Indian Tribes Hide Behind Screens of Money

In a recent move to further their public image, Table Mountain Casino donated a stunning $10 million to the California State University, Fresno Library expansion project.  Their single donation will cover nearly 10% of the total construction costs.  This has inspired the University President John Welty to ask the CSU Board of Trustees to authorize naming one section of the library for the Tribe.

Two months ago, the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians struck a deal with the Fresno Grizzlies, Fresno's Triple A Baseball team to purchase the naming rights to their home at Grizzly Stadium.  In what has been billed as the most expensive naming rights in Triple A history, the Tribe signed the deal for $16 million over 15 years to call the stadium Chukchansi Park. The Fresno City Council was jumping for joy over the deal as the stadium's banker.  The deal has virtually guaranteed that the Grizzly owners will be able to pay their rent to the city for the next 15 years!

These deals are huge public relations bonanza's for the most part and they are cleverly employed to distract the general public from the darker side of the Tribe's dealings in the area.  In the case of Table Mountain and Chukchansi, they are both guilty of "genocide on paper" from their disenrollment activities and their refusal to allow qualified and legally entitled members into the Tribes.

The Tribes are also hiding the fact that they have members who are still living below the poverty line as of today, yet they are out giving away millions of dollars to the state and to the city. What is wrong with this picture? Why aren't they helping their own people? The answer is simple. They don't care about them. They are doing everything they can to kick them out (Chukchansi) or not let them in (Table Mountain) so that the remaining "true members" can become filthy rich while their own brethren are left out in the cold.

In the paper today, I noted an article concerning a group of Indians who live in the New Orleans region and have yet to receive any assistance from the federal government.  A Tribal leader had organized a drive to bring them clothing, food and other critical gear but he didn't have he gas money to drive down to them.  Isn't it astonishing that the Indian gaming industry is bringing in over $23 Billion a year and yet there are still Indians in this country that are living in squallor, that can't get help even during emergencies because none of these rich and powerful Tribes want to give out gas money?

The Seminole Indian Tribe in Florida was noted for not offering any assistance to the Gulf Coast Tribes that were still in need of help.  Instead, they purchased the Hard Rock Hotel corporation for $965 million and are trying to buy the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas for another $330 million. That kind of money could buy a lot of blankets, bread and shelter.  The fact of the matter is that the Tribes who have Casino operations are under no obligation to help other Tribes out if they don't want to.  It's a sad day for Indian Country.

What should concern the average citizen is the fact that the Indian Tribes also don't have to answer to anyone else either.  Today, Indian Tribes are virtually above the law in several areas: civil rights, labor laws, financial disclosure laws, and taxes to name a few.  If you go to an Indian Casino, you are no longer protected by American laws the minute you drive onto the reservation or rancheria.  You cannot sue the Tribe if you are injured or if your property is damaged (some states have minimum insurance coverages built into their Compacts, but the Tribe isn't obligated to cover anything beyond the policy limits).

If you go to work for an Indian Casino, you no longer are protected by the Labor laws of the United States. You no longer are protected by the civil rights laws of the United States. You can be harassed, you can be treated unfairly because you are white, black, asian, gay or female. And, you can't take the Tribe to court.

Now, the Tribe's are trying to get the government to stop all oversight of their finances inside the Casinos operated by them. The NIGC is reeling from recent rulings of the courts that have hampered their ability to make sure that the Casino's are operated in a fair and proper manner.  The courts are interpreting the NIGC law to strip them of their oversight power, stating that the Congress intended the Tribe's to work with the States for oversight.

What the court didn't take into consideration was the fact that most of the Tribes had already negotiated limited oversight by their State citing that they didn't need redundant review since the federal NIGC was already covering them.  With this ruling, the NIGC now has to go to Congress to get the law changed.  The NIGC will use the fact that their inspectors have discovered several thousand violations of current laws when inspecting Indian Casinos as support for their argument that oversight is necessary for the good of the Tribe and of the public that comes into the Casino.  However not all Tribes see it that way.

What we are witnessing is an unprecedented deferral of authority and power to Indian Tribes around the country.  With the blind ignorance of the federal courts, Indian Tribal Councils are empowered to act as the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches of the Tribal government.  The Tribal governments are immune from lawsuits from the general public and from their own members as well.  The Tribe's are allowed to select which federal laws they wish to follow, and they can even break those laws in certain circumstances.  In many Tribes, the governments have turned into Dictatorships, ruling their people with iron fists as a result of the lack accountability to anyone. Now, the Tribe's want freedom from any auditing or oversight into their financials from their Casino's. 

Tribes are also still being given grants and other monies from the federal government for use in housing and education programs.  They are able to draw the same amounts that a non-gaming Tribe would get.  Recently, a Tribe sued HUD for insisting that the Tribe follow the program guidelines that dictate how the money is to be utilized.  The Tribe insisted that they should be able to hand out the HUD money any way they saw fit.  HUD didn't agree so they cut off their drawdowns.  Several Tribes also feel that they should not be obligated to follow the Civil Rights requirements that are part of the federal grants.  These Tribe's are literally trying to opt out of the Constitution while taking our tax dollars to give to their hand picked memberships. What will be next?

The Tribe' are the only groups in the United States that are set up with land, bank vaults full of money called Casino's and immunity from virtually every potential lawsuit that could be thrown at them.  The Tribe's are allowed to violate the rights of their memberships and your rights as well, all with the blessing of the federal government.  With the millions of dollars coming into the Casino operations, many gaming Tribes have been actively disenrolling large groups of their members so that the ruling families can become filthy rich at the expense of their own people.

The fact that the Tribes have become so corrupted is something that must be addressed by the Congress immediately before they are given even more authority over the people that visit the Casino's (think about being jailed on a reservation without your protections as an American citizen).  It's up to the general public to shine a light on this issue.

One way that the public can help is to stop spending their money inside the Casino's owned by Indians.  Another way to help is to stop letting the Tribe's make large donations of cash to public organizations such as schools and city governments so that they can get their name on the building.  The Tribe's are not philanthropists.  The don't care about the general public unless the public isn't spending their rent money inside their Casino.  The Tribes employ professional public relations firms that tell them the best methods for winning the public over and keeping them distracted from wondering what the Tribe is doing.  The public needs to realize that this is the case and fight back!

Don't you wish that the federal government would declare you to be above virtually every civil law on the books, give you a casino, allow you to decide who will remain in your family without any of them being allowed to challenge your decision in court and tell you that you can stop federal inspectors from checking in on the books, leaving you wide open to pilfer the monies from the Casino with no worries.  This is the reality of Tribal governments today.  It has to stop.  The Tribes cannot be allowed to behave like dictorships inside the borders of the United States.  Only Congress can institute change and they are going to be hard pressed to do so with Tribal lobbying that runs into the millions of dollars.  So it is up to you, the general Public to force Congress to do what's right.

It's time for the Tribes to no longer be given carte blanche with their immunity from lawsuits, immunity from federal oversights and immunity from federal civil rights laws.  The members of these Tribes are also American citizens, and as such they should be held accountable just like any other citizen would be for violating the Constitutional rights of another person.  It will be up to you to tell your Congressman just that.  Once the Tribe's are brought down to the same status as the rest of us, and they are required to accept all of the people who are descendents of the ancestral group, I would whole-heartedly support the Tribe's getting their names on a building.  Until that day however, its gotta be NO WAY!  Help me make this message heard!  Call your newspaper, call your Congressman, just make sure you call someone!

Let's help get Indian Country back in order before it's too late.