday