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Pauly Denetclaw
ICT
Soon the Department of the Interior headquarters will again be overflowing with tribal leaders from across the nation, some traveling thousands of miles. The room will be filled with tough questions, lots of laughter and networking.
The summit acts as a deadline for President Joe Biden’s administration and where he will announce his priorities for the upcoming year. At times the administration’s priorities don’t align with the needs of tribal nations.
For the third year in a row, the administration is hosting the summit. It will be Wednesday and Thursday at the U.S. Department of the Interior. Some 300 tribal leaders attend annually. Each nation is allowed one representative at the summit.
Details for the summit have yet to be released by the White House. ICT reached out to newly appointed Rose Petoskey, director of tribal affairs at the Biden administration, for an interview, but she did not respond. Petoskey, Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, replaced PaaWee Rivera, Pueblo of Pojoaque, who left the White House in mid-November.
Indian gaming issue in Oregon
One of the nations that will be represented is the Coquille Indian Tribe in Oregon, which finds itself at the center of a campaign ahead of the summit.
Chairman Brenda Meade, Coquille Indian Tribe, doesn’t understand why her tribe and 2.5 acres the nation is trying to put into trust have caused such a stir among tribal leaders from her state, California and as far as Louisiana.
“It’s been about 12 years now of our efforts to put 2.42 acres of land in the trust in the designated area that Congress designated in our Restoration Act,” Meade told ICT. “The difference between our Restoration Act and anyone else is that ours is very specific. They didn’t give us a reservation when we were restored. There was no land. They said, you poor Indians, if you can go out and buy land in this area, we’ll give you the process to put it in trust and that’ll be your reservation.”
The Coquille nation has purchased and put some land into trust. Coquille was terminated in 1954 and then re-recognized in 1989 without a land base. According to the tribe’s restoration act, “The Secretary shall accept any real property located in Coos and Curry Counties not to exceed one thousand acres for the benefit of the Tribe if conveyed or otherwise transferred to the Secretary.”
The proposed 2.4 acres is located in Medford, Oregon which is in Jackson County. If the land goes into trust then Coquille would like to build another casino. This would be their second one.
“We have every right to put land into trust in that county, in our service area, and that is our reservation,” Meade said.
Some tribal leaders oppose the Coquille nation putting land into trust for a casino in southern Oregon, saying the nation has no right to have one on land they say isn’t their ancestral homelands. They say the proposal defies the state’s one tribe-one casino verbal agreement, an agreement based on each governor’s administration. (The Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw already have two casino locations, one in Florence, Oregon and the other in Coos Bay. Both are located along the coast.)
“We’re asking it not be based on restored lands because these are not their lands,” Russell Attebery, Karuk Tribe chairman, said to ICT.
The other issue brought up by Karuk Tribe and Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians is how close the proposed location is to their gaming facilities on the I-5 corridor.
The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act doesn’t limit the number of casinos a nation can operate or how close one tribal casino can be to another.
For example, there are 14 nations that have gaming compacts with the state of New Mexico. The Navajo Nation has three casinos in New Mexico. The Dancing Eagle Casino, operated by Laguna Pueblo, is a nine-minute drive from Acoma Pueblo’s Sky City Casino Hotel, according to Google Maps.
The location of the proposed new Coquille casino would be in Medford, Oregon, located in the southern part of the state, which is about an hour’s drive from Karuk Tribe’s Rain Rock Casino in Yreka, a sparsely populated small town in northern California. The town has a population of just 7,827, according to the U.S. Census.
It would be over an hour’s drive from the Seven Feathers Casino Resort in Canyonville, Oregon, operated by the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians. The town has a population just under 2,000. The main tourist attraction is the casino resort.
“The Department of Interior is looking to act on a different tribe, 160 miles up into Oregon from their reservation to put a casino in Medford, Oregon, which is very close to the Karuk Tribe’s aboriginal territories,” Attebery said. “It’s very concerning because the Department of Interior, they owe a trust obligation to all tribes. And it’s not fair that a trustee can choose to benefit one beneficiary at the expense of another, which would be happening.”
Putting land into trust is a lengthy process but the first critical step is often to get approval by the Secretary of the Interior, currently, Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo.
The Cow Creek and Karuk nations have been outspoken about how the proposed Medford casino would impact their nations that are located in rural, sparsely populated areas and rely on casino revenues to provide services to their citizens.
“I want to emphasize the profound impact Coquille’s second casino would have on my tribe and my people,” Carla Keene, Cow Creek chairman, said a year ago. “It will impact essential governmental services that the tribe provides. It will impact our education program. It will impact our ability to provide healthcare and social services that many of our members rely upon.”
Meade said it’s fear that is driving this campaign and a way to keep what they have.
“We’re a small tribe,” Meade said. “We’re here in southern Oregon. We’re in rural Oregon, and we’re trying to take care of people. We still live in poverty. We still have huge health disparities that we are tackling.”
Land protection in California
The other issue that has come forward is the protection of ancestral lands in California that are under federal management.
Tribal leaders from the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians and Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians in southern California are calling on the Biden administration to expand protections for three sites. One of them is the San Gabriel National Monument located in between Los Angeles and San Bernandino.
This move would protect 109,000 acres of public lands. This area is a sacred place to the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians and Gabrieleño people. The hope is to protect historic sites and landscapes, which may include cultural artifacts. The Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians is still trying to gain federal recognition.
The other is Chuckwalla National Monument that is located south of Joshua Tree National Park. The proposed protections would be about 660,000 acres and become the largest protected area of the bioregion. The hope is to protect the unique biodiversity of the region, according to Protect Chuckwalla National Monument.
The third site includes some 200,000 acres of the Sattitla Medicine Lake Highlands, about 30 miles from Mount Shasta in Northern California. The area is a spiritual center for the Pit River Tribe where they conduct ceremonies and gatherings.
The tribal communities and Indigenous advocates are calling on the Biden administration to designate these lands through the Antiquities Act, which gives presidents the power to protect public land by creating national monuments in areas with historic, cultural or scientific significance, and the America the Beautiful Initiative, according to a press release by Indigenous Voices of Nevada. “Since taking office, President Biden has used the Antiquities Act five times to designate national monuments, and has protected nearly 1.5 million acres of public lands by establishing these new national monuments, four of which were made possible thanks to the leadership of tribal nations.”
National Congress of American Indians
ICT Editor-at-Large Mark Trahant talked with newly elected NCAI president and Pechanga Band of Indians Chairman Mark Macarro about the upcoming White House Tribal Nations Summit. Here is that conversation:
Trahant: Next week the White House Tribal Nations Summit will take place. It’s an opportunity to talk with the executive branch about some of these issues. What are some of your primary objectives for that?
Macarro: Well, that’s a time when the White House likes to highlight a lot of the positives that it has brought to Indian Country and emphasize those. Also, new initiatives are often rolled out at that time. So that’ll be a chance for Indian Country to have a look at what those initiatives are and have an honest conversation or dialogue with the White House, with the administration, on the relative merits of those initiatives.
Are they hitting the mark with them? Did they leave something out? Because if they do, you know, they will be called out and we will have to point to them and say, look, we need you to pay attention to this. We need to focus on this now and over the next two years.
I think we’ll be prepared to do that. At this point we don’t have any indication, at least I don’t yet, what will be rolled out by the administration in the various agencies.
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