Another Stereotype of the Month entry:
Another Stereotype of the Month entry:
January 10, 2006, 8:10 a.m.
Liar's Dice
Indian casinos are a shameless monument to the most cynical minority politics.
By George Neumayr
Indians in Vermont disliked Howard Dean enough to oppose his presidential run. Members of the Abenaki Nation, which had squabbled with Dean over state recognition, made a point of supporting Wesley Clark over him. But now Dean is pro-Indian and feigns anger that Republicans have been "stealing from Indian tribes," as he put it in a recent interview. Always ready to accuse Republicans of exploiting minorities, Dean sees an opening in the Abramoff scandal to push his minority politics.
Dean, however, fails to see that Indian gambling lords aren't exactly a sympathetic minority. Jack Abramoff scammed scammers. Indian gambling lords aren't strangers to deceit and double-dealing. Why did those poor innocents in the Coushatta Tribe hire Abramoff? For the noble purpose of driving another Indian tribe's proposed casino into the ground. Abramoff did nothing for the tribe? Not true; he helped them mistreat fellow Indians.
Indians mistreating Indians is an old story. Yet Indian history repeating itself in a corrupt modern context is not a point mansion-dwelling tribal chieftains dare acknowledge. Instead, they speak of Abramoff as the "contemporary" face of historic European exploitation of the Indians and hope to milk this scandal for as many political points as possible. Coushatta tribal-council member David Sickey, laying it on pretty thick, told the Washington Post last weekend that in "the 17th and 18th century, native people were exploited for their land. In 2005, they're being exploited for their wealth."
Would that comedian Phil Hartman were still alive to adapt his "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer" routine to the sophisticated shakedown artists who populate Indian tribal councils and can play naive victims at the drop of a hat. According to the Washington Post, the exploited waifs of the Coushatta Tribe are raking in $300 million a year. "Something for nothing" describes their existence as much as that of the lowlife lobbyists they hire. Members of the Coushatta Tribe receive fat checks for doing nothing except manipulating the system as victims even as they elbow out Indians from other tribes.
Perhaps in the years ahead Congress will have to compensate the Jena Band of Choctaws for "exploitation" at the hands of the Coushatta Tribe. There is no bottom to the absurdities of Indian casino politics. The fallout from the Abramoff scandal, instead of increasing sympathy for these casino hucksters, should outrage the public into ending their racket. From coast to coast, Indian casinos are a shameless monument to the most cynical minority politics. Money sloshes back and forth between tribal leaders (who live not on dismal reservations but in posh neighborhoods; one chieftain for a northern California tribe lives in a southern California mansion) and the pols who receive Indian campaign contributions after they agree to let these phony casino "reservations," which are invariably discovered near interstates, blight their states.
I've lost track of the number of these scams in California. But a few years back Time reported on a couple of the most audacious ones, such as the time a woman formed a three-man tribe with her two brothers by dragging a trailer onto a spontaneous reservation in the Palm Springs area. This entitled the suddenly jump-started "Augustine Band of Cahuilla Mission Indians" to build a casino and receive federal aid. In no time the woman was receiving $1 million from Washington for "tribal government," "housing," and "environmental programs."
Tiny tribes spread in California as people learned they had Indian blood, and the supposedly hallowed land of their ancestors was the last place these operators wanted their "reservations," as those spots were annoyingly far from highways and gambling populations. Bay Area Democratic Congressman George Miller once snuck an amendment into a bill which allowed descendants from the Lytton Band of Pomo Indians, a tribe that had disappeared in the 1960s, to reassemble for the purposes of enriching themselves off a casino built near San Francisco. The Upper Lake Band of Pomo Indians, upset that their reservation was an onerous two-hour drive from Sacramento, demanded that politicians relocate it closer to a freeway.
That these makeshift Indian tribes end up with low advocates like Jack Abramoff is no surprise. They deserve each other. If Howard Dean wants to play the Indian card, fine. The more public attention that is drawn to this bipartisan racket of mendacious minority politics the better.
- George Neumayr is a writer living in the Washington, D.C., area
Rob's reply
>> Dean, however, fails to see that Indian gambling lords aren't exactly a sympathetic minority. <<
Calling gaming leaders "lords" instead of "business people" is the first blatant stereotype here.
>> Jack Abramoff scammed scammers. Indian gambling lords aren't strangers to deceit and double-dealing. Why did those poor innocents in the Coushatta Tribe hire Abramoff? <<
The Coushatta tribe is only one of six that Abramoff dealt with. Only it was trying to block another tribe's casino.
Meanwhile, some 200-plus gaming tribes didn't deal with Abramoff at all. And some 300-plus tribes don't conduct gaming at all.
So there's no excuse whatsoever for talking about all tribes as if they're deceitful "scammers" or playing "minority politics." Yet Neumayr does exactly that.
As always, assigning a negative attribute to an entire race when it applies only to a few members of that race is racist. It's the textbook definition of racist.
>> Yet Indian history repeating itself in a corrupt modern context is not a point mansion-dwelling tribal chieftains dare acknowledge. <<
"Mansion-dwelling tribal chieftains" is another blatant stereotype.
Actually, Indians acknowledge the conflicts among tribes all the time. They talk constantly about the need to unite and end the infighting among them.
>> Coushatta tribal-council member David Sickey, laying it on pretty thick, told the Washington Post last weekend that in "the 17th and 18th century, native people were exploited for their land. In 2005, they're being exploited for their wealth." <<
Again, the Coushatta case is totally unrepresentative of Indian gaming in particular or Indians in general. Whether Neumayr is pushing his agenda ignorantly or intentionally, it's still propaganda. He doesn't want to enlighten people about Indians; he wants to turn people against them.
>> "Something for nothing" describes their existence as much as that of the lowlife lobbyists they hire. <<
"Something for nothing" could describe the work of millions of business people across America. That's what business people do: create something out of nothing.
Is Neumayr a socialist or a communist? Does he oppose our capitalist system?
>> Members of the Coushatta Tribe receive fat checks for doing nothing except manipulating the system as victims even as they elbow out Indians from other tribes. <<
"Manipulating the system"...is that what Neumayr calls the last several centuries of businesses lobbying for special favors from government? Again, is he opposed to our capitalist system? Or what, exactly?
>> There is no bottom to the absurdities of Indian casino politics. <<
There's no bottom to the lies told about Indian casino politics, either.
>> The fallout from the Abramoff scandal, instead of increasing sympathy for these casino hucksters, should outrage the public into ending their racket. <<
Which hucksters are those? We get the idea that you don't like what happened in the Coushatta case. Do you have any evidence against any other gaming or nongaming tribe?
>> From coast to coast, Indian casinos are a shameless monument to the most cynical minority politics. <<
No, they're a monument to America's genocidal history and Indians' amazing resilience.
>> Money sloshes back and forth between tribal leaders (who live not on dismal reservations but in posh neighborhoods; one chieftain for a northern California tribe lives in a southern California mansion) <<
Again Neumayr fails to distinguish between tribal leaders in general and leaders of gaming tribes in particular. The effect is to tar all tribes, not just gaming tribes, with his "sleaze" tag.
Fact is, many tribal leaders don't earn big salaries and live in "posh neighborhoods." That's because many of them don't operate casinos.
That's true of many leaders of gaming tribes, too. But what if they do live in posh neighborhoods? Should they be held to a different standard from that of a non-Indian CEO of a multimillion-dollar business? How about that of a head of state? If George W. Bush can live in a mansion, why can't the leader of a sovereign Indian nation do so? The leaders of gaming tribes arguably have more of a right to do so than Bush, since they've eliminated poverty in their domain while Bush hasn't.
Tribes "discover" reservations?
>> and the pols who receive Indian campaign contributions after they agree to let these phony casino "reservations," which are invariably discovered near interstates, blight their states. <<
For the umpteenth time, there are only a handful of off-reservation casinos in existence. All of them came about through perfectly legal means.
Tribes aren't "discovering" reservations. Tribes that had their land stolen from them are asking for it back. If the land isn't available, they're asking for land somewhere in their historic range. If they plan to start an Indian casino, naturally they want land near a viable market.
So there's nothing mysterious or underhanded about the process. If Neumayr and his fellow Americans hadn't stolen the tribes' land, they wouldn't be facing this dilemma. They have only themselves to blame for the result.
Anyway, if Neumayr doesn't like the way our Republican-controlled government works, he can vote Democratic in the next election. If he doesn't like the way our democratic government works, he can try to amend the Constitution. Or find a country more to his linking, where no business lobbyist has any influence over legislators. Good luck finding such a place.
>> I've lost track of the number of these scams in California. <<
Could that be because the number is zero? One? Or what, exactly?
>> But a few years back Time reported on a couple of the most audacious ones, such as the time a woman formed a three-man tribe with her two brothers by dragging a trailer onto a spontaneous reservation in the Palm Springs area. <<
People exposed the Time report long ago as shoddy journalism. See Responses to TIME's Attack on Indian Gaming for details.
Again Neumayr gives the most extreme example and pretends it's representative of the whole. It isn't.
This extreme example has nothing to do with the hundreds of successful gaming operations run by long-established tribes. Neumayr's screed is nothing more than shameless Indian-bashing disguised as opposition to alleged "sleaze."
>> Tiny tribes spread in California as people learned they had Indian blood, and the supposedly hallowed land of their ancestors was the last place these operators wanted their "reservations," as those spots were annoyingly far from highways and gambling populations. <<
Which tribes are those? Note that Neumayr can't or won't say.
>> Bay Area Democratic Congressman George Miller once snuck an amendment into a bill which allowed descendants from the Lytton Band of Pomo Indians, a tribe that had disappeared in the 1960s, to reassemble for the purposes of enriching themselves off a casino built near San Francisco. <<
That's the propaganda. Here are the facts:
San Pablo Man Wants Powwows from Casino
The Lyttons were stripped of their 50-acre Alexander Valley rancheria and their federally recognized status in 1959 in part of a broader effort by the Eisenhower administration, now widely discredited, to assimilate remote smaller bands into society at large.
A 1991 U.S. Supreme Court ruling restored the Lyttons' federal recognition, but not its land, which has since been converted to vineyards.
Seven years after the ruling, the Lyttons approached the owners of Casino San Pablo, a 71,000 square-foot card room opened in 1995, with an eye toward developing it into a Las Vegas-style casino. The owners, frustrated by flagging revenues, agreed to sell to the Lyttons.
The deal garnered national attention, as it was the first time that an Indian entity had purchased a pre-existing gambling venue.
After overcoming years of legislative and judicial hurdles, the band this summer agreed to a compact with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger granting it permission to build a 2,500 slot machine venue. The compact is pending approval from the Legislature.
Neumayr's misstatement of the facts is typical of his propaganda techniques. The Lytton Band didn't disappear, it was illegally terminated and its land stolen. It was re-recognized as a tribe in 1991, or long before Congress got involved. The 2000 Miller amendment would've allowed the Lyttons to turn their existing card club into a Vegas-style casino, not to open a new casino near a highway or gambling population.
Since residents didn't necessarily want a Vegas-style casino nearby, the California state legislature killed the proposed Lytton compact. Since the Miller amendment didn't receive enough scrutiny, Congress subsequently overturned it. The Lyttons won't be expanding their card club in San Pablo because the system worked as it's supposed to.
More propaganda from Neumayr
>> The Upper Lake Band of Pomo Indians, upset that their reservation was an onerous two-hour drive from Sacramento, demanded that politicians relocate it closer to a freeway. <<
Again, here's the real story:
Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake
In 1907, the Federal Government established the Upper Lake Rancheria in Upper Lake, California (a very small Rancheria) for the benefit of a group of homeless and landless Pomo Indians in the Clear Lake area. The U. S. Government held title to the land into Trust for them until 1958.
During the early 1950s, the U. S. Government took steps to terminate its trust relationship with all Indian Tribes, including those in California.
The Upper Lake Band of Pomo Indians were forced off its impoverished tribal lands about 50 years ago under the Federal Government's Indian Relocation program. Around 20 years ago, the Federal Government began permitting California Indians to return to their former lands.
For some, like Upper Lake, California, the land was no longer available. Today, federal law permits such Tribes such as Upper Lake to find a suitable site for restoration of its tribal activities and business operations near its aboriginal tribal lands.
So where are the examples of "tiny tribes" being created out of thin air and spreading like a plague? Neumayr's two examples—the Lytton Band and the Upper Lake Band—both have legitimate reasons for seeking land. Their land was taken from them and they want it back. No crime, scam, or sleaze there.
>> That these makeshift Indian tribes end up with low advocates like Jack Abramoff is no surprise. <<
Makeshift? When one has been a tribe since at least the 1950s, when it was terminated, and the other since 1907? Neumayr must have a strange definition of "makeshift."
Let's recap. Besides the Coushatta case, Neumayr has come up with three examples of what he calls scamming or sleaze. But none of these cases involve any accusations of illegality or even of corruption. All three tribes worked through perfectly legal means to correct past injustices.
If getting something from duly elected representatives is a scam, then everyone in America is guilty of scamming. Unless Neumayr targets the biggest scammers first, starting with the defense industry, he's guilty of racism against Indians.
>> They deserve each other. <<
That's funny. I'd say corrupt Republicans and convicted lobbyists deserve each other. They go together like a jail cell and a key.
Related links
Greedy Indians
The facts about Indian gaming
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