California Governor Fights Indian Casino Expansion(The Indians are ripping us off)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a warning for state voters: "The Indians are ripping us off."

Schwarzenegger has taken up the line to convince them to reject a tribe-backed initiative on the Nov. 2 ballot that would allow rapid expansion of American Indian casinos in the nation's most populous state and derail the governor's own effort to manage casino growth.

Some critics say the governor is going too far with his campaign -- tapping a deep vein of hostility that dates back to the settlers' conquest of the U.S. West.

"His statement touches on racism," said Virgil Moorehead, chairman of the Big Lagoon Rancheria tribe in northern California. "It's so uneducated and so far-fetched to say that we are ripping off the state."

Added Victor Rocha, an American Indian who edits a Web site related to casino gambling: "I don't think it is racist but it sure fans the flames of racism by going and saying that and just having that type of hatred of Native Americans."

American Indian casinos have expanded dramatically across the United States since the late 1980s following court rulings and new laws.

The expansion helped some tribes rise from poverty, but it also triggered a backlash. Schwarzenegger made casino payments to the state an issue in his run for governor last year, saying tribes were not paying their fair share.

"There always has been resentment of any special thing that the Indians seemed to have, whether it was their land or whether it was business concessions," said Robert Berkhofer, author of a 1978 book on American Indians. "In California there is lots of residual racial antipathy."

Schwarzenegger spokesman Vince Sollitto said the governor's comments about Indians "ripping us off" referred to tribes that back Proposition 70, which would allow the expansion of casinos in return for payments on par with state corporate taxes.

Schwarzenegger earlier this year struck a deal with five tribes to guarantee payments by Indians, who have a monopoly on slot machines. The ballot measure would nullify that deal and set the payments at the corporate rate of 8.84 percent.

It also would allow tribes to sign contracts with the state to operate as many slot machines as they want on their land and introduce roulette and craps, both of which are now banned in California.

"The basic thing that Indian gaming has done is raise the salience of some very wealthy tribes at the expense of an accurate picture of what's going on in Indian country," said Jonathan Taylor, a research fellow at the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development.

Nearly half of the roughly 500,000 self-described Native Americans living on reservations did not have casino gambling, according to the 2000 census, he said.

The National Indian Gaming Commission, a federal regulatory agency, says 330 Indian casinos nationwide brought in $16.7 billion in 2003, up about $2 billion each year since 2000.

Schwarzenegger is seeking to negotiate deals with tribes to pay the state more of what casinos make -- perhaps 15 to 25 percent, he said this week. But he has not explained how he reached those figures or why the casinos should pay more than the standard corporate tax.

"What we don't want to do is make it unfair where they grab the billions and billions of dollars from the people of California without paying anything," he told KGO radio in San Francisco.

States have limited influence over tribes, which have a sovereign status roughly the same as the states. That raises tensions that go deep in U.S. history.

"There is this old idea that Indians have wealth and that they have too much of it and we ought to determine how much they get," said Taylor.

"The same with Prudhoe Bay oil money. I never heard of any resentment for that good fortune."

Of course you didn't hear of any resentment. For years, AK had a "reverse" income tax -- you didn't pay, they paid you from the oil revenues; all you had to be was tax filer! My Lilly white, AK resident, squadron commander in Tucson took great joy in finding his $5k tax "refund" check in the mail from the Prudhoe Bay loot. Just the same as any Indian/Eskimo filer got!

Here in AZ, the various casino owning tribes give some $200mil a year to the state solely through their own largesse. The rest of the profits go to their own and other tribes for the betterment of housing, health care, education, etc. on the rez's. And that ain't enough -- the state still wants more!

In years past, AZ has had several initiiatives on the ballot to allow casino gambling statewide. The rationale for such has invariably been "Look how much the Indians are making..." The initiatives have been routinely rejected with the popular opinion being that "'They' have been so abused for so long, 'they' deserve what they can make."

And while the state pushes to reject such initiatives, it wants the tribes to "contribute" even more to the state coffers. Sounds kinda' like extortion doesn't it? To my knowledge, this state gives not a nickel to any tribe but they sure are anxious to get their hands on some of that Indian casino money. Sort of a "gotta keep them folks poor and out of sight down on the rez" attitude.

One would do well to remember that the American Indian is probably the only race against whom whose own national government (in which they had no voice declared "extermination" as a policy.

Before one jumps on that last statement, remember "Jew" is a religious affiliation NOT a race. Any forensic anthropologist can tell you that -- your bones can tell if you were an Indian or a Caucasian but not whether or not you were a Jew.

The American Indians are likely the most abused race in history. Jesse Jackson et al. are demanding "reparations" for the evils of slavery. If such "payments" are justified, let it be but let's go on a "first abused, first paid" basis. Pay the Indians for lands stolen, relocation, rightful revenues stolen...

And before those of you who want to jump in claiming that you, your mother, aunt, great aunt or great grand whatever is/was a "Cherokee Princess" just stow it. The Cherokee Nation has never had a king, queen, prince or princess!

sorry for the mini-rant here but you sorta' got me started...

Of courth I am a Cherokee printheth. I guess that makes me a little light in the old moccathins. Actually I lived with and around Cherokees for a number of years but I am one of six Americans that don't claim Cherokee ancestry. Those old guys must have had twelve inch coup sticks.

Tain't largess that gets the Indians to fork over the 200 really large to the state. Federal law requires that they reach an accord or compact with the state in order to run a casino. No money, no compact. No compact, no casino. Pay to play.

The money is a moron tax to offset some of the deleterious effects on communities. Look what the Apaches have done to the good citizens of Globe. They have them flayed, filleted and staked out on the ant hill and the good citizens don't even realize it. Every week thay are lined up to gamble their welfare checks at the casino. The Apaches could have a big sign "Free scalping. Line up here." and those slugs would be fighting to be first. I'm fer the Apach.

Money for schools and houses sounds good but it's just a cover. BIA isn't lilly white (so to speak) but the corruption on the reservations is endemic. Peter McDonald sold his people out and he sold them out cheap. When he flipped the Big Bo he cost the Dine millions and he pocketed less than 5%. I don't remember if Ned Anderson went to the big house or if he was sentenced to life in San Carlos. Buck Kitcheyan did hard time. Valasquez Sneezy looks like he may be in well deserved trouble. The Sicilian tribe is cleaning up.

The state is looking at the possibility of non-Indian gaming but it is not aimed at the Indians. They are looking at the Arizona dollars lost to Las Vegas and the possibility of attracting some of Las Vegas's business. Resorts in Sedona and Tucson were prewired for the possibility of gaming. Supposedly it was one reason the Hopi bought Los Abrigados.

The rise of Indian gaming actually hurt the cause. They are snagging some of the dollars that used to go to Nevada. The stories of Sedona resorts being prewired also hurt. No one wants red neon in the red rocks. Finally, no one wants to cross the Mormons. They are still a potent voting block.

One would do well to remember that the American Indian is probably the only race against whom whose own national government (in which they had no voice declared "extermination" as a policy

Poppycock. There was never a time in the history of this country that the U.S. Government did not have the power to exterminate the Indians. They did not nor did they attempt to. From the time of the founding to the end of the Indian Wars R. J. Rummel extimates that the total number of Indians killed by military action at around 1500. Fewer than 15 per year. In the middle of this period the U.S. fought a war that cost the lives of some 600,000 of its own people. Extermination is a myth.

During the Civil War the Dakotas rampaged in Minnesota. They killed 400 - 800 men women and children while losing a handful of their own. They were defeated and captured. If there was ever an excuse for extermination, this was it. Thirty-eight of over 2,000 were hanged. Thirty-eight.

In Arizona, a focal point of the Indian wars from 1872 to 1886, there were only two incidents with high Indian casualties, the Aravaipa massacre of Eskminzin's band which was carried out by Mexican, Indian and white vigilantes and the battle of Big Cave above Canyon Lake, which was a military operation. The Aravaipa massacre probably delayed Arizona statehood by forty years. In the cave battle Indians and whites begged the Apaches to surrender but they would not. Even the battle of Big Dry Wash had fewer than a dozen Indian deaths.

Sand Creek was carried out by a demented Chivington and a bunch of drunks from Denver, the Colorado "militia". Washita should have and almost did cost Custer his command. The Trail of Tears was carried out over the objections of the U.S. Supreme Court.

"They did not nor did they attempt to."

Hmmmm....

As Hans Koning says in The Conquest of America: How The Indian Nations Lost Their Continent says:

“From the beginning, the Spaniards saw the native Americans as natural slaves, beasts of burden, part of the loot. When working them to death was more economical than treating them somewhat humanely, they worked them to death.

“The English, on the other hand, had no use for the native peoples. They saw them as devil worshippers, savages who were beyond salvation by the church, and exterminating them increasingly became accepted policy.” [6, pg.14]

The British arrived in Jamestown in 1607. By 1610 the intentional extermination of the native population was well along. As David E. Stannard has written:

“Hundreds of Indians were killed in skirmish after skirmish. Other hundreds were killed in successful plots of mass poisoning. They were hunted down by dogs, ‘blood-Hounds to draw after them, and Mastives [mastiffs] to seize them.’

“Their canoes and fishing weirs were smashed, their villages and agricultural fields burned to the ground. Indian peace offers were accepted by the English only until their prisoners were returned; then, having lulled the natives into false security, the colonists returned to the attack.

“It was the colonists’ expressed desire that the Indians be exterminated, rooted ‘out from being longer a people upon the face of the Earth.’ In a single raid the settlers destroyed corn sufficient to feed four thousand people for a year.

“Starvation and the massacre of non-combatants was becoming the preferred British approach to dealing with the natives.” [3, pg.106]

In Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey extermination was officially promoted by a “scalp bounty” on dead Indians.

“Indeed, in many areas it [murdering Indians] became an outright business,” writes historian Ward Churchill (A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present[5, pg.182])

Indians were defined as subhumans, lower than animals.

George Washington compared them to wolves, “beasts of prey” and called for their total destruction. (Koning[3, pgs.119-120])

Andrew Jackson — whose [innocent-looking] portrait appears on the U.S. $20 bill today — in 1814 said:

“supervised the mutilation of 800 or more Creek Indian corpses — the bodies of men, women and children that [his troops] had massacred — cutting off their noses to count and preserve a record of the dead, slicing long strips of flesh from their bodies to tan and turn into bridle reins.” (Koning [5, pg.186] )

The English policy of extermination — another name for genocide — grew more insistent as settlers pushed westward:
• In 1851 the Governor of California officially called for the extermination of the Indians in his state. (Koning[3, pg.144])
• On March 24, 1863, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver ran an editorial titled, “Exterminate Them.”
• On April 2, 1863, the Santa Fe New Mexican advocated “extermination of the Indians.” (Koning[5, pg.228])
• In 1867, General William Tecumseh Sherman said:
“We must act with vindictive earnestness against the [Lakotas, known to whites as the Sioux] even to their extermination, men, women and children.” (Koning[5, pg.240])

In 1891, L. Frank Baum (gentle author of “The Wizard Of Oz”) wrote in the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer (Kansas) that the army should “finish the job” by the “total annihilation” of the few remaining Indians.

The U.S. did not follow through on Baum’s macabre demand, for there really was no need. By then the native population had been reduced to 2.5% of its original numbers and 97.5% of the aboriginal land base had been expropriated and renamed “The land of the free and the home of the brave.” Today we can see the remnant cultural arrogance of Christopher Columbus and Captain John Smith shadowed in the cult of the “global free market” which aims to eradicate indigenous cultures and traditions world-wide, to force all peoples to adopt the ways of the U.S.
While Koning did make mention of the English system of exterminating entire bands via an early form of biological warfare, he failed to adequately make mention of such policies as:

Relocation – Entire tribes/cultures were forcibly removed from their traditional and familiar lands and ways of life to completely foreign lands (the Indian Territory) and there were “dropped” to more or less fend for themselves not to mention the thousands (some 2500 or more on the Trail of Tears alone) that perished in the process. And even once they were established there, the whites were allowed into the territories. Several plains Indian tribes depended almost exclusively on the bison for food, clothing, shelter and even the droppings provided fuel for their fires – little, if anything went to waste. Once the white man discovered this wonderful creature, they hunted it to the verge of extinction and almost everything was left to waste…

Assimilation – “Let’s just make ‘em ‘White’”. Countless numbers of Indian children were uprooted from family and home and sent to boarding schools where they would learn to be “white.”

Termination – This was the 1950s and 60s policy of the government’s merely declaring that some tribes just merely ceased to have status as tribes and the tribal members no longer had status as Indians.

And just to mention the Indian Wars where, when one is engaged in pitched battle, the goal at the time is to exterminate the enemy at hand though driving him from the battlefield or achieving a total surrender is acceptible. It is interesting to note that in the wars in AZ alone more Medals of Honor were awarded than there were on D-Day in 1944! Those Indian War troopers weren’t doing their utmost to annihilate the enemy?

Through all of the above, “Hundreds upon hundreds of native tribes with unique languages, learning, customs, and cultures had simply been erased from the face of the earth, most often without even the pretense of justice or law.” (Koning)

If that’s not extermination, I don’t know what is.

If you are looking to Koning and Churchill for objective history, you are looking in the wrong place.

The Spanish did look on the Natives as potential slaves. It created a moral examination back home. The Crown declared a three year moratorium on slavery while they decided the issue of whether or not the Indians had souls and whether they were entitled to the full rights of man. The answer was yes to both questions. It was not always followed but it was another major crack in the foundations of slavery.

In the broad scope of English colonization there was comerce and coexistance with Indians and there were conflicts. The calls for extermination were a frequent response to Indian outrages. The English were as quick to ally themselves with Indians as they were to fight them. The "bilogical warfare" charge hangs on a slim thread, based exclusively on two letters, one from and one to Lord Amherst. It may or may not have happened. These people didn't know what a germ was. If it happened it was a singular incident.

But that was the colonial period. From the constitution's ratification in 1786 is what we are responsible for. George Washington's attitude can be seen in his fifth State of the Union address:

After they shall have provided for the present emergency, it will merit their most serious labors to render tranquillity with the savages permanent by creating ties of interest. Next to a rigorous execution of justice on the violators of peace, the establishment of commerce with the Indian nations in behalf of the United States is most likely to conciliate their attachment. But it ought to be conducted without fraud, without extortion, with constant and plentiful supplies, with a ready market for the commodities of the Indians and a stated price for what they give in payment and receive in exchange.

The U.S. sought peace but those that committed barbarous acts would be hunted down and killed.

Jackson comes closest to your preconception but even he sought expulsion, not extermination. The Supreme Court ruled that his actions were illegal and unconstitutional but had no power to enforce the decision. The long term benefit was that subsequent actions by the executve would be held to judicial review but that did not save the Cherokee.

During the conflicts in Arizona the MOH was generally regarded as a good conduct award. Often they were given for general bravery over a period of time. At that time they were given out rather freely, in fact so freely that later close to 1000 would be rescinded by Congress. I think that about 10 or 12 were awarded to Apache scouts.

The majority of Indian engagements were light skirmishes or ambushes involving few combatants. At the time Indian depradations were so numerous that it was said that there was no white in Arizona that had not had a friend or relative killed by Apaches. To stop the murders the army declared that the reservations (Camp Verde, San Carlos and Fort Apache) were refuges but that any Apache caught off the reservations would be presumed to be hostile. The army held the bulk of the Apaches on the reservations and could have killed them at will. Even known hostiles and murderers were safe on the reservations.

Around Denver in 1863 there were hundreds of murders of innocent whites. At one time the city was completely cut off and no one could enter or leave. This was the prelude to the Sand Creek Massacre. Black Kettle's band was not innocent although it was the innocents that would eventually pay. There were few men in the camp and at the same time there were dozens of murders up and down the eastern slope. The men from that camp weren't down at the sports bar.

In Arizona there were calls for the extermination of the Indians. The murders were so frequent and so numerous that it is quite understandable that the people were calling for revenge. But the extermination never happened. Even Geronimo, when he was captured in 1886, had to be whisked to Holbrook and put on a train to keep him out of the hands of the Pima County sheriff, who had an indictment for the murder of a man and his eight year old son. The old drunk should have hanged.

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