Editorials reveal anti-Indian positions

Analysis

AKWESASNE, N.Y. – Editorial writers in the mainstream media began churning out opinion pieces ranging from triumphalist to malicious within days following the Interior Department’s rejection of land into trust applications from the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe and 10 other tribes around the country.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced Jan. 4 that that the department had denied the Mohawk application to take 29 acres of land into trust for a $600 million casino resort at an existing racetrack in Monticello, saying the site – 300 miles from the tribe’s reservation, was too far for tribal members to travel for work. If members left the reservation to work at the casino, reservation life would suffer, Interior reasoned.

The casino project had robust support from N.Y. Gov. Eliot Spitzer, and from congressional, state and local officials who viewed the proposal, with its 3,000 jobs, as a boon to the economically depressed Sullivan County area.

But Interior’s rejection provoked a flurry of editorials both in the area and in Albany and New York City.

”Every once in a great while, even the Bush administration will present us with a genuine truffle,” wrote Fred Lebrun in the Albany Times Union Jan. 8. ”This unexpected delight comes by way of Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne’s denial of a couple of tribal applications for casinos in the Catskills. This means that for the foreseeable future, the Catskills will remain casino-free, the best possible news for these weary old mountains that have seen enough abuse.”

Lebrun also took advantage of the opportunity to bash Spitzer for supporting the Monticello casino project.

”Here goes, another hard luck gambling story. Governor Spitzer bet heavily on casino gambling as a way to economic revival in the Catskills, and now he lost. Worse, the people in the governor’s office are being sore losers,” LeBrun wrote in a separate editorial also published Jan. 8.

Addressing Spitzer’s objection to the Bush administration ”standing in the way of economic development efforts that have broad bipartisan support across New York state,” LeBrun said, ”Sorry, but us-against-them doesn’t work this time.” He also ridiculed Spitzer’s assertion that Sullivan County is a depressed area, an assertion supported by various economic studies of the state.

”The justification for Catskills casinos, and it was always thin, is that the poor, deprived third-world inhabitants of these mountains crave the economic opportunity to make minimum wage working there. If that was ever true, it’s at least five years out of date,” Lebrun said. As proof, he said that land values throughout the Catskills ”are zooming out of sight,” a specious argument that equates high land prices with the incomes of local working people rather than the wealth of people from the cities who are purchasing second homes in the area and pushing property prices up.

Because the tribe already has a casino in the remote upstate area of its reservation, the Malone Telegram on Jan. 8 said the tribe’s pursuit of a second casino close to the New York City market ”doesn’t seem to be an attempt to achieve success, but an act of greed.”

The New York Times chimed in on Jan. 17 with an editorial praising Kempthorne for ”making exactly the right call.”

”This page is all for bringing prosperity to the Catskills, but not on the backs of gamblers,” the Times wrote.

But no paper could beat The New York Post for sheet malice in its Jan. 8 editorial ”A Bad Bet on the Mohawks.”

”U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne did New York (and the rest of America) a big favor last Friday by nixing a plan to let the St. Regis Mohawk Indian tribe build a casino in the Catskills.

”Given the tribe’s longstanding links to crime and violence, the idea of offering it legal entree into the gambling world, letting it run its own facility 350 miles from its home, is absurd,” the editorial writer said.

The article then went on to list a scattershot litany of unsubstantiated criminal activities with no specific allegations as to person, place, time or crime committed.

The tribe has responded to most of the editorials, but not all of the papers have published the tribe’s letters, said Leslie Logan, St. Regis Mohawk spokesman.

Logan would not comment on whether the tribe would take action against The New York Post.