|
Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 16:30:03 GMT -5
-367- with it the real hope for the Indian. The nonwhite peoples of the world have been asserting themselves in recent years, and the long domination by Europeans of Asia and Africa has been broken. Why should not the American Indian demand more for himself, now that the emperor has been discovered to have no clothes on, the growling dog to have no teeth? The growing strength of such organizations as the NCAI, with their potential for influencing the course of legislation, suggests that Indians are becoming more articulate. In the nineteenth century too few Indians had acquired enough education to be really articulate, and those who had were inclined to identify with the whites and to share the prevailing views on civilizing the Indian. But now that educational opportunities are reaching the reservation Indian, there is hope that a considerable body of educated Indians will emerge who are not alienated from their people and who will insist on a better life for those who choose not to migrate to the cities where young people of all races have traditionally sought jobs. Indians would, of course, be less reluctant to leave the reservation if they could be reasonably sure of a friendly reception elsewhere. This does not mean simply a job for which they are qualified; so long as an Indian is second choice for a job, he has little opportunity to demonstrate his qualifications. And so long as the stereotype of the lazy, unreliable Indian persists, he will be second choice at best. Since it is currently unfashionable to express such racial stereotypes publicly, one seldom encounters this view in books, magazines, or newspapers, but anyone who lives near an Indian reservation or even talks casually with non-Indians in such a community soon hears it expressed. And occasionally it finds its way into print. In 1960, Desert magazine received a letter from a reader protesting against the amount of "Indian rot" published in the magazine. "If you would like to see Indians as they really are," the writer advised, "go up to Parker, Arizona any weekend and hang around the beer joints. Parker is a real Indian town." 7 Discrimination against Indians is an established fact in both Dakotas and exists in less obvious form in Nebraska and Minnesota. Racial prejudice among school children is one of the reasons for the high drop-out rate among Prairie Island Indians attending the Red Wing school, according to a study prepared in 1964. 8 Although the burden of conquering prejudice ____________________ 7 Letter from Will T. Scott, in Desert, XXIII ( October 1960), 4. Scott claimed to know Indians, having lived most of his life in Indian country and shared his blankets with the Apache scouts who were tracking Pancho Villa in 1916. 8 Red Wing Daily Republican Eagle, September 11, 1964. This study was conducted
|
|
|
Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 16:30:58 GMT -5
-368- falls mainly on the non-Indian, there is much that the Indian can do to prove the inaccuracy of sweeping generalizations about his race. Not all of the Indians' unwillingness to leave their reservations is due to fear of discrimination against them elsewhere. Many Indians, like people of other races, feel a deep attachment to their home territory, however limited its resources may be and however dreary it may look to the casual visitor. Whatever its limitations, the reservation is a place where an Indian can be an Indian, where he does not have to adapt himself to alien manners and alien values. This desire to remain an Indian is something else that white Americans find difficult to understand, perhaps because most of them are descended from people who gave up their traditional ways to become Americans. Yet until it is understood, non-Indians cannot fulfill their rightful role in helping the Indian to achieve his destiny. So long as this determination to remain an Indian is thought of in purely negative terms--as sheer stubbornness or as a defense mechanism to cover a sense of inadequacy--the general public will continue to propose solutions that demand a reorientation of the Indian personality along white American lines. The Meriam Report stressed the need to consider the desires of the individual Indian in any policy planning. Specifically, it said, "He who wishes to merge into the social and economic life of the prevailing civilization of this country should be given all practicable aid and advice in making the necessary adjustments. He who wants to remain an Indian and live according to his old culture should be aided in doing so." 9 Under the Collier administration this philosophy was adopted and practiced, but during the 1950's attention was concentrated on helping the Indian to leave the reservation and "join the mainstream of American life," to quote the cliché so overused by the advocates of termination and relocation. As long as there are plenty of white Americans who have no desire to "join the mainstream of American life," what wonder is it that an even higher proportion of Indians do not? In a pluralistic society that professes to prize diversity (even while it embraces a surface uniformity), surely there is room for groups as well as individuals who depart noticeably from the norm. Every society ____ by a "committee of welfare, juvenile and school officials." Children questioned said that about 25 per cent of the white children were unfriendly toward Indians; teachers were said to give fair treatment to all. 9 Lewis Meriam et al., The Problem of Indian Administration ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1928), p. 88. The Meriam commission pointed out that unless the Indians who wished to stay Indians were aided, they might become a menace. -369- needs its marginal men--its Thoreaus and its Veblens--who are in it but not of it and hence are in a position to criticize it more perceptively than those who participate fully in it. Can American society not profit from marginal groups as well as marginal men--provided, of course, that they are not marginal simply in the sense of being economically deprived? Indians have often proved shrewd critics of the white world. A body of educated, articulate Indians who remained outside the mainstream of American life could be of incalculable benefit to the society surrounding them. Perhaps Americans would get along better with the rest of the world if they were more frequently reminded that they have in their midst people who do not wholly share the prevailing value system. They need to know that their value system is not the only one that men have found worth embracing. The Sentinel, the organ of the National Congress of American Indians, stated the case well for the preservation of Indian value systems: We must have a variety of real values and differences so that any person has many real options for living in our society. We believe that allowing total development of Indian communities on their own basis will be a major step in providing that variety in American life which is so necessary to a healthy society. 10 Understanding the Indian's point of view and his desire to remain an Indian requires knowledge. Hence perhaps the most important way the white man can help solve the Indian problem is to inform himself on the history and present condition of these people about whom he really knows very little. Indifference and apathy are more serious obstacles to true understanding than outright prejudice, if only because they are vastly more widespread. For every white man who nourishes active hostility toward Indians, there are hundreds who neither know anything about them nor care to know anything. Those who think they know something may only be the victims of myths and stereotypes. To stir people out of their ignorance and complacency is one of the tasks of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In 1948, Gordon Macgregor wrote that an agency superintendent "must always continue to enlighten the general public on Indian affairs for better Indian-white relations, and to overcome the unbelievable amount of mis[in]formation and prejudice about Indians." 11 But superintendents are usually too busy with ______ 10 NCAI Sentinel, XI (Winter 1966), 2. 11 Gordon Macgregor. "The Resources, People and Administration of Fort Berthold Reservation North Dakota," Missouri River Basin Investigations Reports, No. 60, p. 15. Mimeographed ms loaned by the Aberdeen Area Office, Bureau of Indian Affairs. -370- their main job to be able to devote much time to public relations work. The ball must be carried a good share of the time by people outside the Indian Service, people whose access to information may be more limited than that of the Bureau official. In enlightening the general public, as in dispelling prejudice, considerable responsibility rests on the Indian himself. Some forwardlooking tribes are undertaking their own public relations programs. Museums, usually run jointly by the tribe and the Bureau, can be found here and there; newsletters are published by several groups; and of course many Indians contribute letters to newspapers and thus reach a wider audience than they could perhaps reach in any other way. 12 Indians can also help improve their collective image by cooperating, as most do, with serious investigators belonging to other races. Like other people, especially those in lower economic groups, Indians resent anything that looks like snooping into their private affairs, and the line separating a mere frivolous curiosity from a scientific or scholarly interest is sometimes pretty thin. The more thoroughly and objectively their history and contemporary culture are studied, however, the better chance there is that the American public, which finally determines the general course of Indian policy, will awaken from its complacency and lend its support to a sound program. The history of the Santee Sioux is the history of the American Indian. Mutually profitable early contacts with Europeans were followed by a massive onslaught on the native culture, partly deliberate, partly fortuitous. Then came forced land cessions, removal to a reservation, smoldering resentment that erupted in a bloody but abortive protest, vindictive punishment, and a long, dismal period of attempted acculturation, ending in poverty and demoralization. If the outlook has been brighter since 1933, the flicker of hope has by no means yet been fanned into a real flame. Like their past, the future of the Santee Sioux will probably parallel that of the rest of the Indians in this country. A gifted, resilient, durable people, they may yet realize something of their potential if the white man will give them a chance. ____ 12 The anti-Indian tirade that appeared in the letter in Desert magazine elicited a response (among many others) from an Indian who remarked: "The white man looks down on the Indian for some unexplained reason. Those who claim to 'know' Indians take it for granted that some mysterious law of life made them superior to the Indian people--or any other dark skinned race, for that matter." See letter from Jimmie. James , in Desert, XXIII ( December 1960), 6. An agency superintendent, who prefers not to be identified, told the author: "This town is full of 'Indian experts,' who know less about Indians than people a thousand miles away." -371- Epilogue In one respect, Nebraska's Santee Sioux Reservation reached its low point in the early and middle 1960s, when the population dipped below three-hundred. The Santee post office had been discontinued in 1957, there were several vacant buildings in the village, and most of the Indian-owned land (both tribal and allotted) was leased to white farmers. One might have felt safe in predicting that the reservation would soon be abandoned except for a few elderly people who had nowhere else to go. Yet precisely the opposite occurred, with the result that Santee has become a busy, vibrant community, its population and employment opportunities growing, its identity and sense of Indianness revived. Just when and why the turnaround occurred is not entirely clear. It had begun before the end of the 1960s, and it was partly the result of an infusion of federal funds during that decade. A housing project created jobs, which in turn attracted people back to the reservation who had moved to Sioux City, Norfolk, or elsewhere in search of employment. The change was perceptible by 1972, in the form of a flock of new houses on the site of the former agency and the bituminous surfacing of the road from Nebraska State Highway 12 to Santee. These and other changes made it possible to venture the guess that "there [might] be occurring a movement back to the reservation and a revival of a sense of group identity." 1 The revival at Santee has manifested itself in many ways and may be considered under the headings of economic, educational, and cultural (or spiritual) renewal. Although many members of the tribe continue to leave the reservation, temporarily or permanently, to find jobs elsewhere, there are more jobs at home than there were in the early 1960s. Some of these are provided by the educational system: a Head Start program, a kindergarten through twelfth-grade school, and the Santee Campus of the Nebraska Indian Community College. Many people work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Public Health Service, the tribal government, and the state of Nebraska, which contracts with the tribe. Bector Dickinson, a phar- -373- maceutical manufacturer, has a plant on the reservation that employs sixteen people and may increase the number. 2 The tourist industry, centered on Lewis and Clark Lake, has not benefited the tribe greatly thus far, but it holds out promise for the future. Skiing, water sliding, and other sports have been developed commercially by private concerns in the Devil's Nest area, and the tribe, which owns 1,500 acres of land there, has been doing some preliminary negotiating for a share in this enterprise. Unlike the other Santee groups in neighboring states, the Nebraska branch of the tribe has not yet entered the field of commercial gaming, chiefly owing to restrictions placed on gambling by the state. Negotiations were underway in the summer of 1993, however, and it seemed only a matter of time before the tribe would be able to enter this lucrative endeavor that has radically changed the economic condition of so many Indian groups. 3 Construction on a succession of housing projects, most of them carried out in cooperation with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), has been another source of employment. These projects have come in a series of spurts, in 1969-70, 1974-75, and 1980, and have markedly altered the appearance of the Santee community. 4 The largest cluster of houses is located west of the site of the now-vanished Santee Normal Training School, along blacktop streets that wind over the gently rolling landscape. The care with which the houses and lawns are maintained gives the lie to the old stereotyped view, once held by many whites, that Indian dwellings are invariably neglected and acquire a clutter of dead car bodies and other junk. The Nebraska reservation differs from the other Santee reservations in that more use is being made of tribal lands. In 1974 about 2,400 acres were acquired for a tribally owned ranch, which now supports about 600 cattle, mostly cows. Moreover, there has been a sizable increase in the amount of tribal land--from 2,563 acres in 1960 to about 20,000. As tribal officials point out, this is only a fraction of the original 115,000 acres, but at least it represents an improvement in recent decades. 5 All in all, it is estimated that between 200 and 250 people (out of a 1990 reservation population of 740) are employed on or adjacent to the reservation. 6 Although this figure leaves much room for improvement, it does suggest a better state of affairs than prevails on many Indian reservations. Economic development is on the upswing, and if casino gambling comes to Santee, together with a -374- planned expansion of the tribal ranch and a greater share in the tourist potential, the reservation community will be in far better shape than anyone would have expected in the bleak years that preceded the exciting events of the past quarter-century. Except for the Santee Normal Training School, the reservation was without its own educational facilities after the closing of the boarding school in 1909. Although it was served by district schools for many years, the Indian people yearned for their own school, which could follow a curriculum more suited to their children's needs. Their wishes were finally realized in 1974-75, when a school was built at Santee. At first limited to kindergarten through eighth grade, it subsequently added a four-year high school. The needs of at least some of the young people for post-secondary education are met by the fully accredited two-year community college, one of three branches of the Nebraska Indian Community College. Tribal officials, presumably reflecting the wishes of their constituents, would like to see an increase in the amount of specifically Indian cultural materials in the curriculum, especially at the secondary level, taught by native people. 7 As on other Indian reservations, there has been at Santee a rejection of the assimilationist philosophy that dominated Indian policy until the 1930s, if not longer, and a heightened interest in the traditional culture, which, contrary to the beliefs of many whites early in this century, was not dying but only suppressed. An annual powwow is held the third week of June, when many of the 2,260-plus enrolled members who live away from the reservation come "home" and join in the festivities, along with Indians from other reservations. And of course Santees attend and often participate in similar celebrations around the country and in Canada. On a deeper level there is increased interest, especially on the part of young people, in the aboriginal culture that government agents and missionaries tried so hard to stamp out in the late nineteenth century. Tribal leaders have expressed the belief that three or four generations will be needed for the recovery of the old culture and for acceptance by the non-Indian population of their neighbors' right to preserve this culture. 8 Meanwhile, the Indian people are becoming increasingly comfortable in and accepted by the white world around them. In addition, most of them consider as part of their history the missionary culture represented by the Santee Normal Training School, the site of which is regarded as a sort of shrine. The Santee Sioux, if they have not solved all their problems yet--who in -375- our society has?--seem well on their way toward doing so. The recovery evident at Santee is even more strikingly noticeable at the Sisseton, or Lake Traverse, Reservation, where conditions in the 1960s were as dismal as anywhere on the northern Great Plains. A much larger--and growing--population both heightened the seriousness of the problems and enhanced the possibilities for their solution. With help from outside the reservation, the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux have improved their lot to a degree that could scarcely have been imagined in the mid-1960s. And in the process the tribe, seemingly acculturated beyond any hope of reversal in the 1930s, has recovered much of its traditional culture and seems determined to retain it and pass it on to the next generation. From a reservation population of 2,315 in 1960, the tribe has grown to about 5,500, with roughly an equal number of enrolled members living off the reservation. For election purposes, the reservation is divided into seven districts, each containing at least one population center: Old Agency, Big Coulee, Enemy Swim, Long Hollow, Buffalo Lake, Heipa-Veblen, and Lake Traverse. As has been the case ever since the opening of the reservation in 1891, following allotment, the Indian communities are interspersed with white-owned farms and villages predominantly white in population. 9 (The official South Dakota state highway map does not recognize the Sisseton reservation, though it shows all the others in the state except the Yankton Reservation.) A major concern in the 1960s was the land situation. As a legacy of allotment, not much more than 10 percent of the original reservation of nearly a million acres remained in Indian hands. Only 650 acres of this was tribally owned; except for 122 acres of governmentowned land, the rest--109,378 acres--was allotted land, much of it in a tangled heirship status and thus to all practical purposes unusable. After several failed attempts over a period of nearly fifty years, Congress finally passed an heirship bill in 1984. The provisions of the act (Public Law 98-513) limited the inheritance of allotted lands to close relatives and to interests of at least two and half acres (outside municipalities). If there were no close relatives or if the person's interest was less than two and a half acres, the land would go to the tribe. Heirs must also be members of the tribe. Nonmembers would receive only a life estate; upon their decease the land would pass to the tribe. The act also granted the right of eminent domain to the tribe for such purposes as "to eliminate fractional heirship interests. . . . , to consolidate tribal interests in land, to develop agricul- -376- ture and . . . for other public purposes. . . ." As a result of this legislation, there has been a substantial shift of land from individual ownership to tribal ownership. By 1993 the allotted lands were down to about 81,000 acres, the tribal lands up to about 27,000 acres. 10 The land problem at Sisseton has not, of course, been solved. The individual tracts are too small for efficient operation under modern conditions, and so not many Indians even try to farm. But as elsewhere, the land is perceived as the most valuable resource the Indians have left, and they are determined to hang on to it. There are plans for using it more productively, too. In the summer of 1993 a proposal for setting up a tribally owned cattle operation was being considered. At the same time it was planned to bring 65 buffalo to the reservation in the fall. 11 Fortunately, the land is not the only potential source of income available to the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux, many of whom find employment in industry, both on and off the reservation. Besides the various types of government jobs mentioned in connection with Santee, there are two small industrial enterprises on the reservation: Power Sentry, an electronics plant, and Dakota Western, a plastic bag factory that employs about 23 people. Watertown, a city of 15,649 inhabitants about sixty miles from the center of the reservation, has a quilting factory and a chicken processing plant; the latter has proposed operating a bus for the convenience of Indian employees living at home. 12 The Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux have also joined the great number of Indian groups that have taken up commercial gaming as a source of income. Agency Bingo, on the reservation, and the Dakota Sioux Casino in Watertown are owned and operated by the tribe. The former employs 45 Indians, the latter 153. Besides the employment opportunities offered by these facilities, receipts are used to underwrite tribal programs. 13 The Lake Traverse Reservation has undergone changes of a highly visible nature since the 1960s. In 1974 the agency, which had been in the town of Sisseton ever since 1923, was moved to a site near the old Good Will Mission, where there was still a Presbyterian church. This site, renamed Agency Village, became the principal center of activity on the reservation, with a large housing project, the tribal offices, Agency Bingo, a store called the Trading Post containing a postal station, a coin laundry, a credit union, the educational complex, and other conveniences. Although some tribal facilities are in Sisseton, the creation of Agency Village has given the Indian peo- -377-
|
|
|
Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 16:31:42 GMT -5
ple a political, economic, and cultural center that they can regard as their own and not part of the predominantly non-Indian town. The educational complex referred to alone consists of the Tiospa Zina Tribal School, offering a course of study from kindergarten through twelfth grade, and the Sisseton Wahpeton Community College, an accredited two-year institution. The school was started in 1981 (though the present physical plant came along later) and from the beginning included both elementary and secondary work. The school has designed its curriculum to suit the needs of its students, including an emphasis on native culture. One issue of the newspaper project a list of thirteen Dakota words, with pronunciations, that the TZTS students were learning. Unlike its counterpart at Santee, the community college is an independent institution, not a branch of a larger system. 14 Inasmuch as a lack of decent living quarters was a long-standing deficiency on the Lake Traverse Reservation, much effort in recent years has gone into housing projects. Besides the new houses at Agency Village, there are similar, if smaller, clusters at eight other locations, including the towns of Sisseton and Peever. The SissetonWahpeton Housing Authority, working in cooperation with HUD, has been responsible for these projects. As at Santee, the houses and yards appear to be well maintained. While thanking the low-rent housing tenants for keeping up their lawns, the Housing Authority has had to remind them that they are responsible for the lawnmowers they sign out. 15 The native culture, under assault from the beginning of EuroAmerican contanct until the 1930s, has shown the same resilience and survival power on the Lake Traverse Reservation that it has elsewhere. It persists not only in the schools but also in such forms as the annual tribal celebration. In early July 1993 the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux held the 126th annual wacipi, or powwow. The Fourth of July event had an international as well as an intertribal flavor; one of the announcers was from the Sioux Valley (Oak River) reserve near Griswold, Manitoba. 16 Another vehicle for the expression and transmission of community spirit is the official tribal newspaper, Sota Iya Ye Yapi, founded in 1968. A professionally edited weekly, it concentrates on news of interest to the people of the reservation. The issue for June 17, 1993, for example, contained articles on the dedication of the monument commemorating the repatriation from the Smithsonian Institution of the remains of 34 tribesmen, an announcement of a special elec- -378- tion to determine the wishes of tribal members concerning a selfgovernance initiative, the approval of a grant from the National Archives to enable the community college to establish a tribal archive, the eighth-grade graduation at the tribal school, and a report on the stocking of reservation lakes with walleye fry, to mention only the most conspicuous. There were also shorter items on topics of more widespread concern, such as ways of recycling oil, examples of sexual harassment, HIV testing and counseling, and an aerobics class. As this sampling of newspaper items suggests, the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux resemble other people in that they are interested chiefly in matters that affect them immediately and personally. Some of these matters are the same as those that concern the general population, a few are of special interest to Indians in general, and many have to do with events on the Lake Traverse Reservation. Although the people living on the reservation have much more contact with the outside world than their forebears did a century ago, there is a very definite consciousness of themselves as a people, with interests and concerns different from those of the surrounding white population--this despite the deliberate attempt by the agents of the Indian Bureau to scatter the Indians over the reservation so that they and the whites would mingle and eventually form one people. The Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe and its reservation are much larger than the other fragments into which the Eastern Sioux were split following the events of 1862. Despite the dispersed nature of Indian settlement on the reservation, therefore, the tribe is better situated to preserve its identity and perhaps even to constitute an economically viable unit than the other groups who claim descent from the four subtribes that lived in what is now Minnesota at the time of the earliest major contacts with Europeans. If what the tribe has accomplished in the quarter-century since 1968--reflected in the distinctly upbeat tone of the tribal newspaper--can be taken as an augury of the future, it stands an excellent chance of achieving its goals. The history of the Devils Lake Reservation since the late 1960s parallels that of Sisseton, even to the passage of an act by Congress to facilitate land consolidation. As on the Lake Traverse Reservation, there have been changes, mostly for the better, both visible and invisible to the eye of the visitor. Here too there have been economic developments of considerable importance, improvements in housing, and expansion of the educational system. Although the heirship problem at Devils Lake had not reached -379- the proportions noted at Sisseton, by the 1960s it was serious enough. In an attempt to alleviate the problem before it worsened, Congress in January 1983 passed Public Law 459, Title II of which was called "The Indian Land Consolidation Act." Title I, which applied specifically to the Devils Lake Sioux Tribe, authorized the Secretary of the Interior to acquire by purchase or other means, including exchange, additional lands within the boundaries of the reservation, such lands to be held in trust for the tribe or individual members thereof. Another provision authorized the tribe to purchase inherited lands from nonmembers. 17 Title II (which applied to Indian tribes generally) provided for the purchase by the tribe of inherited fractional interests with the consent of over 50 percent of the owners, subject to certain restrictions, and for conveyance to the tribe of inherited interests amounting to less than 2 percent of the total acreage of the tracts involved. It will be seen that, although specific provisions of this act differ from provisions of the Sisseton bill, the intent is much the same: to put a stop to the further division of inherited lands and to make it easier for the tribe to build up its land base. The law contained one interesting provision not found in its Sisseton counterpart. Section 109 states that the "Devils Lake Sioux Reservation, North Dakota, is hereby declared the permanent homeland of the Devils Lake Sioux Tribe." 18 In 1960 the Devils Lake Reservation embraced 49,193 acres of allotted land, 2,080 acres of government-owned land, and only 120 acres of tribal land. A decade after passage of the land consolidation act the figures were 39,950.4 acres of allotted land, 268 acres of government-owned land, and, 11,329.6 acres of tribal land. 19 Although the total acreage reveals a net gain of only 155 acres, there was probably a net loss in the two decades before passage of the act, more than offset by acreage acquired after 1983. In any event, an increase in the tribe's land base is no longer the most reliable measure of its economic well-being, for the Devils Lake Sioux no longer rely on farming as their principal source of income, as their ancestors were expected to do in the late nineteenth century and even, to some degree, as recently as the 1930s. Industry has come to the Devils Lake Sioux in the form of two tribally owned plants: the Sioux Manufacturing Corporation, which employs about 110, and Dakota Tribal Industries, employing about 200. The former began in partnership with Brunswick Corporation, which originally owned 60 percent of the business to the tribe's 40 percent. Eventually the tribe bought out Brunswick and now owns 100 per- -380- cent of the firm, which manufactures camouflage netting, helmets, side panels for Bradley personnel carriers, and other military equipment. 20 Dakota Tribal Industries, which was incorporated in 1985 and began operation in December 1986, also manufactures military items and, like Sioux Manufacturing, has a contract with the Department of Defense. Both produced articles used in Operation Desert Storm. In 1990 Dakota Tribal Industries was declared Minority Business of the Year nationally. 21 Devils Lake has got into the commercial gaming business to an extent comparable to the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe. At St. Michael, adjacent to the former Catholic school, the Dakotah Bingo Parlor and the Dakota Casino cater to the gambling instincts of visitors and incidentally employ about 175 people. Most of the receipts are used for economic and social development on the reservation. In July 1993 a third gaming emporium opened at Tokio, another small reservation town, where a member of the tribe also operates a grocery store-gasoline station. 22 Other individually owned businesses include a grocery store, a coin laundry, a restaurant, an electronics store, and a video rental ("Sioux-Per Video Vending and Sound"), all at Fort Totten, and the Mission Market at St. Michael. There are plans to promote tourism, especially at Tokio, and there is talk of starting a tribal bakery. 23 Despite all the economic activity reflected by these industries and businesses, and despite the jobs provided by the BIA, the tribal government, and the educational complex of the reservation, Devils Lake has a long way to go before it reaches anything like full employment. According to the tribal planner, unemployment, which once ran to over 80 percent, had dropped to 68 percent by the summer of 1993--a far cry from the small Sioux communities in Minnesota, where the claim is made that everyone who wants a ob now has one. 24 Devils Lake has shared with other reservations a great improvement in housing since the 1960s. Beginning in the next decade, several housing projects have changed living conditions for the better. As at Sisseton and Santee, relatively new houses, set along newly laid-out streets, cover substantial areas at Fort Totten, St. Michael, and elsewhere. The housing projects also involve refurbishing older houses, including those built during the 1970s. For the lowest-income people the turnkey, or mutual self-help, project has provided inexpensive housing. Much of the construction has been done by contractors who are tribal members. Water and sewer service is pro- -381- vided by the tribally owned Sioux Utilities Commission; electricity is furnished by private utility companies. 25 Like Agency Village on the Lake Traverse Reservation, For Totten is served by two educational complexes: the Four Winds Tribal School and the Little Hoop Community College. Four Winds, opened in 1983, occupies a stunning building located on the crest of a hill. Grades from kindergarten to eighth grade are tribally operated, and grades nine through twelve constitute District 30, Benson County. In 1903 the elementary school enrolled 505 pupils, the high school 125. As at the other tribal schools, there is an emphasis on Dakota woonspe--learning Dakota culture--along with the standard curriculum of North Dakota schools. 26 Little Hoop Community College was chartered in 1974, when the tribe entered into a bilateral agreement with Lake Region Junior College, in the city of Devils Lake. The following year it began operation with offices in the tribal building and a staff of four. In 1980 the BIA conducted a feasibility study, as a result of which the college became an independent, tribally, controlled community college. In 1982 the bilateral agreement with Lake Region was terminated, and two years later Little Hoop moved into buildings formerly occupied by the Bureau-operated elementary and secondary schools. 27 Granted accreditation in 1990 by the North Central Association, Little Hoop offers both vocational and academic programs leading to the one-year vocational certificate and the two-year associate degree. It employs 13 full-time instructors and about 90 part-time instructors and has an enrollment of some 275 students. The enrollment is expected to increase when the college begins offering a program in casino training. The college operates on the semester system and schedules its classes with an eye to the available time of people with jobs and those in need of remedial work. It also administers the Comprehensive Child Development Program, the Office of Substance Abuse Program, the community library, and the Head Start program. Its 1993 budget was a little over $4 million. 28 In the 1960s the Devils Lake reservation was in the poorest shape economically of any of the Santee Sioux communities. So it is not surprising that in the 1990s its condition was less impressive than that of some of the other reservations. Despite the 68 percent unemployment figure, however, there was an air of optimism about Fort Totten, a sense of accomplishment and an expectation of better things to come. Like their fellows at Sisseton, the Devils Lake Sioux have regained a stronger pride in their culture and a conviction of their abil- -382- ity to solve their lingering problems. Perhaps it is symbolic of this new attitude that membership on the tribal council is now a fulltime, salaried job. The Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe gives the impression not so much of having changed direction sharply since the 1960s, as Santee and Sisseton do, as of having continued moving more rapidly in the direction already evident at that time. Finding employment locally and within commuting distance, the Flandreau people were relatively well off economically then and displaying a revived interest in their traditional culture. Much the same might be said of them today, except that they now enjoy more sources of income and seem to evince a stronger sense of community spirit and Indian identity. There have been modest increases in both population--from 210 in 1965 to 250 in 1993 (but a total of 603 enrolled members)--and tribal lands--from 2,100 acres in 1960 to about 2,400 acres in 1993. There is no allotted land. Perhaps the most visible change is in the location of the community center. Most of the land acquired in the 1930s lay north of the town of Flandreau, along the Big Sioux River, and that is where the community building and powwow grounds were located. More recently a tract of federal land on the southwestern edge of the town was transferred to the tribe, and it is there that the bulk of commercial and residental development has occurred. In the early 1970s a tribally owned and operated motel, the First American Inn, was started, and in 1978 an extensive housing project was inaugurated, with assistance from HUD. A gaming facility, the Royal River Casino, was opened in October, 1990, and in the spring of 1993 a convenience store called The Mart began operation. 29 An unusually large tribal building for so small a group is located within sight of these various enterprises. As they did in the 1960s, many members of the tribe find employment in the town or at the Flandreau Indian Industrial School, but the new tribal enterprises provide jobs for others. Receipts from the casino constitute a significant source of income. According to the policy adopted by the tribe, 35 percent of the receipts go to individuals (three-fourths to residents, one-fourth to nonresidents), 43 percent to economic development, 12 percent to general operations, 5 percent to a minors' trust, and 5 percent to a community fund. Nonresident enrollees have challenged what they regard as discrimination against them in the distribution to individuals. While the case is in litigation, a federal judge has frozen the casino profits, thereby depriving the tribe of access to funds for tribal projects. 30 -383- The Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe shared in the nearly $5 million claims award, for which Congress in 1985 (P. L. 99-130) provided distribution guidelines. Their share was 15.84%, or a little more than $770,900. According to the guidelines, 75 percent of the funds would be used by the tribal governing body "for programs to enhance the social and economic development of the tribe." The remaining 25 percent would be used for per capita payments, with members sixty years of age and older receiving twice as much as other recipients. 31 These various sources of income have enabled the tribe and its individual members to accomplish many things that would have been impossible at an earlier time. Among the benefits to individuals are greater educational opportunities than were enjoyed in the 1960s. According to tribal officials, the average number of years of school is now 13.5--which must surely be one of the highest among Indian groups in the country. Few young people attend the Flandreau Indian School; upon completion of the local high school, collegebound young people go to a wide variety of colleges, not all in the Midwest. 32 Although the effort to preserve the native culture is not so conspicuous as on the Lake Traverse Reservation, it is very much a part of contemporary life among the Flandreau people. The "Siouxtennial" presented in 1962 and again in 1965 has been continued ever since and still takes place at the old site along the Big Sioux River, though the old community building no longer stands. At least symbolically, it reflects the desire of the Flandreau Santees to retain their traditions even as they participate ever more fully in the larger community. The changes evident at Santee, Lake Traverse, and Devils Lake, and even more noticeable at Flandreau, are most striking of all on the Sioux reservations in Minnesota, especially at Prior Lake, now called the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. The radical transformation of these settlements from pockets of poverty to enclaves of affluence has occurred largely since 1982, when the first Indian gaming enterprise in the state began at Shakopee, but intimations of coming change could be discerned earlier. In 1967 the Prior take community consisted of four or five scattered families, administered as part of the Lower Sioux community, which had itself dwindled to only nineteen families, with nine vacant houses on the reservation. But that year saw the beginnings of a housing project on Prairie Island that not only provided better -384- homes for current residents but attracted other members of the tribe then living in the Twin Cities or elsewhere. With the start of construction on a nuclear-powered electric generating plant by Northern States Power Company (NSP) on the island, it looked as though there might be increased employment close to the reservation. Two years later the Prior Lake community separated from Lower Sioux and formed its own tribal organization. Although membership consisted of all those on the tribal rolls and their descendants, actual control of the reservation was vested in the "general council," made up of all voters who were residents of the community--only a few families to begin with--which in turn delegated its authority to a business council consisting of a chairman, vicechairman, and secretary-treasurer. 33 No major changes took place during the 1970s, though a number of events occurred then that were to acquire significance later. The Shakopee Mdewakanton and Prairie Island communities became part of the cities of Prior Lake and Red Wing, respectively, when those cities annexed the formerly rural townships in which the reservations were located. At Prior Lake the annexation was part of the urban growth that saw the city increase from 848 inhabitants in 1960 to, 11,482 in 1990. Red Wing annexed Burnside Township in order to increase municipal revenues by taxing NSP's generating plant. In 1971 the Minnesota Sioux communities formed an umbrella organization that underwent various changes of name and membership before it was dissolved in 1984, the members having concluded by then that their interests would be better served by resuming their separate status. 34 The communities continued, however, to participate in the Minnesota Dakota Housing Authority, which administered state and federal housing programs. In 1976 the state legislature established the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, thereby making Minnesota "the first state in the nation to recognize and assist with the housing needs of Indians through a program operated by Indians," as Indians in Minnesota expressed it. Over the next decade the Sioux communities received forty-one loans for home ownership and home improvement through this program. 35 Perhaps the most important development of the 1970s was that the four Sioux communities all grew in population. Determining the populations is difficult because different agencies provide different figures. The Census Bureau, which counted only Indians on census tracts with land held in trust, credited Prairie Island with 80 inhabi- -385-
|
|
|
Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 16:32:08 GMT -5
tants in 1980. On the other hand, the BIA, which counted those living near reservations as well as those living on trust lands, found 118 at Prairie Island. But the Indian Health Service, which counted Indians in reservation counties and abutting counties, came up with a figure of 222! 36 Since the BIA figures for 1960 were used elsewhere in this book, they will be used here for comparative purposes. In 1960 the BIA found 160 Indians at Lower Sioux, 95 at Prairie Island, 10 at Prior Lake, and 120 at Upper Sioux. Comparable figures for 1980 gave Lower Sioux 202 inhabitants, Prairie Island 118, Shakopee Mdewakanton 116, and Upper Sioux 122. 37 Except at Upper Sioux, which had benefited very little from government programs in the 1960s and 1970s, the increase was considerable--indeed, at Shakopee Mdewakanton, spectacular. This growth was to continue, and even accelerate, in the 1980s, when the bonanza of bingo parlors attracted to the reservations tribal members who had lived elsewhere, perhaps for most of their lives. A few signs of improvement became evident before the bingo bonanza got under way in the 1980s. At Prairie Island, for example, relations with the city of Red Wing improved when the city contributed to replacing the community hall, burned one New Year's Eve. Originally the city budgeted $40,000 toward the project, but when a HUD grant of $114,000 became available, the city's share was reduced to $24,760, plus $10,000 for furnishings. Construction began in June 1978 and was completed eleven months later; the building was dedicated the following October 20. 38 Two claims cases that were settled during this period brought some improvement in the finances of individual tribal members. In June 1981 payment was received, amounting in some cases to as much as $2,500 each (referred to in the headline to a newspaper article as "a paltry windfall for some Indians"), which went mostly for furniture, appliances, and car replacement or repair; some recipients paid off debts, while others deposited their checks in savings accounts. Norman Campbell, then president of the tribal council, urged his tribesmen to use the "windfall" wisely. 39 The other claims case was that previously referred to, in connection with the Flandreau community, for which funds were appropriated by Congress in October 1985. The Prairie Island, Shakopee Mdewakanton, and Lower Sioux communities were collectively to receive 25.47 percent of the award. At the time these groups voted to accept the settlement, in May 1983, it was said that the amount to be -386- received would come to less than $566 per person. It was distributed along the lines specified in the legislation: 20 percent for tribal programs, 80 percent in per capita payments, handled variously by the three communities. 40 As indicated by the population figures given earlier, the Shakopee Mdewakanton community was experiencing a period of rapid growth, as enrolled members moved to the reservation. In order to provide housing for these people, about half of the largest tract of tribal land, 159 acres, was withdrawn from the family to whom it had been assigned, and divided into smaller parcels. Before long, attractive houses were built on these lots, which now constitute the principal population center of the reservation. 41 But the big news from the early 1980s was the arrival of commercial gaming on Indian reservations. Preceded by "smoke shops" at which untaxed cigarettes were sold to tribal members, this innovation was made possible by Supreme Court decisions denying to state and local governments civil jurisdiction, including taxing authority, over reservation lands. A 1976 agreement with the state had required that Indian tobacco merchants collect sales tax, part of which would be returned by the state. But in the light of federal court rulings that people living on reservations need not pay state sales or income taxes (later extended to cigarette and liquor taxes), the Shakopee Mdewakanton community opened a smoke shop, from which they hoped to earn $50,000 a year for badly needed tribal programs. Although state officials feared that the practice would spread to other Indian reservations, depriving the state of considerable revenue, tribal chairman Norman M. Crooks proved correct in his prediction that its nearness to the Twin Cities gave Shakopee Mdewakanton a unique status and that other reservations would realize more income from state reimbursement than from the sale of taxfree cigarettes. 42 But the smoke shop was only small potatoes compared to the bingo hall that came under serious discussion early in 1982. A precedent had been set in Florida, where the Seminole Indians were operating three bingo parlors, the first opened in 1979. When county and state officials tried to bring these enterprises under their control, the Seminoles took the matter to court and eventually won from the United States Supreme Court a ruling that such governments had no authority to regulate gaming on Indian reservations. Chairman Crooks had been to Florida, as had BIA Area Director Earl J. Barlow, and had been impressed by the way money was flowing into -387- the tribe's coffers. Crooks approached Barlow with a proposal to borrow money for a 1,200-seat bingo palace on the Shakopee Mdewakanton Reservation. As Barlow tells it, he at first tried to bring Crooks' schemes down to earth. "Be realistic!" he says he told Crooks; "300 or 400 maybe, but not 1,200." The chairman, however, stuck with his plan for a 1,200-seat hall, and eventually Barlow had to acknowledge that it might be feasible. 43 The tribe borrowed about $1 million and in the summer of 1982 began construction of a prefabricated structure to house the first of what were to be many gaming establishments on Minnesota Indian reservations. Almost at once opposition surfaced in the form of objections from the city of Prior Lake, whose officials were concerned about the amount of sewage the facility would produce, the increase in traffic on the local gravel roads, and the need for police protection in view of the anticipated influx of potential gamblers. The dispute, which at one stage involved the Metropolitan Council, was temporarily settled by an agreement under which the tribe would contract with the Scott County sheriff for police protection and with Prior Lake for fire protection and rescue service; the Indians would provide a field septic system and work with the county to control dust on the road. 44 In its original form, what became the Little Six Bingo Palace was built and operated by a consortium of two firms, the New England Entertainment Company, based in Boston, which was running one of the parlors in Florida, and the Pan American International Management Company. Under the contract negotiated by Crooks, the company was to receive 45 percent of the profits, the tribe 55 percent. When the facility opened for business on October 16, Crooks was quoted as saying, "I'm excited for my people because it's going to do what they want it to do. It's a big shot in the arm for us." Unemployment, which had been running about 60 percent (some sources later said 90 percent), was wiped out. Although most of the 150 employees of the palace were non-Indians, everyone on the reservation who wanted to work could be accommodated. 45 As a later tribal chairman was to say, proximity to the Twin Cities was the reservation's only resource, and it was this proximity that made Little Six "wildly successful," as a newspaper article phrased it a few months later, from the start. Buses took people from various shopping centers in the metropolitan area to the "palace." For $12 a ticket, the customer received a bus ride and a packet of sixteen bingo cards. On a slow night, perhaps only 500 players appeared; but on -388- jackpot nights people had to be turned away when all 1,300 seats were occupied. Big winners were escorted to the bus or to their cars, just to be on the safe side. 46 After Little Six had been in operation for a few months, it became evident that it was indeed "wildly successful," or, as Crooks described it, "darn near a Utopia." Within six months the tribe had paid off its $1 million debt, built a medical/dental clinic, paved the reservation roads and driveways, and paid each family $700. It grossed over $9 million in its first year; after prizes, salaries, and other expenses had been deducted, the tribe still netted over $1 million. 47 By the end of February 1984, when it was possible to evaluate the whole experience, a pair of investigative articles appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. At that time the tribe's share of the profits was being divided three ways. The largest share, 54.5 percent, was going for individual payments to 72 adults and 24 children who lived on the reservation; monthly payments varied from $600 to $1,500. Eighty percent of the children's shares went into an educational trust fund, the rest to the parents for essential goods and services. With .5 percent going for legal expenses, the remaining 45 percent went into tribal programs. Crooks said that the tribe had given about $108,000 to various charities. The bingo parlor was then employing about 230 part-time workers, who received from $3.35 to $5.50 per hour. The tribe had spent $150,000 on the medical/dental building, which was later expanded to include a $90,000 tribal office and a day care center. By that time they were finishing a half-million dollar cultural center. 48 If the bingo business gave Shakopee Mdewakantons "darn near a Utopia," there was also a downside. In the interview in which Crooks used that phrase, he also admitted that the tribe's sudden wealth had also generated "prejudice and resentment" and a conflict with the city of Prior Lake. The clash with the city is the most readily documented of these undesired consequences. In July 1983, the city council, arguing that the 1972 annexation was illegal and that it had no "governing authority" over the reservation's residents, redrew precinct boundaries so as to leave the reservation outside. Of this action city manager Mike McGuire said, with unusual frankness, that the "intent was to keep the Indians from voting in city elections." City officials feared that if the Indians did vote, they would demand police, fire, and other services on the same basis as other citizens. They were at the time paying $12,000 a year for police and fire protection under the contract negotiated the previous year. 49 -389- Since among other handicaps this move left the Indians without a place in which to vote in county, state, or federal elections, they took the city to court and won two decisions, first from U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson and then from a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, affirming the Indian's right to vote in Prior Lake, which, said the courts, had legally annexed the reservation and was obligated to provide voting rights and municipal services on an equal basis with other citizens, even though it lacked civil jurisdiction over them. 50 During the two years that the case against the city was being litigated, a dispute arose within the tribe over Crooks' management of the gaming enterprise. Some members blamed him for a decrease in per capita payments late in 1984, which he attributed to the novelty having worn off and to competition from a similar business started the previous winter at Prairie Island. After a petition had been circulated calling for his ouster, the general council voted to remove him from office and replace him with Leonard Prescott, leader of the dissident faction. Not long after this controversy had been settled, another arose from within the ranks of the new tribal leaders. For the next couple of years charges and counter-charges were hurled back and forth, lawsuits were undertaken, the BIA reluctantly entered the fray, and metropolitan newspapers gave considerable attention to the issue. 51 The Reverend Gary Cavender, who served the Ho Waste Episcopal Indian Mission near the Shakopee Mdewakanton Reservation, deplored the media's emphasis on the sensational aspects of these quarrels. The Indians weren't fighting all the time, he pointed out; they also were carrying out positive programs, such as building a church designed by an Indian architect. The matter warrants attention here only because it suggests how minor disagreements and factional infighting could be exacerbated by the high stakes of an enterprise described in February 1985 as a $12 million business and in April 1986 as an $18 million operation. 52 As soon as Little Six had proved a success, people at the other communities began discussing how they could get into the act. According to a chronology published in the Red Wing newspaper, the first official discussion in the Prairie Island tribal council occurred in January 1983. After some inconclusive negotiations with a questionable organization called the Basic Bible Church of Amerika, the council hired a St. Paul firm called the Red Wing Amusement Company to build a 24,000-square-foot palace at a cost of some $1.2 million, -390- which opened on February 29, 1984. Under the agreement, the company would get 90 percent of the profits until the building was paid for, after which the profits would be split, as at Little Six, 55 percent to the tribe, 45 percent to the company. The company would manage the operation for ten years. At the beginning, 70 of the 150 employees hired were enrolled tribal members. 53 Because Prairie Island was farther from the Twin Cities than Little Six and more isolated, many expected that it would be less profitable than its predecessor. In order to compensate for this handicap, Island Bingo, as it was called, offered larger prizes than Little Six--a decision that led to objections from the latter. But when, on opening night, nearly all the seats were filled, many with people who had arrived on buses from the Twin Cities, Rochester, Winona, and elsewhere, it was found that at least some of the players had been at Little Six earlier in the day. 54 So it appeared that not only would Island Bingo be a success, but it would achieve that success without drawing business away from Little Six. Tribal leaders at Prairie Island had plans for the expected profits. At the time the facility opened, Vine Wells, council president, said that some of their earnings would pay for housing for the elderly and college education for the young people. At that time there were 280 enrolled members, 150 of whom were living on the reservation. At the beginning of 1985 construction began on a housing project planned for five years and aided by $1.4 million from HUD. It consisted of twenty-four units, nineteen two-story single-family units, a duplex, and a triplex. 55 The effects of high-stakes bingo on Prairie Island were, as at Prior Lake, both good and bad. It took two and half years to pay for the $1.2 million building, but in its first year the enterprise paid out more than $9 million in prizes. When the facility had been paid for and the tribe was about to begin receiving 55 percent of the profits, its leaders decided to buy out Red Wing Amusement's contract for $407,000. They claimed that they had received only 4 percent of the $44 million in profits that the facility had earned in its first four years of operation. When a dissident faction, thinking the price too steep, sought to block the tribe's effort, factionalism once more reared its ugly head, as it had done at Shakopee Mdewakanton, and the controversy found its way into the courts. 56 The dissident faction's suit was dismissed, and the tribe took over management of the bingo hall in December 1988, reportedly at a price of $250,000. The early prosperity had waned somewhat by this -391- time, and it did not improve under tribal management. In the following years the tribe contracted, successively, with two outside companies, one of which changed the facility's name to Treasure Island Casino, and greatly expanded the building in May 1991. Subsequently the tribe resumed control of the casino but hired a general manager, under whose direction the enterprise again became profitable. The return of prosperity did not lessen factional quarreling; as at Little Six, the more there was to fight over, the more fighting took place. 57 A little more than six months after the opening of Island Bingo, the Lower Sioux community joined the other two reservations with Jackpot Junction, a $600,000 facility financed in large part by GMT Management Company, a Glenwood ( Minnesota)--based partnership that operated three casinos in Deadwood, South Dakota. In the early years of the Reagan administration, the community had suffered from cutbacks in the federal jobs program, BIA housing subsidies and social services, and elimination of health programs for the handicapped and elderly. With the nationwide recession reducing the number of off-reservation jobs, it was claimed that unemployment had risen from about 50 percent to nearly go percent by April 1982, when tribal members Tom Goldtooth and Morris Pendleton met with representatives of 36 foundations, corporations, and giving programs in St. Paul. The two men were seeking $150,000 in grant money, which would not only aid the Indians economically but also help them gain a sense of self-reliance. As Goldtooth said, There's been a whole century of dependency that's been building-dependency on the federal government, the state, the tribe. It has put us in the position where we don't feel we can make our own decisions." 58 When Jackpot Junction opened in September 1984, it was expected to do great things for the community. After a promising start, however, the bingo parlor for a time failed to measure up to expectations. Much farther from the Twin Cities than Little Six or even Island Bingo, it had not drawn the attendance its promoters had hoped for. At the end of 1985 its balance sheet for the year showed a loss of $92,000 on an income of $2.2 million. There were rumors that it might cut back from three nights a week to one, or even close. It did, however, employ forty-two Indians and eight others married to Indians and had a payroll of $275,000 in 1985. 59 The day-to-day management was not all it could have been. Taxes on cigarettes sold at the facility weren't being forwarded to the state, -392-
|
|
|
Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 16:32:37 GMT -5
and it fell $31,000 in debt to the Internal Revenue Service because of the management's failure to deduct withholding taxes. A petition signed by over half the voting membership called for changes in the management of the hall, and in October, 1986, seven members of the community broke into the building and staged a two-hour takeover that ended only when the county sheriff and other law enforcement officers moved in. The seven men received light sentences when the case was finally disposed of, more than a year later. 60 Whether this bold action had anything to do with it or not, business picked up in the years that followed, especially after Jackpot Junction became the first of Minnesota's reservation casinos to venture beyond church-basement bingo into a new, high-stakes variant that was reminiscent of Las Vegas. Up to four thousand customers a week came from as far as Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Winnipeg on bargain bus tours. Gaming went on all night, and at 5:30 a.m. a "bingo bus" would pick up a load of gamblers and haul them the 125 miles to the Twin Cities, where they were dropped off at various shopping centers. In the space of a year, receipts rose from $4 million to $30 million, and unemployment had ceased to exist on the reservation. Tribal attorney John Jacobson remarked that gaming was changing reservation life in a way that government programs had never done. 61 In 1985 the Sioux communities began taking over management of their bingo parlors. Shakopee Mdewakanton, first to enter the business, was also the first to assume complete control of its casino. Early in 1985 the newly elected tribal leaders took legal steps to invalidate the 1982 contract that Norman Crooks had negotiated. Both U.S. District Judge Diana Murphy and the BIA ruled that the contract was invalid, and management of the bingo parlor was transferred to the tribe. 62 Although Crooks predicted that this move would ruin business, he proved wrong this time, and the continued success of Little Six may have emboldened the Prairie Island tribal leaders, as noted earlier, to follow the example of those at Shakopee Mdewakanton about three years later. In 1992 the Lower Sioux community bought out the management of Jackpot Junction, which had been taking 30 percent of the receipts. "We just felt it was time for us to go on our own," said tribal chairman Jody Goodthunder. 63 By the early 1990s all three of the bingo parlors were huge successes, and in January 1991 the Upper Sioux community joined the other reservations by opening the Firefly Creek Casino. At the outset -393- it operated for sixteen hours on weekdays, around the clock on weekends, and had 120 full- and part-time employees and an anticipated payroll of $750,000 a year. It offered 114 slot machines and "something that looks a lot like blackjack" but was called Bingo 21. Like the others, it enjoyed a period of prosperity before falling on hard times. By August 1992, when the tribal chairman was ousted and several employees were fired, it was rumored to have lost $26,000 a day in June and $31,000 a day in July, and to be on the verge of closing. A more optimistic view held that it was thriving and that it had brought thousands of visitors to Granite Falls, with substantial benefit to business there. 64 The casino survived and apparently gained back some of its original momentum in subsequent months, but it remained a small operation competing with larger ones. In May 1992 the Shakopee Mdewakanton tribe opened a second facility, the $15 million Mystic Lake Casino, with 1,100 slot machines, 76 blackjack tables, and a 1,100-seat, terraced bingo parlor. It also contained a delicatessen, a buffet restaurant, and a private dining and meeting room. Spotlights in the shape of a Dakota tipi were visible for a distance of thirty miles at night. By this time, according to Chairman Prescott, some per capita payments had reached $4,000 a month. 65 In the summer of 1993 the Prairie Island people unveiled a 78,000-square-foot addition containing a restaurant, sports lounge, banquet facilities, and another 200 slot machines; a 135-berth marina on Sturgeon Lake was to follow. The Treasure Island Casino had by this time come to be the largest employer in Red Wing and the thirty-fourth largest privately held corporation in Minnesota, and claimed to have a half-billion dollar impact on the surrounding area. The vast new Tribal Community Center, with its swimming pool, gymnasium, and day-care center, quite cast into the shade the one built in 1979 and symbolized the changes that had occurred in only a few years. 66 Just before the Mystic Lake Casino opened, the tribal leadership ran into difficulties, not with their white neighbors (though the controversy with Prior Lake was still simmering) but with Indian activists who objected to the use of the sacred white buffalo in their advertising. Vernon and Clyde Bellecourt, AIM leaders, said that its use as a symbol was disrespectful. Prescott disagreed, saying that the buffalo economy was part of the Indians' past and that gambling was their "new buffalo." But as chairman of the board of Little Six, Inc.,
|
|
|
Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 16:33:03 GMT -5
-394- he agreed to stop using the symbol and to review their use of the eagle in similar advertising. Clyde Bellecourt reported that the casino owners would let a task force of concerned Indians review all future advertising before it was used. 67 With the opening of Mystic Lake and the expansion of Treasure Island, commercial gaming on the Sioux Indian reservations in Minnesota may be said to have come of age. By that time the state was easily leading the nation in reservation gambling and was reported to be fourth in per capita betting. Was all this good or bad? For the Indians it appeared to be a bonanza. In a newspaper article titled "New Casino Gives Dakota Pride," St. Paul columnist Nick Coleman said that the message the new enterprise carried was "Dama Kota"-"I am a Dakota." And the Reverend Gary Cavender exclaimed, "We're not sucking off welfare--we're employers. That's the thing that blows me away: we can make an economic impact." 68 Some non-Indians agreed. When Myron Ellis, chairman of the Minnesota Indian Gaming Commission, testified before the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs in February 1992, he cited a study done by the accounting firm of Peat, Marwick & Main of five Indian casinos, including three operated by the Sioux. In four rural counties, including Goodhue and Redwood, the number of people receiving benefits under Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) had declined 16 percent since 1987, while the statewide total had increased 15 percent. He used these figures to deflect criticism that the profits from casinos were being siphoned off from the Indians who nominally ran them. His testimony was reported in an article headlined "4,500 New Jobs Top Success Story of Indian Casinos." Claims were also made, based on the testimony of businessmen in Prior Lake and elsewhere, that business in adjacent towns was also increased by the influx of people wishing to patronize the casinos. 69 But there were nagging questions about the legality of some of these gaming operations, not to mention their effect on other types of gambling. As early as 1983 some state legislators were concerned about the potential threat to parimutuel betting on horse races at the new racetrack at Canterbury Downs, near Shakopee. By 1986 the state attorney general's office was wondering aloud whether some of the forms of gambling newly adopted on the reservations were legal. Bingo was legal, but poker, video machines, and electronic slot machines might not be. By that time Little Six was offering video poker, electronic slot machines, pull-tabs, and "bingoized" versions of -395- craps, blackjack, and roulette. Neither the charitable gambling board nor the BIA appeared to have any police control over the games. 70 In 1982 the U.S. Supreme Court had declined to consider the issue of state control over gambling on Indian reservations and let a lower court ruling favorable to the Indians stand. In 1986 a similar California case came before the court. Two federal appellate courts there had ruled against the state, but in Maine and Oklahoma state supreme courts had decided in favor of state regulation. Early in 1987 the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, that state and local authorities may not prohibit Indians from operating gambling casinos on reservations. In the light of these confusing and contradictory rulings, in October 1988 Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which brought some order out of a complex issue, but it left some grey areas. It also established an Indian Gaming Commission, one of whose tasks was to rule on problems that might arise. In May 1992 a ruling by the Commission took effect, barring Indian casinos from running electronic slot machines or keno games without state approval. U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger reportedly told casino operators they must negotiate agreements with the state if they wanted to play lotto-type games. "We will . . . enforce the Federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act," he said. The management of Little Six brought suit against the Indian Gaming Commission, while the Lower Sioux community leaders said they would change the game at Jackpot Junction to make it more like bingo. 71 Another issue that eventually wound up in the courts was the selectivity exercised by some tribes with regard to the distribution of per capita payments. Like Flandreau, Lower Sioux distinguished between residents and non-residents. And when people who had not lived on the reservation for years, if ever, began settling there, the council decreed that they must have lived within ten miles of the community in August 1990 in order to qualify for payments. Some of those excluded brought suit against the tribe, and on March 11, 1993, in U.S. District Court, Judge Paul Magnuson ruled against the tribe and ordered it to set aside 30 percent of casino receipts while the Department of the Interior reviewed its payment policy. The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was silent as to whether tribes could discriminate on the basis of residence in the distribution of per capita payments, but it had specified that all plans must be approved by the Secretary of the Interior. Shakopee Mdewakanton also discrimi- -396- nated in this fashion, whereas Prairie Island paid all 410 enrolled members on the same basis. 72 Despite its acknowledged benefits to the tribes, the future of Indian gaming is still in doubt. Gary Dawson, writing for the St. Paul Pioneer Press on the opening of the Mystic Lake Casino, remarked, "Market saturation, in fact, appears to be the thing that would dictate an end to tribal gaming expansion. How far away that is remains to be seen." Others who have doubts about the continued expansion of the "new buffalo" believe that by providing needed capital and experience in managing business, the casinos have benefited the Indians in ways that will persist far beyond the time when profits begin to diminish and perhaps disappear. 73 While all four Sioux communities were reaping benefits from commercial gaming, the Prairie Island people were wrestling with a problem all their own. When Northern States Power built its nuclear generating plant in the late 1960s, the benefits were expected to outweigh whatever disadvantages it might bring. For the next two decades it seemed as though this would be the case. As late as 1985 the author of Indians in Minnesota observed that, though questions had been raised about nuclear power plant safety and though questions of possible contamination had been brought up at tribal council meetings, "the Indian community has had no discernible health problems from the power plant and is not concerned about its presence." 74 This optimistic view was probably not held by all members of the community even then. In August 1986, when Prairie Island celebrated its centennial, a staff writer from the Pioneer Press interviewed Hazel Wells, who had watched eighty-four years of change on the island. Commenting on the juxtaposition of the nuclear plant and the eighty-one-year-old Church of the Messiah, founded by her grandfather, Mrs. Wells remarked, "We're still waiting for the Messiah. Instead, we got the nuclear plant." 75 One problem worrying the Prairie Island people in their relations with NSP was the ongoing danger of radioactive contamination should some accident occur at the plant. When an "unusual event"-the lowest of four alert levels--occurred in February 1992, federal inspectors appeared on the scene and assured everyone concerned that the accident posed no threat to the health and safety of people inside the plant or near it. Nevertheless, William Hardacker, lawyer for the tribe, insisted that, no matter what NSP or the Nuclear Regu-
|
|
|
Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 16:33:42 GMT -5
-397- latory Commission said, the " Prairie Island community will always have serious questions about the operation of this plant" and the accumulation of waste there. A few months later NSP reported that an eight-inch water line had leaked radioactive tritium into private wells on the reservation. 76 What made relations between the Indians and the company turn ugly was a proposal by NSP to store radioactive wastes in casks outside the plant, adjacent to the reservation. The utility's problem was that it would run out of storage space in its spent-fuel pool in 1994 or 1995, and a proposed national storage site in Nevada would not be available until 2010--if ever. The plan for temporary storage was approved by the Environmental Quality Board, but it was opposed by members of the Indian community, who said, in effect, "Not in my back yard!", and by various environmental groups, whose argument was supported by a Minnesota Department of Health study that asserted that radioactive gases were increasing the cancer risk for island residents to six times the state standard and that the storage of wastes in casks would increase the hazard. 77 The controversy heated up in November 1991, when hearings were conducted before Administrative Law Judge Allen Klein, and tribal officials joined environmentalists in a demonstration in St. Paul. A short time later the tribe hired an advertising agency to prepare a television spot expressing their views and attempting to sway public opinion against NSP. All four major Twin Cities TV stations refused to run the ad, which opened with the line "NSP doesn't want you to hear this." Eventually another station did run a revised ad, but columnist Nick Coleman commented that NSP spent $5 million a year on advertising in Minnesota, nearly half of which was ultimately paid for by consumers in the form of higher rates. 78 The Indians won only a doubtful victory in this episode, and they lost in court--twice--in an attempt to enforce an ordinance intended to prevent NSP from hauling radioactive material over reservation roads. NSP also denied charges, brought by tribal secretary Edith Pacini, that it had offered the tribe $500,000 to go along with the utility's proposal for waste storage. J oseph Wolf, vice-president for public and environmental affairs, charged that the accusations were part of a tribal campaign "of doing everything in their power to make us miserable." 79 When Judge Klein announced his decision, in April 1992, recommending that NSP be prohibited from storing nuclear wastes out-
|
|
|
Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 16:34:03 GMT -5
-398- side the plant, it was hailed by one newspaper writer as a "stunning victory for the Prairie Island Indian community." Unfortunately, the judge rejected the argument that storage would pose a health hazard and based his ruling on other grounds, such as that the state legislature should make the final judgment and that attention should be focused on alternative sources of energy. Even more unfortunately, from the Indians' point of view, his conclusions were only a recommendation; the final decision would have to be made by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC). The PUC held hearings in June and, after a five-hour debate, rejected Judge Klein's recommendations and ruled in favor of NSP. Coleman commented that it was "the best PUC a power company ever had," and George Crocker, of the North American Water Office, an environmental group, called the decision "a hate crime more vicious than crossburning." 80 The PUC ruling was not, however, the last word on the subject. The case was carried to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, which ruled on June 8, 1993, that NSP must go to the legislature for approval of the waste storage plan. Its argument was that the Radioactive Waste Management Act ( 1977) required the company to get "express legislative authorization" before proceeding with its plan. NSP spokesmen denied that the RWMA applied to a "temporary" storage site and continued building the facilities, while taking their case to the Minnesota Supreme Court. About six weeks later the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal, thus leaving the final decision up to the 1994 legislature. 81 Not all the recent history of the Minnesota Sioux has occurred on reservations. As Indians have become more visible in the larger community, their interaction with non-Indians has increased, and they have come to share their culture and traditions with interested members of the general population. In September 1972, what was called "the first authentic powwow in recent years" took place in Mankato. After a slow beginning, this event, now called the Mah-Kato Mdewakanton Powwow, has become an annual affair, drawing both Indians and non-Indians from a wide area, gradually increasing its attendance from two thousand to over five thousand by 1989. First held in the Key City Ball Park, it later found a permanent home in the campground part of Sibley Park, now called Land of Memories--"sacred, blessed ground" to the Indians, who had used it in tribal days as a camping place. Besides the customary dancing by -399- members of many tribes, the powwow includes a sweat lodge ceremony, meals, give-aways, honoring of the dead, and name-giving ceremonies. 82 One of the instigators of the first Mah-Kato Powwow was Amos Owen, tribal chairman of Prairie Island for a time in the 1960s. Owen, a towering figure in the recent history of the Minnesota Sioux, was born on the Lake Traverse reservation in 1917 and came to Prairie Island with his mother in 1934. He was deeply interested in the traditions of his people and in his later years became known as a tribal elder and spiritual leader. Besides conducting weekly sweat lodge ceremonies at Prairie Island, each December 26 (the anniversary of the mass execution in Mankato) he held a pipe ceremony, burning sweet sage, praying to the four directions, and reciting the names of the thirty-eight who had been hanged there in 1862. 83 If Mankato was, in a sense, doing penance in hosting the powwow, it went even further in that direction in 1975, when the Native People's Bicentennial Commission and AIM sponsored a Day of Reconciliation. The principal ceremony took place on the site of the 1862 execution, where Norman Blue, then chairman at Lower Sioux, read, in Dakota, the names of the thirty-eight, whom Vernon Bellecourt compared to the Revolutionary patriots to be honored the following year. Singers and drummers from the Santee Reservation sang traditional memorial songs. Later some two hundred people, mostly Indians, marched to Mankato State University's Highland Arena for a traditional meal and dancing. 84 By proclamation of Governor Rudy Perpich, 1987 was declared a Year of Reconciliation, beginning with a run from Fort Snelling to Mankato on December 26, 1986. At Land of Memories Park Chris Cavender spoke to about twenty runners and thirty others, and Amos Owen conducted a ceremony. Cavender said that both Indians and whites still harbored feelings about 1862 that needed to be resolved. More than fifteen events were planned for the next year, at Mankato, New Ulm, Fort Ridgely, Fort Snelling, and other locations identified with the Sioux Uprising, now called the U.S.-Dakota Conflict. 85 As part of the Year of Reconciliation, the remains of twenty-one men and ten women who had died at the prison near Davenport, Iowa, during their years of incarceration there, were recovered from the Iowa museum where they had been stored, and were reburied at the Lower Sioux community cemetery. The reburial was
|
|
|
Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 16:34:28 GMT -5
-400- done in the native manner, with burning sage and a traditional prayer by Amos Owen. 86 Owen's life of service to his people ended less than three years later, when on June 4, 1990, he died of cancer. A horse-drawn hearse carried his coffin, made by his sons, to the Prairie Island cemetery, where he was buried in a star quilt, with bracelets of sage around his ankles and wrists. Both Christian and Dakota prayers were said. In his later years he had given up fishing because he had made a pledge not to kill anything. Even when he cut willows for ceremonial use, he made an offering to the trees. Nick Coleman, who said Owen had done more than anyone else to heal the scars of the 1862 war through his lectures to high school and college audiences, saw an eagle soaring over the Mississippi River bluffs and recalled that he had seen an eagle the day he met Amos, trying to start a pipe on a cold and windy day. 87 Amos Owen is remembered in Mankato, where his portrait hangs in the Minnesota Valley Regional Library, located on the site of the execution, and where a cottonwood tree was planted in his honor on the Mankato State University campus. Each year MSU anthropology professor Michael Scullin's students and members of the Mah-Kato Mdewakanton Club, composed of Indian students and interested non-Indians, plant corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers in the Amos Owen Garden of American Indian Horticulture. The history of the Santee Sioux is not over. At the rate events are occurring, one is hesitant to venture any generalizations, for they may be out-dated by the time they are made. Individuals may pass from the scene, but the people live on, not as a single entity but as a group of related communities. The Santee Sioux have not been swallowed up by the surrounding white society, nor have they been swept into the sea of Pan-Indianism. They participate more fully then they did a quarter-century ago in the larger society, however, and they are more aware of themselves as Indians and as members of the minority population. The term "environmental racism" was new to the Prairie Island people when they began their struggle against NSP, but they soon embraced it as descriptive of the power company's behavior, as they perceived it. 88 Given the rapidity of change in the contemporary Santee Sioux communities, it would be hazardous to predict, in any detail, future trends. But some educated guesses may be projected from the past record and recent developments. In a book about the prehistoric -401- Chaco Culture of New Mexico, Kendrick Frazier remarks, "Part of the resiliency of Indian cultures is an ability to maintain tradition while adapting to changing conditions." 89 This resiliency is not, of course, unique to Indians, but the history of the Americas has subjected them to the pressure of "changing conditions" perhaps to a greater degree than any other race. And Peter D. Elias, after studying the Canadian descendants of the Eastern Sioux who fled Minnesota in 1862-63--now over three thousand strong--concluded that when they were treated with benign neglect and permitted to work out their own adjustments to the changing world around them, they managed pretty well, but when forced to submit to government interference, they retrogressed into poverty and apathy. 90 With the economic prosperity brought by commercial gaming and the growing emphasis on self-determination in the policies currently being pursued by the BIA, the Santee Sioux probably have a better chance of realizing their potential than they have enjoyed at any time since they were first impacted by Euro-American civilization. Those familiar with the often tragic history of this gifted people can only wish them success in a future that looks brighter just now than ever before. NOTES 1. Jane F. Smith and Robert M. Kvasnicka, eds., Indian-White Relations: A Persistent Paradox ( Washington: Howard University Press, 1976), p. 211. This book is a collection of papers and commentaries presented at the National Archives Conference on Research in the History of Indian-White Relations, held in J une 1972. The quotation is from a note to my comment on William T. Hagan paper, "The Reservation Policy: Too Little and Too Late." The note containing this observation was added later, after a visit to the Santee reservation about three weeks after the conference.
|
|
|
Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 16:34:54 GMT -5
2. Interview with Richard Kitto, Tribal Chairman, June 15, 1993.
3. Interview with Mr. Kitto, June 15, 1993.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Interview with Lorraine Rousseau, Tribal Chairwoman, June 16, 1993; Sota Iya Ye Yapi ( Agency Village, S. Dak.), June 17, 1993.
|
|
|
Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 16:35:22 GMT -5
10. United States Department of the Interior, Reports, September 1960,
-402- U.S. Indian Population and Land: 1960, p. 25; U.S. Statutes at Large, XCVI, 2411-14; interview with Ms. Rousseau, June 16, 1993.
11. Sota lya Ye Yapi, June 17, 1993.
12. Interview with Ms. Rousseau, June 16, 1993; interview with Loretta B. Webster , Superintendent, Sisseton Agency, June 16, 1993.
13. Interview with Ms. Rousseau, June 16, 1993.
14. Interview with Ms. Rousseau, June 16, 1993; Sota lya Ye Yapi, June 17, 1993.
15. Interview with Ms. Rousseau, J une 16, 1993; Sota lya Ye Yapi, June 17, 1993.
16. Sota Iya Ye Yapi, June 17, 1993.
|
|
|
Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 16:35:41 GMT -5
17. U.S. Statutes at Large, XCVI, 2515-17.
18. Ibid., 2517-19.
19. U.S. Indian Population and Land: 1960, p. 21; Realty Branch, Devils Lake Agency, Fort Totten, N. Dak., June 29, 1993.
20. Interview with Douglas Sevigny, Tribal Planner, Devils Lake Sioux Tribe, Fort Totten, N. Dak., June 29, 1993.
|
|
|
Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 16:35:59 GMT -5
21. Interview with Mr. Sevigny, June 29, 1993.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
|
|
|
Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 16:36:31 GMT -5
26. Interview with Judi Ami, Chief Executive Officer, Four Winds Elementary School, Fort Totten, N. Dak., June 29, 1993.
27. Interview with Eric Longie, Academic Dean, Little Hoop Community College, Fort Totten, N. Dak., June 29, 1993.
28. Interview with Mr. Longie, June 29, 1993.
29. Interviews with Cheryl Redearth and Gordon Jones Jr., members of Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribal Council, June 16, 1993; U.S. Indian Population and Land: 1960, p. 24.
30. Interview with Mr. Jones, June 16, 1993; Indian Country Today ( Rapid City, S. Dak.), March 24, 1993.
31. U.S. Statutes at large, XCIX, 549-50.
32. Interviews with Ms. Redearth and Mr. Jones, June 16, 1993.
33. Elizabeth Ebbott, Indians in Minnesota ( Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), pp. 31, 56.
34. Ebbott, p. 56.
35. Ibid., pp. 56, 194-95.
36. Ibid., p. 42 (Table 5).
37. U.S. Indian Population and Land: 1960, p. 14; Ebbott, p. 42 (Table 5).
38. Daily Republican Eagle ( Red Wing, Minn.), October 22 and 24, 1979.
39. Minneapolis Tribune, June 13, 1981. Campbell died on July 29, 1981. See Republican Eagle, July 30, 1981.
40. U.S. Statutes at Large, XCIX, 549-52; St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 15,
-403-
|
|
|
Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 16:36:49 GMT -5
1983; Star and Tribune ( Minneapolis), May 15 and 16, 1983.
41. Tribune, December 1, 1981. Tribal officials accused the couple living on the land of leasing some of it to farmers and pocketing the income.
42. St. Paul Dispatch, January 5, 1982; Tribune, September 1 and 10, 1982; Pioneer Press, September 10, 1982. Minnesota law limited bingo prizes to $100, but Indian tribes' immunity to state regulation permitted them to offer larger awards. The woman evicted from the t tribal land and her daughter opened an off-sale liquor store, "Firewall Liquors," in a mobile home. Star and Tribune, May 27, 1983.
|
|