Schwarzenegger Scapegoats California NDNs

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--ryan

California Governor Fights Indian Casino Expansion

By Adam Tanner

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a
warning for state voters: "The Indians are ripping us off."

Schwarzenegger has taken up the line to convince them to reject a
tribe-backed initiative on the Nov. 2 ballot that would allow rapid
expansion of American Indian casinos in the nation's most populous
state and derail the governor's own effort to manage casino growth.

Some critics say the governor is going too far with his campaign --
tapping a deep vein of hostility that dates back to the settlers'
conquest of the U.S. West.

"His statement touches on racism," said Virgil Moorehead, chairman of
the Big Lagoon Rancheria tribe in northern California. "It's so
uneducated and so far-fetched to say that we are ripping off the
state."

Added Victor Rocha, an American Indian who edits a Web site related
to casino gambling: "I don't think it is racist but it sure fans the
flames of racism by going and saying that and just having that type
of hatred of Native Americans."

American Indian casinos have expanded dramatically across the United
States since the late 1980s following court rulings and new laws.

The expansion helped some tribes rise from poverty, but it also
triggered a backlash. Schwarzenegger made casino payments to the
state an issue in his run for governor last year, saying tribes were
not paying their fair share.

"There always has been resentment of any special thing that the
Indians seemed to have, whether it was their land or whether it was
business concessions," said Robert Berkhofer, author of a 1978 book
on American Indians. "In California there is lots of residual racial
antipathy."

Schwarzenegger spokesman Vince Sollitto said the governor's comments
about Indians "ripping us off" referred to tribes that back
Proposition 70, which would allow the expansion of casinos in return
for payments on par with state corporate taxes.

Schwarzenegger earlier this year struck a deal with five tribes to
guarantee payments by Indians, who have a monopoly on slot machines.
The ballot measure would nullify that deal and set the payments at
the corporate rate of 8.84 percent.

It also would allow tribes to sign contracts with the state to
operate as many slot machines as they want on their land and
introduce roulette and craps, both of which are now banned in
California.

UNEVEN PROSPERITY

Experts say the debate overlooks the fact that many tribes have no
casinos.

"The basic thing that Indian gaming has done is raise the salience of
some very wealthy tribes at the expense of an accurate picture of
what's going on in Indian country," said Jonathan Taylor, a research
fellow at the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic
Development.

Nearly half of the roughly 500,000 self-described Native Americans
living on reservations did not have casino gambling, according to the
2000 census, he said.

The National Indian Gaming Commission, a federal regulatory agency,
says 330 Indian casinos nationwide brought in $16.7 billion in 2003,
up about $2 billion each year since 2000.

Schwarzenegger is seeking to negotiate deals with tribes to pay the
state more of what casinos make -- perhaps 15 to 25 percent, he said
this week. But he has not explained how he reached those figures or
why the casinos should pay more than the standard corporate tax.

"What we don't want to do is make it unfair where they grab the
billions and billions of dollars from the people of California
without paying anything," he told KGO radio in San Francisco.

States have limited influence over tribes, which have a sovereign
status roughly the same as the states. That raises tensions that go
deep in U.S. history.

"There is this old idea that Indians have wealth and that they have
too much of it and we ought to determine how much they get," said
Taylor.