It’s been a long while since I last wrote something. Life has a way of getting in the way of your plans. I thought about this blog yesterday and thought it would be a good idea to formulate my philosophy on Indian gaming.
I’ve written a lot about secondary effects of gaming since this blog’s inception. You’ve heard me rail on and on about tribal disenrollments, the Indian Civil Rights Act, and greedy tribal councils. Yet at the same time I don’t think I’ve done enough to elucidate a clear stance on Indian gaming. I’ve written a sentence about it here and there, but it never received its own post. So, here it is.
Indian gaming is beneficial to tribes. It is a unique and lucrative economic tool that tribes may use to earn money for their people. Many tribes were shockingly poor and living in almost third-world conditions prior to the advent of Indian gaming. The money was desperately needed. Since its inception, Indian gaming has led to running water, indoor plumbing, standardized housing, clinics, schools, scholarships, jobs (for Indian and non-Indians), roads, buildings, and vast infrastructure improvements. Tribes have donated money to charity and invested some of their money in surrounding communities. In a perfect world, Indian gaming benefits everyone.
Unfortunately, Indian gaming has been used to oppress others. On this subject I’ve written plenty and need not repeat most of it here. To put it simply, avarice has begotten numerous civil rights violations and blackened many tribes’ images. Gaming tribes are seen as duplicitous, greedy, corrupt, and oppressive. Their use of tribal sovereignty as a means to use their money as they see fit and then hide behind sovereign immunity whenever they want is not an endearing quality. Many have called for an end to Indian gaming.
The remedies to these problems vary. Stronger congressional oversight, amending federal laws, partial or total abrogation of tribal sovereignty, more state power to intervene in tribal affairs, and exemption from taxation laws are just some of the proposed solutions. I honestly don’t know how the problem can be truly solved. I used to think (and still think) that Congress needs to step in and regulate tribal activity regarding membership despite tribes’ unique place in the law to handle their own membership affairs. However, I am becoming more convinced that one cannot simply legislate the problem away.
Ultimately, the solution has to come from the Indian tribes themselves. It’s hard to tell someone to stop acting badly towards others let alone an entire tribe, especially when the ruling families of that tribe firmly believe that they’re right, and in some cases, believe that society as a whole owes them something. But tribes need to realize that they are part of this society like everyone else and as a pluralistic society, we rise and fall together. Tribal sovereignty will always have its place, but it should not be a blank check to cast aside their own people over what they believe is an entitlement, whether it is for money or for the unfortunate belief that the disenrolled were never really members of their tribe to begin with. The Creator does not see things the way they do.
Roger Wood
November 15, 2012 at 11:43 am
Hi David, While I agree with almost 99% of what you have said, I felt it was important to add this.
In reply to your comments about the creators role in humans becoming citizens of a Native American tribe or not. The Creator did not write the tribes constitutional position on what constitutes a valid tribal citizen. So now you have laws introduced by Indians on Indians of their rights as legal citizens. Although these are traditionally the white mans laws, nonetheless, Native Americans have written them into their laws and have a greed to be bound by their own words. After all, isn’t your word the most important thing in Native culture?
As you ask members to be law abiding citizens, play fair, honest and embracing of one other when it comes to tribal profits (casino’s etc.), it is these same people who initial years ago decieved their own and put people on the tribal roles that never did meet the tribes constitutional requirements. So to bring the creator into the equasion of membership requirements is like blaming me in 2012, for the holocaust in 1944.
It is like wearing your left shoe on your right foot. If one continues this behavior, you end up with a foot that is always fighting against what is natural, and eventually begins to deform the right foot to comply with the wrong shoe.What was once not natural, now is natural. Breaking the law becomes ‘ok’ to do now. Its what weve always done. Nobody really follows the constitution, right? …and in the meantime, I’ve become a tribal citizen, so how dare you disenroll me? Right? Isnt this the outcry of injustice based on injustice? So why is it allowed to use ‘Indian Civil Rights laws by people who are not eligible to be covered under these same rights?
Down the road when these old enrollment deformities are uncovered, it is unfair of the rightful citizens to have to continue playing along (getting ripped off) with those who do not follow the rules, just because their grandmother didn’t. What has always been wrong, now becomes right, and that my friend is wrong. It is wrong because their are legal remedies written into these constitutions as the proper and legal way to alter/ammend the laws to make even Russians, Germans,or Chinese, eligible Native American citizens. So why are these constitutional remedies not used to do things ‘lawfully’?
If you want to put people in the tribe just because they are your inlaw, or a lifetime friend, why don’t tribes just use the mechanism’s to change the law to be able to do this so there isn’t any problem with it in 2 months or 40 years later?
The greedy unethical Indians who illegally disenroll people for profits and power, have made it difficult for the law abiding Indians to disenroll people who do not, or never did, have the right to be in the tribe.
These disenrollment distinctions deserve more clarity and visability so that we don’t continue to use ‘tribal civil rights’ as a pendleton blanket for people who do not meet the legal requirements to be protected by these same ‘tribal civil rights’.
It has become a vicious circle layered with years of lies and injustices on which Indians make thier arguments today against other Indians.
And then people wonder why Indian Civil Rights are not effective or even meaningful.
RW
Erick
November 15, 2012 at 12:23 pm
Who’s David?
Erick
November 15, 2012 at 12:34 pm
And another thing. If membership mix-ups were all the rage before the casinos were built, then why weren’t the wrong members banished from the tribe back then? Nothing was stopping them before the Indian Gaming Rights Act was passed, so why is it an issue now? Disenrolling anyone from a tribe now seems like you’re doing it for unethical reasons, even if it may ultimately be true that the person who was disenrolled was not really a tribal member. In my opinion, if the tribes were too lazy to act on disenrolling people who didn’t belong before the casinos came along, their argument for disenrolling them should either be: 1) waived, or 2) needs to meet a higher burden of proof as to why they were disenrolled, not just because a council member says “Oh, we’re correcting our paperwork. They shouldn’t have been part of our tribe back when they were added in 198X.” Well, why didn’t you banish them in the 80′s if that was the case? If poorly written tribal constitutions were an accomplice to this situation I can only accept that to a point. In the end, tribes — like the members they are composed of — should act reasonably, and reasonable people are bound by all of their decisions and should bear the consequences of them. If a constitutional provision needed changing then it should have been changed. You can’t let false members of a tribe ingrain themselves into the tribal community for decades before you need to get rid of them when, as a lucrative aside, disenrolling them nets you larger per capita profits.
cathy l. cory
November 15, 2012 at 1:45 pm
picayune did not dismember “in-laws” or “lifetime friends”…picayune dismembered HUNDREDS of indian people who shared chukchansi blood, kinship, land and culture–including native language keepers…you, roger, seek to cloud the issue….
as far as the picayune constitution? NOT written by indian people, but by lawyers at California Indian Legal Services….
notification that the tribe was being terminated–NEVER GIVEN to the majority of chukchansi people as required by law…
notification that the tribe was being re-recognized by the federal government, again required by law…ALSO NEVER GIVEN…
with a tribal government that for 29 years has NEVER followed the constitution–with the current tribal council even farther from doing so, while claiming all the while that they are doing just that–picayune hides behind a shield of tribal sovereignty to commit genocide against their own blood and steal the very birthright of hundreds of their own people, reducing the tribe from over 1800 chukchansi people to maybe 350 following the planning and implementation of chukchansi gold resort and casino…
SHAMEFUL…and undoubtedly NO part of creators plan, or any indian person who follows the true red road of our indian people…
for ALL nations…for ALL chukchansi people
!!!bring the people–ALL the people–home to picayune (AND table mountain, for that matter)!!!
Roger Wood
November 15, 2012 at 3:20 pm
Eric, So sorry for calling you David, I meant to write Eric. I apologize. I was multi-tasking at the time.
I am not arguing with anyone on these issues, and i find that when an opinion based on the facts is shared (as mine was), some people feel as though they have to attack. This is not a healthy way to approach the proper resolutions for all of these varied enrollment issues. Please do not take me wrong. Back up, and allow a conversation to emerge. Sometimes people get so dug in, that it is difficult to move beyond their own personal fox hole.
As I said, there are many many different reasons for disenrollments. It never is a ‘one size fits all’. That is the reason that I felt there was no need to name any particular tribe in stating the facts as I did.
Cathy’s experiences are completely different from my wife’s tribes issues. I never meant to say that this is what is going on with Cathy’s tribe. Cathy I don’t ‘seek’. I’ve never needed to ‘seek’. You don’t know me, so don’t judge. Please instead, listen, reread if that is what it takes to get the spirit of the conversation, and its message. When you judge me, you only say that you do not ‘listen’.
What I have stated truly ‘has happened’ in Native American tribes. I do not believe anyone would tell me that the way i described it, has ‘not’ happened.
This leads to Erics point about ‘why disenrollments now’? Why now when tribes have an economic engine? Why not back in 198? when there was no economic engine? Good question. Very valid and important question for both sides of the question.
The need to add people to the rolls and the need to remove people from the rolls stems from the same ‘human greed’. It is an old practice in Native American tribes. Tribes have always done this to members for many many reasons over many many years. A lot of times they don’t even tell you, thy just disenroll you via a letter. Sometimes they offered people ‘enrollment’ for no spoken reason. Oh, but there is a reason in both cases.
In both cases, the laws of the Native Nations are broken to acheive this single goal. This goal is more money. Back in the day (before economic engines) adding more heads onto the roles meant more money for the tribe, and if that meant that illegal people were added, then that is a violation of the civil rights of those that ‘do’ meet the tribe requirements. Does anyone give voice to the rights of a valid tribal member who has sat quiet all along and been robbed? Or is it because that person never said anything, that it was their fault they were robbed? Do they lose their rights because they were ‘to lazy’? This borders on the area of rape. Does a man or a woman deserve to be raped just because they dress or act in such a manner that heightens the sexual desires of another? Does it make it right when it has become a community norm to abandon a constitution?
I fully understand the need to write constitutions that take Native values and culture into consideration, but were not talking about the differences in basket weaving styles here. Were discussing value systems within a constitution, designed to protect, preserve, maintain and and endear a people to their culture, while maintaining a sense of peace, fairness, justice and security.
Now, reducing heads from the role means the same thing (more money for the people in the tribe). And just because your getting these dollars from the US Government doesn’t make it right either. At some point, a person (council member or regular member) must display and rely upon principles and their own integrity to uphold those principles so that the people can prosper and be in good health. So this kind of ill-fated and unethical behavior over many many years has bred, fueled and driven our human need to ‘have’, over the need to ‘belong’ to our culture.
So in fairness, I was attempting to show the many sides of disenrollment, the many different reasons, and not allow one injustice to steal all of the thunder from the other injustices occuring in disenrollments. Because when this is done, ‘greed’ is part of that equasion as well. Like a court judge, we need to look at all of the separate circumstances surrounding each case. Civil rights fuel should not be wasted on people who live outside of the law of ANY nation. It is already difficult enough for anyone to have to prove civil rights violations have occured. Time cannot erode an injustice and tribes need to get started at some point correcting this destructive personal behavior. After all, just because I buy a car that doesn’t work, doesn’t mean I can’t fix it.
Remember now, we haven’t even discussed the most important word of all in this matter, and that would be ‘culture’. We’ve been to busy debating disenrollments because ‘we’ ‘I’ or ‘you’ have lost a material $ value.
I am a realist. I believe in rules and regulations to guide a people. I believe that these rules must be followed ‘and preserved’ in order to see the desired positive outcomes of these rules. Even culture has rules. Thats what makes you different from the next.
Respectfully,
RW
Roger Wood
November 15, 2012 at 3:22 pm
I meant; Erick.
Roger Wood
November 17, 2012 at 11:17 am
It does not matter whether a tribe is the richest tribe in the world, or the poorest tribe in the world, because a tribes wealth or lack of, has absolutely NO effect on that tribes constitutional laws.
Oh yes the money does influence ‘humanity’ to act one way or the other, but these asset elements by themselves, do not and cannot alter already written laws.
However, I would be curious to know how many tribes have written new, or re-written their constitutions post the Indian Gaming Act? Now this is when the money can play a role in the creation/development of a tribes constitution. I would be very wary of these constitutions.
There are only 2 ways a constitution can have a negative effect on its people; 1. When its laws are interpretated differently than what was meant in the original. 2. When a constitution is completely abandoned (or not used) by its people.
In both cases it is the people who are to be blamed, not their written laws.
2 Native values interpreted into Euro language.
Respect & Honor = Integrity & Accountability
Respectfully,
RW
Erick
November 19, 2012 at 12:28 pm
You make good points. I wasn’t trying to counter-attack in my earlier reply, but something you said touched on an issue that others have tried to use an excuse for justifying disenrollments. I wanted to bring that out into the forefront and show everyone why that doesn’t work, but I should have been more obvious as to what my goal was.
I’m sure numerous tribal constitutions have been re-written and amended after the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed. When tribes undergo a major structural change by starting up their own gaming industry they should probably make sure that their legal infrastructure is just as updated. As a general principle, I’m fine with that and, in fact, I would encourage it because extremely important things like constitutions need to be checked every so often to ensure compliance with changes in law. I wouldn’t doubt that some are changed to benefit the incumbent political factions that sit on the councils and pay the law firm’s bills.
One major legal change I’m in favor of is implementing a tiered enrollment/disenrollment that requires some oversight from a legal/judicial body that is not the tribal council. The problem there, however, is independence from the tribal council which brings in the concept of using outside third parties (i.e., non-Indian) which can rankle tribal members who don’t want any part of their sovereignty delegated away to a non-Indian body, no matter how harmless. But at the very least, some form of meaningful appeals process and evidentiary standards throughout the enrollment/disenrollment process is necessary and should be implemented in tribal constitutions.
But this is just wishful thinking. Whether any tribe (even ones that don’t disenroll) would actually do this is another question.