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Ramping Up Economic Development Policy for Tribes
By Duane Champagne February 15, 2012
AP Photo/Matt York
A homesite lies dormant on the San Carlos Indian Reservation on June 9, 2000 in San Carlos, Arizona. Most of the reservation’s 10,500 members live far below the poverty line.
Maybe you’ve heard: The Department of the Interior’s (DOI) Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs has a deputy for policy and economic development. In recent years, that office has played an increasingly significant part in tribal government planning and goals.
A good thing, too. Because if reservation communities can’t continue to enter into the marketplace and create wealth and income for tribal members, they will remain impoverished and at the mercy of the federal government.
Just consider the numbers. According to the Census Bureau, the poverty rate for reservation Indians in 2010 was 28.4 percent, while the poverty rate for all Americans was 15.3 percent. Poverty rates on some reservations, like the San Carlos and Pine Ridge, can be more than 50 percent.
By now, we all know the miseries that come with being poor: substandard education, ill health, chronic unemployment, bad housing and pitiful economic opportunities among them. Not to mention the pathetically limited resources for political and cultural practice and renewal. It’s a grim fact that Indian poverty, both reservation and urban, remains a central feature of contemporary Indian life.
Fortunately, Washington knows this. And so it is encouraging to see the federal bureaucracy devoting at least some management resources to policy and economic development issues. As it is, these activities are mandated by congressional legislation.
But plenty of challenges remain. Take the Office of Tribal Self-Governance, which is devoted to contract negotiations and monitoring of federal contracts. It carries out necessary and important tasks for tribal governments. But it is not engaged in helping tribal governments and communities prepare for market competition. Nor does it handle culturally acceptable ways to approach market enterprise.
Witness, too, the Office of Indian Gaming, which assists tribes in negotiating compacts with state governments. All well and good. But as Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar recently noted, less than half of federally recognized Indian reservations have gaming establishments, and only about 232 are engaged in casino-style gaming. “Most tribal gaming operations are quite small,” he said, “and are located in rural areas.”
And then there is gaming revenue itself. It has helped many tribes provide needed services such as housing, safety, health and education. Gaming funds have been a significant building block for some tribal governments and communities to obtain greater self-governance. Nonetheless, Indian gaming successes are limited. For most Indian communities, gaming just can’t provide enough support for economically sustainable empowerment.
Granted, the assistant secretary’s policy and economic development office has begun to more directly address some important issues. These include economic financing, training in entrepreneurship and management, marketing of energy and minerals, economic capacity building and workforce training. The office recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development for future collaboration on economic development for Indian tribes. A major consultation initiative to hear the voice of tribal leaders about proposed revision of leasing rules affecting residents, business leasing, and wind and solar power leasing issues will be completed by this summer.
And including Indian cultural values and community goals within economic development planning is becoming an important priority. Members of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota collected $117 million in oil royalties in 2011, thanks in part to cooperative relations between the DOI and the tribal government to support environmentally safe oil extraction. The division of energy and mineral development is actively promoting environmentally friendly, or green, job creation for reservation communities. Since 2009, the division of capital investment has guaranteed more than $209 million in loans to Indian individual and tribal businesses that are designed to benefit reservation economies.
Before you get too hopeful, though, remember this: The total budget for Indian policy and economic development is only about $40 million, of which about $25 million goes to salaries. That’s a pittance. When it comes to investment and culturally agreeable economic development on Indian reservations, the DOI isn’t doing nearly enough.
Proposed tribal casino case goes to appeals court
9 comments by Cecilia Chan – Feb. 14, 2012 08:36 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com
In April, Glendale leaders and others will ask a court to overturn a federal decision to grant reservation status to a 54-acre tract near the city that is owned by a southern Arizona tribe.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently set April16 as the date for oral arguments in the case against the Tohono O’odham Nation, which seeks to build a resort and casino on the land near 95th and Northern avenues.
Glendale is joined by the Gila River Indian Community and key state lawmakers in the appeal.
They seek to overturn the U.S. Department of Interior’s decision in 2010 that the tribe’s land should be taken into trust as part of the reservation. The Tohono O’odham purchased the land as part of a congressional settlement to replace tribal land near Gila Bend that was damaged by a federally built dam.
Glendale and others challenged the Interior’s decision, which was upheld by a federal judge last year. From there, they appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Tohono O’odham leaders asked the court to fast-track the case, saying a delay would give opponents an opportunity to thwart the Interior’s decision. The tribe noted three such attempts, including a bill by Peoria Republican U.S. Rep. Trent Franks to prohibit gaming on the site.
The tribe also argued the casino would provide much-needed financial revenue to help its members. The project has been on hold pending resolution of court cases. The Interior has not formally taken the land into the reservation until the legal challenges are resolved. Even if the land is taken into the reservation, the tribe still must get specific permission to game there from the National Indian Gaming Commission.
Glendale and Gila River tribe had argued against expediting the appeal, saying that the Tohono O’odham failed to show justification to speed up the process.
The appeals court in November declined to expedite the case, but agreed to it a month later after the Tohono O’odham filed for reconsideration.
Glendale issued a statement saying the city is confident the court “will recognize that reservation shopping is an issue with national implications that could affect communities across our country. This effort by the Tohono O’odham political leaders to establish a reservation for gaming purposes in the middle of a neighborhood sets a dangerous precedent – one that could turn any U.S. city or town into another Las Vegas.”
David Leibowitz said the Gila River tribe is eager to present its case. Leibowitz, a spokesman for the tribe on the casino matter, said at the heart of the appeal is that the federal government refused to look at evidence showing the Tohono O’odham exceeded the acreage limit under its congressional settlement. Gila River argues the tribe exceeded the 9,880 acres allowed in the settlement, making the Glendale area land is ineligible for reservation status.
Leibowitz said Gila River leaders are optimistic the court would rule in their favor and remand the case back to the Interior Department for reconsideration.
He said if the appellate court upholds the decision to take the land into trust, the tribe “will consider all of its options — including petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court.”
A three-judge panel in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear oral arguments at 9a.m. April16 in the James R. Browning U.S. Courthouse in San Francisco.
Shadow Wolves track down smugglers on the Arizona-Mexico border
The technologies border police use to protect our boundaries range from the historic (mustangs trained for mounted patrols) to the futuristic. (The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency plans to nearly triple its fleet of unmanned surveillance Predator B aircraft.)
But nothing can track a smuggler quite like a human being. The Shadow Wolves, a nine-member unit of Native American customs agents, have excelled at the job since the early 1970s, when Congress decided a special force was needed to police drug smugglers on 140 miles of U.S.-Mexico border, 76 of which cross the Tohono O’odham Nation. The agents were chosen because of their finely honed traditional tracking skills — particularly the ability to find and follow nearly invisible signs, such as tiny snags of fabric or footprint traces. With increased border security impeding traditional smuggling routes in California and Texas, the Shadow Wolves have seen more action in the Arizona desert. And while the recession may have slowed illegal immigration, drug traders remain undaunted: Last October, the Shadow Wolves and Tohono O’odham police tailed smugglers through the desert, eventually seizing nearly two tons of marijuana.
Document
By Barry Bergman, NewsCenter | January 20, 2012
BERKELEY —
The Juaneño band of Mission Indians “has been in the process of federal recognition for 30 years,” laments Domingo Belardes, his voice hinting at the psychic and economic toll of a generation’s worth of government snubs. He dreams of expanding and improving his Orange County band’s modest, weekends-only museum as a way “to bring our people together through our culture.”
 Nicole Lim describes the California Indian Museum’s Ishi exhibit.
James Marquez, a White Mountain Apache and board director for MACT — a nonprofit providing services to Indians in Mariposa, Amador, Calaveras and Tuolomne counties — says his organization has both a building and a “pretty spectacular collection” of 250 Indian-made baskets and other cultural artifacts. Recognizing the enormous challenges and myriad details involved in developing, operating and curating a full-blown museum, however, he and his fellow board members are “trying to figure out whether to take the next step” into serious fundraising.
As UC Berkeley students streamed back to campus last week, Belardes and Marquez were taking part in a first-of-its kind Native American Museum Studies Institute, a collaborative effort of two campus entities — the Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues and the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology — and a third with strong campus ties, the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center in Santa Rosa. Over the course of four days, they and eight other participants got a crash course in everything from grantwriting and intellectual-property issues to curation, exhibit design and museum management. Tuition was free, though the institute’s 10 participants — Indians (mostly) and affiliated non-Indians from Northern and Southern California, Arizona, Montana and Alaska — were responsible for room and board.
 Joe Myers
To Joe Myers, the Berkeley lecturer and law-school alum who heads the center bearing his name — and whose daughter, Berkeley grad Nicole Lim, is the director of the California Indian Museum — museums are a tool for Indians to reclaim their culture, their history and their very “Indian-ness.”
Before gaming came to Indian reservations, Myers says, they typically operated in what he calls “survival mode.” That may be changing, but casino money alone can’t reverse the impacts of brutal government campaigns of Indian removal and forced assimilation. “Even on those reservations where there’s been an economic boom because of gaming, we still have the poverty mentality,” Myers says. “We still have drug issues, alcoholism and lack of education and motivation to succeed.” The U.S. government’s decades-long program of sending Indian children away to boarding schools, he adds, “devastated cultural ties.”
Indigenous people’s museums, he believes, can help heal some of the damage. “What I think these museums will do — either on an individual basis, or on a collaborative, regional basis — is to let Indians tell their own stories, and to tell the stories from their perspective,” he explains. As with MACT, though, “even if you have the money for the building, you still have to have the skills to make it work — both for visitors who are not from the reservation and for those who are. You can’t just open the doors and expect it to succeed.”
The need to conserve and revitalize tribal cultural heritage, and give tribes a stronger voice in representing that heritage, was the beating heart of the institute. In addition to workshops on topics like collections management and cataloging — including a day at the Hearst’s basket and textile storage facility in Emeryville — participants were schooled in such issues as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, better known as NAGPRA, the 1990 law that requires institutions receiving federal funding to return human remains and other cultural objects to tribes.
Under the leadership of Mari Lyn Salvador, the Hearst Museum — which has a large collection of bones dug up decades ago by Berkeley archaeologists — has hired additional staff to help with the challenging task of repatriating the bones of Native Americans to their respective tribes for burial. Myers, who co-conducted the NAGPRA workshop, says the Hearst “has turned the corner with Mari Lyn in getting artifacts back to tribes.”
Salvador, one of the many scholars and museum experts who took part in the institute, presented a brief but brightly illustrated history of her own education in “how to bring indigenous knowledge to museums,” beginning with lessons learned working with Kuna Indians in Panama while still in her 20s.
Lim, whose Santa Rosa museum is focused less on displaying artifacts than on using multimedia with the aim of “correcting misinformation” and “changing stereotypes” about Indians, recounted how she and her staff went about creating a permanent exhibit on Ishi, among the country’s best-known Indians — and its most misunderstood. She described grade-school classrooms in which Native American children, often a minority of one, are forced to “defend their history” against popular misconceptions.
“Our goal is that one day, our kids won’t have to do that,” Lim said.
On the institute’s final morning, the group sat in a circle in the Hearst galleries to hear Karen Biestman, who teaches at Berkeley Law and directs Stanford’s Native American Cultural Center, address the need to “transform ethnic museums into forums and places for confrontation, experimentation and debate,” all of it “grounded in the Native perspective.”
To Myers, who was instrumental in the creation of the California Indian Museum, that perspective is crucial — not just to museums, but to Indians themselves.
“We didn’t have our culture with us in the ways we should have,” says Myers, a Pomo who remembers riding the bus to Catholic catechism lessons as a boy in Ukiah. “Today we have young people thinking differently. They’re thinking it’s OK to be Indian, it’s OK to be proud of your people, where before — my mother’s generation especially — we’d bought into the idea that you had to get rid of that Indian-ness, that you wanted to be ‘an American.’
“But,” he adds, “you can be both.”
Arizona casinos launch new website
18 January 2012
SCOTTSDALE, Arizona — (PRESS RELEASE) — Vilocity Interactive, Inc. and Gila River Gaming Enterprises announce the launch of a new website for the Gila River Indian Community’s three Phoenix-area casinos: Wild Horse Pass Hotel & Casino, Lone Butte Casino and Vee Quiva Casino.
Located at www.wingilariver.com and developed by Vilocity Interactive, the upscale website rivals Las Vegas casino websites, providing easy access to up-to-the-minute information about casino promotions, shows, offers, and even jackpot totals. Live feeds from the casino floor update the Gila River Riches jackpot totals for each of the three casinos. An interactive map provides Wild Horse Pass Hotel & Casino guests a dynamic preview of the 100,000 square foot casino, 10-story hotel, and 12,000 square feet of meeting space. Website visitors can book hotel rooms, review current promotions, make dining reservations, purchase tickets to live shows, and participate in social media, with just a few clicks.
Perhaps the most “gee whiz” of all, a Virtual Concierge shows hotel guests the casino and local events occurring on the days of their visit, and enables them to request a real concierge help with arrangements.
The site also includes a sophisticated data capture capabilities enabling visitors to subscribe to e-newsletters, indicate their entertainment and casino preferences, and opt-in to receive special offers via text messaging. Also, on the backend, Gila River Casinos’ administrative staff can quickly and easily updates the site using the Vilocity Content Management System.
Gila River Casinos Chief Executive Officer, John J. James, remarked, “My vision for this website was to engage visitors by providing a full experience of the casinos and hotel before they even step through our doors. The rich photography and sophisticated design entice users while making it easy to find information and plan their visit.”
“Gila River Casinos is on the leading edge of digital marketing and Vilocity is honored to be their partner in reaching their online goals,” says Ron Mileti, president of Vilocity Interactive.
Vilocity Interactive, Inc. is Gila River Casinos online marketing agency of record, not only developing and helping maintain the organization’s website, but also manages email marketing for each casinos, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), social networking, mobile marketing, texting campaigns, smart phone apps, digital signage, and more.
Gila River Gaming Enterprises, Inc. owns and operates three Arizona casinos within the Gila River Indian Community including Wild Horse Pass Hotel & Casino, Lone Butte Casino, and Vee Quiva Casino. All three casinos offer a combination of slots, table games, bingo, poker and hotel and are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
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