It is the understatement of all time to note that United States law hasn’t been kind to Native Americans. Filmmaker Samuel Goldwyn is (probably mis-) quoted as saying that “a verbal agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.” That also applies to just about every treaty with Native American tribes ever made and ratified by the U.S. government.
The Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 prohibited white settlement in the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming for all time.
It lasted six years, when members of George Custer’s expedition discovered gold in the hills. Two years later, Custer was sent back in to clear the Indians out. It ended badly for both sides.
Oklahoma didn’t become a state until 1907. The shorthand version for that is that the U.S. took Indians from all over the place (including Geronimo and his Chiricahuas) and dumped them in the armpit of the universe, which would remain Indian Territory for … you know, ever! Oil was discovered, so the whites who had been filtering in began clamoring for statehood.
The five Native American tribes in the area didn’t want statehood, so the U.S. passed the Curtis Act in 1898, calling for the disbanding of all Indian governments in 1906. Despite Native Americans outnumbering the whites by a 6-1 margin, Indian Territory got dragged into statehood on Nov. 16, 1907.
Perhaps the most egregious example of legal animosity toward Native Americans involved Indian suffrage in Arizona (and a few other states, including New Mexico). Native Americans were granted U.S. citizenship in 1924. That was mighty white of the government, seeing as how it came almost 60 years after the freed slaves were granted such status.
However, it did not automatically confer to Indians the right to vote. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that since Native Americans were, technically, under the guardianship of the U.S. government, they were ineligible to vote because the Arizona Constitution, as written, denied the vote to “mental incompetents and people under guardianship.” It wasn’t until 1948—nearly a century after the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and years after many Arizona Indians had fought and died in World War II—that suffrage was granted.
Unfortunately, these are just drops in a bucketful of outrageous official conduct stretching over centuries. That’s why I smile a little bit when I learn that one tribe is using the law to its full advantage and apparently has a number of allies in the legal system.
It all started when some land on the Tohono O’odham Nation was flooded due to some federal dam projects. The tribe was allowed to buy land to make up for what was lost, even if that new land was not contiguous with the existing reservation. They picked out a nice plot of land outside of Glendale, right near where a brand-new football stadium was being built to house the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals.
Around this time, the state government started sticking its nose into Indian gaming, basically trying to regulate it to death. I personally don’t think the state has any business trying to control Indian gaming. The Indians were stuck on reservations, many of them pretty desolate, and when they figure out a way to make money, the state steps in and says, “No! Bad Indian. Bad!!”
I understand the state trying to get a cut of the revenue. That’s just like Fanucci in The Godfather Part II trying to “wet his beak.” But I believe that the tribes should be able to build as many casinos as they want.
Arizona voters approved Proposition 202 in 2002. It basically reined in the state and brought some order to the casino race. While it capped the number of casinos in Arizona, it also specifically allowed the Tohono O’odham tribe to build one more on its land and didn’t specify where that land had to be. A casino right next to a huge entertainment district that includes an NFL stadium and a National Hockey League arena that also hosts concerts would probably make out OK, don’t you think?
The state has joined with the two tribes (the Gila River Indian Community and the Salt River-Pima Maricopa Indian Community) that already have casinos in the Valley of the Sun to try to block the new casino, to no avail. The courts have sided with the Tohono O’odham all the way up the line. Intense lobbying has now gotten Republican congressmen Trent Franks and Paul Gosar into the act. They’re going to try to pass a federal law to stop the casino from being built. Yeah, good luck with that, bitches.
U.S. District Judge David Campbell rejected almost all of the claims brought by the state and the other two tribes. All that is left is the Hail-est of all Hail Marys. The plaintiffs claim that, in campaign brochures for Proposition 202, the Tohono O’odham tribe maybe sorta maybe misled people into thinking that they wouldn’t try to build the Glendale casino. Oh my God! Misleading statements in a political campaign?! I’m going to get the vapors.
I don’t gamble, mostly because I understand mathematics. However, when that casino gets built, I may stop in for an overpriced diet soda to celebrate a small victory in a legal system that, for centuries, was cruel, one-sided and, quite frankly, un-American.
This article appears in May 16-22, 2013.
The history of indian gaming is a lot more complicated than you make it. States want to regulate the casinos for good reasons, too. Indian casinos are just as prone to organized crime and corruption as any other gaming establishment. Corruption is the biggest problem. Just as Jack Abramoff and his lobbyist cronies. Yes, we committed genocide against native americans, and unfortunately, they lost the war and were placed in interior exile on reservations. Letting them now build casinos wherever they want, whenever they want with no state or local oversight at all is not in any way justice for past treatment. There are now very good studies that show strong connections between casinos and local crime rates. Just getting basic data on this very serious subject is tough because indian casinos do not have to report anything to the government. So, while you sip your diet soda on the gaming floor, thank your god that it isn’t in your backyard.
Casino del Sol is not directly in my backyard but it’s pretty close, and I’m fine with it. My only issue with the article is calling poker “gambling,” because it’s a game of skill (we are still trying to convince the US Government of that however) and if the tribe’s casino becomes uber successful, as I hope it will, can we convince them to buy the Coyotes? I must confess I will not drive up to Glendale and patronize the casino unless there are still Coyotes games to see.
Indian gaming is NOT unregulated as Kentop is trying to lead the readers on. In fact, there is a U.S. Govt regulatory board that is a extended arm of the U.S. Dept of Justice: National Indian Gaming Assoc. They see/review the $$$ numbers, the take and the payouts and report ANY misleading statements to the justice dept for an in-depth review. Las Vegas on the other hand, was built on Mob money and can you seriously say that they are not still involved. Let me guess, you support escorts & 24/7 stripclubs. As for Jack Abramoff: that is how the political system is set up… the other person who took money is JOEL OSTEEN. The natives gave them funds to advocate on their behalf; yet they took the money and spent it on themselves & did not give it back. If that is not a double standard, then what is… I am glad to see that this Native Tribe had the fore sight to see and invest properly in a solid long-term return; is that not the “American” dream Kentop
The BIA and its gambling cartel have never been lawful entities. Andrew Jackson issued a proclamation denying the power of the judicial department to hand down the law of the land. Jackson and Congress then enjoined an insurrection and passed the patently unlawful Indian Removal Act over the Majority Opinion of the Supreme Court. This is why we are petitioning the Government to repeal this despicable act, which should have been repealed with slavery. The Indian Citizenship Act should have included fee simple title to their ancestral lands. The BIA reservation system is simply another form of enslavement. Government Indian policy from the beginning has been one of human genocide. For proof one only need look at the stats:
Aside, from the 5 billion dollars in damages incurred by the BIA for ripping off the tribal trust and other crimes, the BIA administration has managed to oversee virtual death camps. Here are some staggering figures to mull over: BIA reservations have 8 times the U.S. rate for diabetes, 8 times the rate for tuberculosis. Unemployment as high as 90 percent, quite naturally, is followed closely by similarly high rates for alcoholism, and several other diseases. Those stats, coupled with infant mortality and juvenile suicide rates three times the national average — it is fair to suggest that the BIA policy of genocide remains in full force and effect.
This human tragedy is being ignored by the media who launder billions of dollars for the BIA gambling cabal, helping to sustain this amoral government agency. The press does not find it newsworthy that the gambling compact, which ordered the States to negotiate with the BIA gambling cartel was subsequently ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. The case involved the State of Florida and the Seminole Tribe. Join us in demanding that the Indian Removal Act be repealed and the tribe given fee simple title to their ancestral lands — it is long overdue for the American people to close these internment camps and allow the tribes to handle their own affairs. The Poke Player Army is circulating a 1st Amendment petition and demand that Congress formally repeal the Indian Removal Act. Visit the http://www.pokerplayerarmy.org and learn more.
The indian tribes gave Abramoff buckets of money to bribe congressmen. At least four dozen congressmen from both sides of the aisle voted in their favor during that time. It was bribe money plain and simple, paid by the tribes to buy influence in congress. It worked. Before Abramoff, the indian tribes had their own lobbyists, who were much less effective than straight out bribing congressmen through Abramoff’s lobbying firm. Casinos are still easy targets for organized crime. I don’t mean that they could be taken over by an italian “costa nostra”. I mean that the indian tribes could create their own internal crime syndicates. That’s the nature of casinos. Federal oversight of indian casinos by the NIGC works about as well as any other neglected government department manned by a skeleton crew and managed by a chairman, or currently, a chairwoman. The commission has no teeth. But it’s not federal oversight I’m talking about, though, it’s state and local oversight, of which there is very little. Back in 1988 the indian regulatory gaming act actually excluded states from regulating casinos. So the states hands are tied. I stand by my first post, it’s a much more complicated issue than Danehy thinks, and it doesn’t have anything to do with gettin’ back at the round-eyes.
Hooray for the O’Odham nation. The law is clear….they have the right to be compensated for land lost to flooding by federal dams. Their plan to build on land near Glendale’s stadium and entertainment complex is shrewd. If the same plan were being pushed by some Snottsdale group of investors, it would be viewed as a display of business acumen. Neanderthal Congressman Trent Franks and Go-nowhere oppose it? That in itself is reason to like the idea.
The Indian Gaming Association is no different than any other outlawed crime syndicate or cabal. This sub agency of the government is merely one more crime cartel with nothing to distinguish it from the drug cartel, other than the type of felony being perpetrated on the public. BIA casinos pay no revenue taxes and does not submit to police oversight, from taxpayer funded police agents. In fact, the Arizona gambling cartel pay their own enforcers (the misnamed Arizona Department of Gaming) to coerce poker players and VFW halls, while guarding the exclusive interests of the BIA’s felonious monopoly over gambling and the international sport of poker.
Tribal casinos are not “Indian”. The BIA reservations are simply criminal sanctuaries that are being operated by paid government bureaucrats. Their criminal behavior has left taxpayers indebted for billions of dollars in damages, from legal actions due to the BIA pilfering the tribal trust. They are guilty of ripping off the poverty ridden tribes they claim to be protecting. This is happening despite the Supreme Court having nixed the 1988 congressional mandate that the Arizona gambling cartel continues to hide behind.
Arizona leadership could not be more obtuse. BIA casinos do not pay local taxes; yet, they dump gambling addicts on the community, while siphoning off business and revenue taxes from local entertainment venues. Don’t think for a moment you have nothing to fear from the addicts and drunk drivers the BIA casinos slough off on local communities. Join the pokerplayerarmy.org drive. Free the Native Tribes — REPEAL THE INDIAN REMOVAL ACT.
Wait long enough, and you get responses like Harold Lee’s. Suffice it to say, there is no syndicate or cabal. The NIGC is not even under the jurisdiction of the justice department, as TaxPayer said. It reports to the department of the interior, which is why it has no teeth.
Responders to articles, such as myself, rant endlessly upon foundless asumptions, never hearing other opinions, and never conceding a point. Please block out the noise, listen to both sides, and make your own opinion.
Disregard Kentop’s hyperbole about the NIGC having no teeth. Look no further for their pearly whites than here: http://www.nigc.gov/Portals/0/NIGC%20Uploa…
In this document, the NIGC stepped out of it’s role as a regulator and into the role of promoter of Indian gaming when it went heads-up against the Attorney General of the State of Arizona’s earlier formal opinion on tribal cardrooms, the latter of which came at the request of the director of the “Arizona” department of gaming that was trying to shut down the BIA cardrooms.
The problem I have with poker in Arizona is that the Governor signed away the rights and liberties of every citizen to conduct professional card games in their home or business and just handed it to the 22 tribes (17 of which have signed the conspiratorial Poker Memorandum of Understanding). Would you believe me if I told you that California’s 88 cardrooms generated $880 million is state revenue last year? That’s $10M in taxable revenue per cardroom!
Do you think that the Compacts and the Poker MoUs generate $200,000 per year for the Arizona Benefits Fund, or $20M of the $90M slush fund that the ADoG administers? Don’t you think we would need to know that information in order to judge the benefit, or detriment, to the State and its citizens thanks to the Poker MoU exclusivity for the tribes?
Would you believe me if I told you that not even the Governor, who signed the illicit Poker MoU with the director of the ADoG and a tribal representative, doesn’t even get to know how much benefit the State gets by allowing a legal monopoly on the international sport of poker to only be played in BIA Indian Country?
If we are going to worry about infiltration of organized crime, look up the OCCA and RICO and can someone please tell me how the heck CA vs. Cabazon in 1987 managed to rule that tribes retained their right to high stakes poker, with the federal court even acknowledging OCCA and RICO laws that prohibit it by telling the State to mind it’s own business about the application and process of federal laws?
And like crazy Judge and convict-at-large Lee, don’t even get me started on the other atrocities that the BIA has visited upon our native american domestic dependent nations with faux-sovereignty. You can’t have a state within a state. You can’t have a country within a state either. It’s unconstitutional. The first thing the Indians gave up when they touched the pen was their sovereignty, and they gave it to the president, who later gave it to Congress.
This fit is shucked up. But what can we do?
We need a civil and social association of adults with common interests in a primary mission to create awareness, educate, and enact change in public policies regarding the international sport of poker in Arizona, as well as nationally address the genocidal policies and continued violation of constitutional trust responsibilities and impressments of our Native American brothers and sisters through unconstitutional gaming Compacts, by the continued exploitation of this most impoverished, invisible group of Americans for the past several centuries.
And Kentop, let’s not blur the line too much between “gambling” playing Class II games like bingo or poker versus gambling playing Class III games like slots, blackjack, and the lottery.
The NIGC was created by Congress to keep it’s BIA crime syndicate in check with some of the fastest regulations Congress every passed after Cabazon. Prior to IGRA, which created the NIGC under the Interior Department in 1987, the illicit BIA cabal was in the habit of approving unlawful gambling contracts between BIA tribes and non-Indian parties. A syndicate can be defined as a loose affiliation of gangsters in control of organized criminal activities. A cabal can be defined as conspiratorial group of plotters or intriguers. The BIA was born as a political quid-pro quo and without Congressional consent. It was later empowered by Jackson in his 1831 insurgency over Cherokee vs. Georgia and the illegal Indian Removal Act. I’m not sure how you can not consider the NIGC as part of the federal criminal cabal/syndicate that has continued impressments of their wards and pupilage (some say slaves) to provide outlawed gambling that we don’t want in our own backyards. I think I’ll go have a diet coke now and play some online poker.
Do people understand that in pre-IGRA Cabazon, the fed ruled that Indians retained (they didn’t “win”) their right to conduct poker and bingo games and that they don’t need to abide by state laws except for hours and wager limits? How, pre-IGRA, can the federal government, express that their wards have this liberty but that non-Indians do not? Answer: they didn’t. It’s just never been tested. Lots came out of Cabazon, lots of regulations in IGRA, new federal commissions, more BIA power, more Indian “sovereignty”, and lots of case law. Case after case in state after state non-Indian citizens have sought the same equal protection of the law in the case of Class III gaming (slot machines at race tracks, for example). These efforts fall flat because of the principle “government-to-government” relationship that exists between the State and the tribes seeking lucrative Class III gaming compacts as authorized by Congress through IGRA. But this government-to-government relationship concept was hatched “post-Cabazon”. Sure, there is a government-to-government relationship between the feds and the tribes too, one more closely tied than the gaming that binds states and tribes. But the tribal relationship is sub-sovereign to the United States Congress, and the Cabazon relationship was that of guardian-to-ward more so than that of fed to tribe. Just look at how “dad” let slide the obvious OCCA and RICO infractions pre-IGRA, and how papa Sam just told the State of California not to worry about the application of federal laws. This is the federal government working against its own states and citizenry to favor the rights of indians to promote gambling. Syndicate. Cabal. Fed. Impressment.
But in Arizona and other states similarly situated, the exclusive grant of Class II professional poker without a shred of doubt infringes on my rights as a US Citizen and proud Arizonan to demand equal protection of the law and operate my own professional (with a compensated dealer, and in a commercial operation) poker room outside of Indian Country.
I agree with Kentop though. People should research and investigate and form their own opinions about what is going on and why in the Arizona Poker War. The Indians already fought it and won, and it took ’em 18 years. Off-rez cardrooms are now in their 8th year of open, public “storefront” locations. 50 have come and gone that I’m aware of, and about 20 are operating in the Valley of the Sun today.
Overall, the Tohono O’odham Nation prevailed. They lost a lot of cultural land due to appease the general public of the state of Arizona. We didn’t say anything to that, afterall, it directly benefited us as taxpayers. We give them some “shut-up” money to leave us alone in our air-conditioned homes and businesses. They take the money and purchase 135 acres in Glendale to make up for “Our” comforts related to the American dream. They go and decided to build a casino in the middle of Phoenix; their old ancestral from the Hohokam period… yep; sounds like Karma to me and yes… it is their land from times past.
BIA tribes are not sovereign nations according to Majority opinion handed down in Cherokee vs. Georgia. The Tohono O’odham have been herded around the state like livestock. We flooded their original REZ. The BIA is solely responsible for the 90 percent unemployment astronomical rate of disease including 8 X the national rate for such diseases as diabetes and TB. They have 90 percent unemployment and a rate of alcoholism approaching the unemployment, which is likely a root cause the massive rate for that disease. Genocide is now and always has been the BIA Indian policy. These figures suggest that the Country is well on its way to eradicating the Indian. Shame on the leadership in Arizona for not fight to halt the genocide and giving the tribes fee simple title to their ancestral lands.
Fee simple title to their lands? What? And watch the federal government’s sanctioned criminal organized crime cabal go to Native Americans? After all the rigamarole Congress and the Courts have had to do backpedaling to “fix” the Indian Removal Act and Jackson’s insurgency? Sure, makes sense on paper Lee, but it’ll never happen… it could, but nobody gives a damn about the silent minority that lives on The Rez. Nobody ever goes to The Rez except to the BIA casinos anyway, and those don’t look too shabby. I guess that’s also part of the legacy of genocide. I guess I’m guilty too. Shame on me. 🙁 Um… diet coke please.
I worked WITH an Indian casino in Oregon, I know. The ass’t manager referred to opening a new casino in a brand new neighborhood as “giving a gift of cancer.” After consulting with the resort’s Security officer who told me, one year after opening all the crime stats you can think of leap frogged including rape, robbery and divorce, including parking lot shottings, I’d say prepare for everything. Wharton School did a rather dispassionate study on same. Look it up. It’s ugly.
Do you have title or date for the Wharton study? I would very much like to read it. By the way Kentop, the Indian Removal Act was not the result of a war. It was and is theft. With diabetics and TB rates 8 times the National average, not too mention astronomical rates for all other diseases, including a a suicide rate 3 times the national average, it is fair to call the BIA reservations America’s killing fields. There was no Indian War the policy remains the byproduct of Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act. Why are you so afraid to give the tribes fee simple title to their land?