Casino rights bonanza fuels bitter tribal feud

THEY are enjoying unprecedented wealth, earning easy money from the lucrative gambling trade which now funds their previously impoverished communities.

But with their new-found wealth has come misery for Native American tribes across the US who are being torn apart amid the scramble to stake a claim in hundreds of new casinos opening on their reservations.

The industry is now bringing 2.2bn a year to reservations in California alone thanks to a change in the state’s law five years ago which gave tribes exclusive rights to operate casinos on their land.

However now families have been split and tribes are in disarray as unprecedented numbers of people claim Native American blood in an effort to cash in on the tax-free bounty.

Some families living on the same reservations are now in dispute, and one tribe is to resort to DNA testing in an effort to prove membership. One fifth of the 61 tribes in California with gambling agreements are now in dispute.

The Pechanga tribe has a lavish resort and 2,000 slot-machine casino and nets an estimated 103m annually. That money goes towards health, social, education, and housing programmes, with some parcelled out as individual stipends to every member.

Before the casino opened, the Pechanga received about 15 to 30 applications a year from people seeking enrolment, according to tribal documents. But now they are overwhelmed by more than 450 applications a year and the same story is repeated across the country.

In response, many tribes are freezing their membership lists. As a result hundreds of Indians, many of whom have for years considered themselves part of a tribe, have been ejected or are being disenrolled.

Laura Wass, a spokeswoman for the American Indian Movement, says that, today, about 2,000 Indians in California alone face disenrolment action.

Jon Velie, an attorney representing some of the disenrolled Pechanga, said: "People are being voted out of their tribe and losing their identity so others can benefit from monies."

He claims individuals on the enrolment committee are trying to consolidate political power, control the key leadership jobs, and then illegally increase their wealth by reducing the number of tribal members eligible for shares of casino profits.

And he added that he believes that the enrolment committee members are themselves ‘iffy’ members of the tribe. "It’s a classic case of non-Indians trying to kick the real Indians out."

So far, the California courts have followed the law that says tribes, as sovereign nations, are shielded from lawsuits filed against them in state or federal courts - and have refused to rule on the Pechanga case or order a restraining order on the enrolment committee, as plaintiffs have demanded.

But Riverside Superior Court Judge Charles Field has not thrown out the case indicating to some that he might take jurisdiction in the future.

The casino dispute has had a profound effect in the Pechanga community. The elders nod coldly when they see one another at tribal gatherings, certain children are ostracised at the reservation playground, and housewives shuffle quickly down the aisles at Albertsons supermarket without as much as a greeting to each other.

It all started sometime in late 2002 when the enrolment committee moved to throw some 130 members out of the 1,200-strong tribe.

The members targeted are furious. "They did it to our face," said John Gomez Jr, one of the plaintiffs in the suit filed two months ago against enrolment committee members. "They presented a memo saying there are ‘issues’ about our ancestor Manuela Miranda. False and absurd! We know who we are."

According to the Pechanga constitution, full membership requires proof of lineal descent from an original Pechanga member and a family line contained in the official enrolment book. Gomez and other plaintiffs trace their lineage to Manuela Miranda, granddaughter of undisputed Pechanga headman Pablo Apish. Most of the plaintiffs have enjoyed full membership rights and lived on or around the reservation in Temecula, California for more than 25 years.

But now, committee members say they have found that Miranda, who was only half Pechanga according to the US Bureau of Indian Affairs, moved off the reservation and cut her ties to the tribe 80 years ago.

"Cut her ties? No. No and no," insisted Gomez. "At show-and-tell at elementary school I would bring in pictures of my Pechanga ancestors," he said.

Gomez grew up in northern California and moved to Temecula in 1997 with his wife, Jennifer. "I would tell stories of my dad and his cousins and their ‘Indian tricks and games’. To have someone suddenly tell you, ‘You are not Pechanga and you never were,’ is very hurtful."

The threat of disenrolment as well as being a grave insult is a major hit to the wallet. The members in question stand to lose more than 67,000 each a year in casino profits and bonuses, as well as health insurance and other benefits.

Yet most Indian law experts are sceptical that the California court will step further into such a bitter dispute.

"Membership disputes go to the core of a tribe’s status and sovereignty," said Colin Cloud Hampson, a San Diego lawyer specialising in federal Indian law. "The tribe should be the sole determiner of membership and the Supreme Court has upheld this setup."

Carole Goldberg, an Indian law professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, agreed: "This is a case worth watching," she said. "But I don’t see how a judge is going to legally interfere here. This is a question of who belongs. And that is clearly an internal matter."

A version of this article first appeared in the Christian Science Monitor