Gambling On Independence Indians Say I-651 Needed To Get More Tribal Members Off Welfare
Spokane Indians don’t want to gamble with the dramatic gains that casinos have brought to their reservation in the past couple of years.
Tribal members like Francis Carson, Sheila Pascal and Roger Denison see Initiative 651 as all that stands between their first steady jobs and a return to poverty.
The measure - proposed by the Spokane, Puyallup and Shoalwater Bay tribes - would sweep away state legal impediments to Nevada-style casinos that are bringing financial independence and pride to the Spokane Reservation.
“These voters in Washington state hold the whole deck of cards to the future of our reservation,” Denison said. “We need these jobs.”
Passage of the initiative could greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the legal cloud hanging over the casinos.
Ongoing federal litigation has yet to determine the extent to which the state may regulate casino gambling on reservations. The initiative would sidestep the issue by forcing the state government to sign regulatory agreements on tribal terms.
Tribal members like Carson, Pascal and Denison view themselves as providing entertainment service to people who can afford it. Social gambling is deeply embedded in their culture and doesn’t carry the stigma it does for many whites - who overwhelmingly are the casino customers.
Mostly, though, tribal members are just glad to have steady jobs.
“It feels a lot better to get $600 every two weeks instead of $160 on general assistance - especially when you’ve got a family to feed,” said Carson, 38.
He has lived on the reservation, near Ford, all his life except for a hitch in the Army, where he learned auto mechanics. Carson struggled for years to make a living on odd jobs and repairing cars in his back yard for people who couldn’t afford to pay.
Now he and his wife, Connie, both are slot machine mechanics. The family has fewer debts, two dependable cars and a TV satellite dish. Carson is hauling in dirt to plant a yard.
Denison, 40, came to the reservation in 1983 so his children wouldn’t have to grow up the way he did in Los Angeles. But he found only dead-end jobs and poverty.
“I lost a lot of my self-esteem when I got too hung up in the alcohol thing,” he said.
Now Denison is proud to be a pit boss at the tribe’s flagship Two Rivers Casino at the confluence of the Spokane and Columbia rivers. With tips, he brings home about $2,000 a month and his wife, Anita, supplements the family income as a blackjack dealer.
Sheila Pascal, 27, is a single mother who had nothing but part-time jobs and welfare until nine months ago when she was hired as one of the “porters” who keep the Two Rivers Casino tidy. She’s out of debt now and able to pay for the new home the tribal housing program will build for her next spring.
It feels good, Pascal said, to keep occupied and to be able to buy new school clothes for her 9-year-old son and take him to the movies occasionally. She looks forward to enrolling him in the day-care center the tribe plans to build for the 270 casino and marina workers at Two Rivers if Initiative 651 passes.
Pascal, Denison and Carson are typical of many tribal members.
Even 64-year-old greatgrandmother Alvina Wood found work at Two Rivers.
“It makes me feel like I’m back in the world again and not on a shelf,” Wood said.
There are few unemployed people in the West End community a dozen miles north of the Two Rivers Casino, resident Lea Etue said. Etue said her Pappy’s Korner convenience store has received far fewer food stamps in the past six months, and business has been up 30 to 40 percent since 20 nickel slot machines were installed.
Tribal leaders say “general assistance” welfare recipients among some 850 tribal members have dropped from about 200 to 40. Only about 20 of those live on the reservation.
Unemployment - which has been as high as 66 percent - has dropped from about 35 percent two years ago to around 18 percent. Officials consider the current rate - high by non-reservation standards - close to “full employment.”
Many of those who don’t have jobs now are transient or single heads of household who want to be with their children, said Larry Brown, director of the Tribal Employment Rights Office. The tribal casinos have turned to non-Indians for 20 to 30 percent of their workers.
Ten percent of gross receipts from casinos goes straight to the tribal Department of Health and Human Services. Programs have expanded greatly, and there is a two-year cushion of reserves. Staffing - which is 95 percent Native American - has gone from 34 last November to 56.
Office Manager Charlene Sijohn said many of the new workers provide meals and services, such as firewood delivery, for elderly and homebound residents.
Just a month ago, the department’s widely scattered offices were consolidated in well-appointed quarters in an old school building that was renovated for $238,000.
Vans now shuttle tribal members to medical appointments as well as to casino jobs, and construction of a tribal museum is being discussed.
Education is among numerous other programs that have benefited. The HeadStart kindergarten has new equipment and Margo Finnegan has been sent to Gonzaga Law School. Finnegan, 27, plans to become the first attorney in the tribe’s history.
“It’s employing our people, it’s educating our people, and we’re doing it all ourselves,” Finnegan said. “We don’t want welfare. We want a job.”
Since November 1994, the tribe has spent more than $300,000 on a new branch college campus that has 68 students.
A separate $300,000 endowment is boosting scholarships to other colleges. Education Director Terri Parr Wynecoop hopes to increase the endowment if Initiative 651 provides the stability needed to get loans for motels, restaurants and other amenities needed to make Two Rivers a destination resort.
Executive Director Larry Goodrow said much of the casino income is being plowed back into infrastructure at Two Rivers, providing work for tribal contractors. The resort already has a 100-slip marina and an unfinished recreational vehicle park as well as a 10,000-square-foot casino with 400 slot machines, blackjack, craps and roulette.
Buzz Gutierrez, whose family operates one of two casinos on tribal land two miles south of Chewelah, Wash., said his daughter, Monica, would like to build a motel but can’t get financing because of the legal uncertainties.
Tribal leaders declined to say how much is being earned by a total of four casinos. They’re optimistic, though, that the revenue will offset federal funding cuts - which could slash 19 percent from the tribe’s current budget - and eventually will free them from federal dependence.
State opposition to the casinos is seen as paternalism designed to keep Indians subservient.
As Roger Denison put it, “Before, we were like the Indian standing in front of the cigar store. We were going nowhere. They say we’re a sovereign nation, but I guess that’s only when we do nothing.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: I-651 Initiative 651, on the Nov. 7 ballot, would: Allow expanded gambling, including slot machines, on tribal land on and off reservations. Remove all state restrictions on the size or number of gambling halls, size of bets placed, hours of operation, or type of gambling. Greatly reduce state regulation of tribal gambling.