Idaho’S Largest Tribe Asserts Itself Shoshone-Bannocks’ Push For Gambling Decision Is Part Of Aggressive Strategy

After a century of losses, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes are going on the offensive.

The state’s largest Indian nation is taking on local, state and federal authorities to defend its rights to run things on the Fort Hall Reservation as its members see fit.

Chairman Lionel Boyer frowns below his white cowboy hat, his two long braids a mosaic of yellow and iron gray.

“The non-Indian society, they don’t like to see us as maintaining our traditions - except when we dance for them,” Boyer said. “I have quit dancing for them.”

The tribes are moving to assert their rights on everything from control over reservation roads to running gambling halls, and have found themselves at odds with North Idaho tribes on how best to ensure gaming rights.

Their insistence on a decision from a federal court on whether they can legally operate video gambling machines could jeopardize the casinos of three other tribes. At stake are millions of dollars in gambling revenues the tribes need to lift their members out of poverty.

The past 130 years haven’t been easy for the Shoshone-Bannocks. Bands of Indians with two separate languages were thrust together on one southern Idaho reservation. Their traditional, nomadic ways of living cut off, they were forced into poverty. Over time, two-thirds of their reservation land was chipped away, and they were left with decimated resources, scarce jobs and contaminated water.

Now the Sho-Bans are reclaiming their treaty rights, regardless of the consequences for other tribes or communities. Tribal leaders hope the moves will bring back some of the pride, self-sufficiency and cultural richness their people lost when white settlers indelibly altered their landscape.

Back to black and white

The tribes’ herds of horses and buffalo still graze on the rich river-bottom land known as the Fort Hall bottoms, where archaeologists have found proof of tribal life going back at least 3,500 years. The 77,000-acre tract was the Indians’ winter home in ancient times, as well as a rich source of fish, wildlife and grazing land throughout history.

“Supposedly it was ours to hunt, fish, graze and gather firewood on,” said Robert “Red” Perry, a 70-year-old Bannock who’s helped track down historical sites across the reservation. He pushed through head-high grass to point out an overgrown historical marker, as birds flew overhead and insects whined.

But in 1925, all but 13,000 acres of the bottoms was inundated by American Falls Reservoir.

“Younger members, they’re asking questions, `Well, why did this happen?”’ Boyer said. “In the past, your word was as good as putting it in black and white. But in time, we find that a man’s word isn’t any good.”

The Sho-Bans have turned back to the black and white - the rights guaranteed them in the 1868 Fort Bridger Treaty. Based on it, they’ve stopped a nuclear waste shipment, started taxing utilities that cross their land and begun enforcing tribal hiring preferences at a factory on reservation land.

In July, a trucking company tried to cross the reservation with a load so big it required moving power lines. The firm had no tribal permit, so tribal officials stopped the truck until a $10,000 trespass fee was paid.

“That road is on the reservation,” Boyer said emphatically.

The Shoshone-Bannocks say they have reason to be resentful. The Pocatello airport, for example, is on reservation land - taken by the military for an air base during World War II, and then given to the city of Pocatello.

“Half of our woes and troubles on the reservation were all created by the (federal) government,” Perry said with a sigh.

The Fort Bridger Treaty gave the tribes rights to hunt, gather and fish off the reservation, but when the Bannocks tried a few years later, it led to a bloody war they couldn’t win.

A different world

Outside the reservation today, subdivisions are rising in the open land along the outskirts of Pocatello, with pastel, two-story houses in neat, curving rows. Phosphate factories belch steam. There’s a university. Commercial planes land at an airport next to the freeway, which is lined with motels, restaurants and other businesses.

But things look far different on the reservation, which is only 544,000 acres of the original 1.5 million promised to the tribes in the 1868 treaty. Scattered trailers and a few junkyards dot the rolling hills of the reservation’s brilliantly lit high country, where lightning flashes on a summer morning. Mostly, they’re the homes of non-Indian workers for the cattle companies that lease the land.

Small houses cluster in the Fort Hall town site, where the streets are a maze of asphalt, gravel and dust, the playground is next to the jail, and the new, modern health clinic stands across from a cemetery.

The tribes or their members own 96 percent of the land on the reservation, which gives them something of an edge over other Idaho tribes in determining their own fate. But much of the land is leased to nonIndians.

Fertile potato fields have made fortunes for nonIndian firms that leased the land, but tribal members often gained little. Instead, they’ve discovered pesticide contamination in the aquifer that provides Fort Hall’s drinking water.

“I’ve had people whose wells have been contaminated report skin rashes to me,” said Lisa DeJongh, water quality manager for the tribes. “I know in one well, in which there was a very high concentration, there was a young woman who delivered a child with severe birth defects.”

The pesticide, ethylene dibromide, probably was legally applied by potato farmers until it was banned in 1985, DeJongh said. Now the tribe is in the midst of planning for miles of new water mains to pipe in water from a clean source.

“The farmers that were the cause of it are long gone,” Boyer said. “They’ve made their millions and disappeared.”

The tribal government has responded in part by banning all aerial spraying on the reservation - a major departure for Idaho potato farmers. Boyer said if anyone objected to the ban, he’d have a one-word answer: “Tough.”

“We don’t want any more damage done to Mother Earth,” he said. “They don’t understand that Mother Earth is a natural being, and putting unnatural things into Mother Earth is going to destroy it.”

All on one reservation

Perry bounced his bright-red Chevy pickup along the rutted back roads of the reservation, gesturing to mountains dotted with sacred sites that rise above the brushy hills.

Some once were timbered, he said. “They logged it off, but God knows where the logs went,” he muttered.

Political dissent and distrust have a long history at Fort Hall, said Perry, who has spent his life at the reservation, other than the years he served in the Navy during World War II.

A former tribal fire chief who spent years working for the tribes and government agencies, Perry is a student of history, who can point out the deep ruts of the Oregon Trail that still cut across the reservation.

He’s studied how his people, the Bannocks, and various bands of Shoshones once traveled through the region, following food sources to seasonal homes.

Then came the reservation.

“The government gathered all of ‘em up together and `pphht’ - put ‘em on one reservation,” Perry said.

After confining the tribes to the reservation, the federal government broke up the reservation into 160-acre “allotments” for each member, in an effort to disrupt traditional tribal living patterns and entice the Indians to live like farmers.

Over time, as the allotments were handed down to multiple heirs, ownership and management of the land became more difficult.

“You’ve got 150 owners for 160 acres,” Perry said in disgust.

Maxine Edmo, a tribal land use commissioner, said, “Some of them are forced to lease it out, because there are a lot of owners for one piece of land. We’re trying to maintain it under the tribe, so that’s a major concern.”

Agriculture and grazing are the main land uses. A Simplot Corp. open-pit phosphate mine operated until the early 1990s, then shut down, taking more than 100 jobs with it.

A labor force report prepared by the tribal government in April showed 57 percent unemployment among Indians on the reservation aged 16 to 64. Nearly 40 percent of those who were employed still fell below the poverty line.

“It’s real difficult, because we’re seasonal,” said Donna Bollinger, director of the tribal employment rights office. “I think it’s getting better. The work force is starting to become more skilled.”

Bill Brower, general manager of tribal gaming, said employment is the top benefit gaming has brought to the tribes. About 150 tribal members work in gaming. “Among many of the workers here, this is their first job.”

The tribal government is the largest employer on the reservation, by far. It employs nearly 500 Indian workers among the various agencies, tribal businesses and two gaming halls. Federal Indian agencies are second, followed by the phosphate and potato industries.

Perry worries about idleness among young people, and that they’ll lose their connection to their heritage. “Nowadays, there’s nothing for them to do,” he said. “Dope is one of our biggest problems.”

But there are hopeful signs, too. The tribes recently completed a 300-student junior/senior high school. Perry saw a granddaughter go to college. And his great-granddaughter speaks Bannock.

Boyer, who took office this summer as chairman of the Fort Hall Business Council, the tribes’ sevenmember governing body, heads an extensive tribal government. With 67 departments, it handles government functions ranging from fish and game to welfare to water resources.

Some members are excited to see the forceful Boyer return to leadership. He served as chairman 20 years ago, helping spur the original development of tribal enterprises, including a trading post with a grocery store and restaurant.

“He’s one of those individuals that commands respect just instantly,” said Bollinger, the employment rights director.

Boyer said he faces different challenges as a chairman today than he did two decades ago. “Times have changed, issues are different. You have to be more aggressive than what we were back then.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: FAST FACTS Shoshone-Bannock Tribes

Idaho’s largest Indian nation, the Shoshone-Bannocks have 4,461 enrolled members, about two-thirds of whom live on the Fort Hall Reservation in southeastern Idaho.

An estimated 3,000 members of other tribes also live on the reservation, for a total Indian population of 6,742.

The reservation covers 544,000 acres. Of that, 216,438 acres are leased to outside parties for agriculture, and 302,197 acres are leased out for grazing. That’s 95 percent of the reservation ground.

On the reservation, the tribes operate enterprises designed to provide jobs for tribal members and generate income for government services. They include a truck stop with a small gaming room filled with slot machines; a larger bingo hall and casino; and a roadside trading post that includes a grocery store, restaurant, the Clothes Horse clothing and crafts store, and more. The tribes also publish a newspaper, the Sho-Ban News, and operate a historical museum.

The tribes have an Internet site at www.sho-ban.com that gives information about the tribes, and also sells items from the Clothes Horse, including the tribes’ traditional and intricate bead work. This weekend, the tribes are hosts for their annual Indian Festival, a large, four-day powwow that draws participants and spectators from across the country.

Sources: Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs

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See related story under headline: Tribe rolls dice with gambling hall