Casino Stalker

NewTimes: Broken promises and Tohono O'odham casino

Friday, April 30, 2010

"Albert Manuel walks through the desert near Gila Bend, reminiscing about the days when Indian villages sprawled across the landscape. He grew up in this southwestern desert, played under its mesquite trees, and hunted quail and dove with his brothers.

Families lived on the 22,000-acre reservation in homes with cactus-rib walls, clay floors, and thatched rooftops. In 1882, the federal government established the Gila Bend Indian Reservation, one of four in Arizona that make up the Tohono O'odham Nation.

By 1909, Washington cut the reservation by more than half. Even so, it was plenty big enough for tribal members to gather wood, hunt, worship, and raise families.

Villagers did not feel cramped until 1967, when they were forced to leave their homes because of continual flooding from Painted Rock Dam — built in 1960 by the federal Corps of Engineers downstream from the reservation to protect farming communities in southern Arizona. Water backup from the dam flooded reservation land repeatedly during the 1970s and '80s. Livelihoods were destroyed, including a 750-acre farm that helped support the tribe.

The forced move was the latest in a series of broken promises made to the tribe by the federal government.

First, because of pressure from land-hungry white farmers, the feds reduced the reservation to about 10,000 acres. Then, the government said it would help the impoverished tribe improve its land for agriculture. Before that could happen, the feds approved the dam, which flooded reservation land and forced the tribe to move.

Then, almost two decades after the Tohono O'odham settled San Lucy Village on the 40 acres, federal lawmakers promised tribal leaders in 1986 that they could replace the about 10,000 acres irreparably damaged by Painted Rock Dam — a pledge that the tribe became determined to make Washington keep.

It would take the tribe almost another two decades to find a chunk of real estate it wanted, a 134-acre parcel in the West Valley. In acquiring the property, tribal leaders were shrewd, using the same tricks that non-Indian developers use in land deals all the time."

Get the Story:
Wanna Bet? The Tohono O'odham Want to Build a Casino in the West Valley -- Now It's Up to the Feds to Make It Happen or Break Another Promise to the Tribe (The Phoenix New Times 4/29)