New TV ad by San Manuel tribe attacks Schwarzenegger

LOS ANGELES -- One month after supporting a defeated ballot initiative campaign, the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians continued pushing television commercials attacking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's efforts to collect revenues from California tribes.

The second in a series of ads aired statewide this week, saying the governor has not been fair in demanding that "tribal governments pay three times more taxes than any other business."

That statement was a stab at Schwarzenegger's ongoing negotiations with tribes to pay as much as 25 percent of their gambling revenues to the state in exchange for rights to operate additional slot machines.

California businesses are taxed 8.84 percent, an amount Proposition 70 proposed tribes to pay in exchange for having unlimited gambling rights on their reservations. Only 24 percent of Nov. 2 voters supported it.

San Manuel, which contributed more than to the initiative campaign, plans to spend millions more producing similar ads, said tribal Chairman Deron Marquez.

"This commercial is basically saying tribes have never used tax in the state of California for any of our programs, but the governor feels the need to get 25 percent from us to fix the ills of California," Marquez said in a recent phone interview.

Marquez said the ads seek to educate people about tribal sovereignty and to address statements by Schwarzenegger -- who said publicly that tribes were ripping off California. There will be several more new ads through 2007, he said.

Schwarzenegger spokesman Vince Sollitto disputed claims by San Manuel of unfairness.

"What the governor wants is for California's Indian tribes to make a fair contribution of gaming revenues in exchange for the monopoly the state has given them," he said. "Some have, some haven't. This tribe is in the latter category."

A distinguished Californian recently wrote:

"When California was admitted to the Union in 1850, the estimated Indian population of this state numbered some 150,000.

One of the first statutory acts of this legislature was to offer a bounty on Indian scalps.

From 1850 to 1863, state law provided for the indenture of California Indians.

Indian property was free for the taking because Indians weren’t permitted to testify in court. It was impossible to prosecute any crimes against them.

In this very body, State Senator J.J. Warner spoke for many at the time when he said: “... there is no place within the territory of the United States in which to locate them ... better, far better, to drive them at once into the ocean, or bury them in the land of their birth."

And by the mid-1870’s, the Indian population had fallen to less than 30,000.

Following the Indian wars of the 1870’s, Congress established the Bureau of Indian Affairs in major part to protect the survivors of these predations from further pillage and plunder at the hands of state and local governments and vigilante groups and to protect their welfare on the remote and desolate reservations to which they had been banished.

Their sovereignty was guaranteed. That was simple – it cost us nothing. What the Indians were able to make on their sovereign reservations they were allowed to keep. The reservations became desolate islands of refuge from state and local governments that sought to tax or regulate them.

And when for generations they lived hand-to-mouth in isolation, the state didn’t begrudge the meager earnings they made from selling trinkets to tourists.

Coming to California in 1965 as a boy, I remember the squalor and poverty – the tin shacks out on the highways where they sold sun-bleached bottles, rattlesnake skins, sun-dried cattle skulls, beaded vests and polished stones.

And after experimenting with all manner of enterprise, these tribes finally found a way to make a living off the flinty land they had been left.

And now they’re doing very well. In fact, they’re doing extremely well. So well, in fact, that the same state that plundered their ancestors of their land, their belongings and their earnings turns a hungry and covetous eye toward them once again.

The wheel has come full circle. And the question is, how will this generation of legislators respond?

Shall we open these reservations to a new breed of special interests that seek to exert power over them? Shall we employ high-priced lawyers to devise intricate legal constructions to part them of their long-delayed but new-found riches?

Or are we going to honor the commitments that were made to these nations a century ago – that the earnings of Indians on Indian land are to be used for the welfare of the Indians without interference by state and local government?

There is a substantial inclination toward the former course of action among many in our state. Of course, we’re more gentile these days. We’re not going to kill anybody.

But the fact is the Indians have money and we want it. Indeed, this is the central and core fact from which this entire question arises. The Indians have money and we want it. Dress it up any way you like – that is the central fact of this case.

If they were still selling desert curiosities out on I-10 we wouldn’t be having this discussion and we all know it. The Indians have money and we want it.

The compacts before us strip the inalienable sovereignty of the tribes involved. It is true that a few of the tribes have been willing to do so under the extreme political duress of threats that would cost them even more.

But the vast majority of the tribes are willing to stand and fight. For my part, I intend to stand and fight with them.

Sovereignty is a natural right of these nations that cannot be alienated. To force these tribes – under duress -- to surrender that sovereignty in order to exercise rights that were guaranteed them more than a century ago is not only wrong – it is shameful.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Senate – this is our generation’s test. Let us meet that test with honor."

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