Indians using casino profits to purchase ancestral land

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

LA Times, October 20, 2003

Tribes Buying Back Ancestral Lands
Indian bands statewide are using casino profits to purchase property 
near their reservations, sometimes reacquiring farmland or sacred sites.

By Louis Sahagun, Times Staff Writer

Maurice Lyons was a boy when white ranchers fenced a lush canyon in the 
heart of the Morongo Band of Mission Indians reservation to keep his 
people from sharing its game, pasturelands, wild grapes and sage.

"Back then, I hunted deer and rabbit in the canyon with a beat-up old 
single-shot .22 rifle," he recalled. "We didn't have anything else to 
live on in those days, so there were hard feelings about those fences."

Now, as chairman of one of the wealthiest casino-owning tribes in the 
state, Lyons is making a priority of buying back ancestral territory, 
starting with Millard Canyon, near Banning. It is part of an effort to 
consolidate the reservation — a checkerboard of desert parcels about 100 
miles east of Los Angeles — and, even more important, fulfill a tribal 
longing to reclaim land that had been taken away.

Other casino-owning tribes up and down the state also are quietly buying 
property near their reservations as part of long-term economic 
development strategies, or merely to protect it from encroachment.

The advantages of owning a successful casino, tribal leaders say, are 
cultural as well as economic. In addition to paying for social services, 
infrastructure improvements, business investments and political 
donations, gambling operations help tribes reconnect to a fundamental 
aspect of their besieged past: land lost through tax sales, fraud and 
violence.

"It has long been an aspiration of tribes across America to reclaim 
their traditional lands in any way possible," said Victoria Bomberry, a 
professor of Native American studies at UC Riverside.

"During the early days of the Red Power movement in the 1960s, for 
example, tribal elders emphasized the importance of reclaiming that 
land," Bomberry added. "A lot of people who have come of age since then 
are now in a position to try to achieve that dream."

UCLA law professor Carole Goldberg would add, however, that it can be a 
costly dream.

"On one hand, the tribes are buying property with revenue provided by 
non-Indians, which seems to mitigate some of the unjustness of it all," 
she said. "But sellers know they have a unique commodity, and may raise 
prices dramatically to take advantage of the value that contiguous land 
has for Native Americans."

In many cases, the tribes aim to eventually take the acquired property 
into trust, a lengthy process that would ultimately insulate it from 
state and local laws by making it a part of their sovereign territory. 
Sometimes, however, tribal elders say, they are simply content to own 
the land.

full: http://www.latimes.com/

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