By Patric Hedlund, TME
What would it look like if a group of business speculators was able to take over a sovereign nation, substitute their own leaders and change the priorities of that nation? What if all it took to accomplish that was to eliminate the members of the nation who didn’t agree with the new direction?
On August 13, 2015 a listing in the Federal Register out of Washington, D.C. started the clock ticking for an Indian gambling casino to be approved in the name of the Tejon Indian Tribe just north of the Outlets at Tejon.
The Federal Register describes their plan to acquire 306 acres of agricultural land near the junction of State Route 99 and Interstate 5 to construct and operate a 250,000 square foot gaming facility and a 300-room hotel about 20 minutes north of Frazier Park.
Federal Fumbling
It typically takes decades for a tribe to obtain ‘recognized tribe’ status with the United States government. Losing that status can happen overnight.
The ancestors of the people of the Tinoqui-Chalola Council of the Kitanemuk and Yowlumne Tejon Indians entered into a treaty with the United States government in 1851 as a sovereign nation, but they disappeared from the list of tribes “recognized” as sovereign by the United States government a hundred years later.
Loss of recognition occurred in 1962 after 880 acres of land designated in 1916 for the Tejon Indians was found by the Department of the Interior to be ‘unusable’ by the tribe. The land was placed back into the public domain. When the U.S. Department of the Interior published its list of recognized tribes in 1969, the previously-recognized tribe was not on the list.
Five Years Ago
Then, five years ago this week, on December 30, 2011, a decision by the United States Department of the Interior was announced. Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Larry Echo Hawk declared that an “administrative error” had caused the tribe’s delisting. Echo Hawk said tribal recognition had been restored.
Gotcha
What appeared on the surface to be an effort to correct a past mistake is seen differently by those of the traditional members of the tribe who say they were arbitrarily left off of the newly-named “Tejon Indian Tribe” membership rolls.
Dee Dominguez, chairwoman of the original Tinoqui-Chalola Council of the Kitanemuk and Yowlumne Tejon Indians—disagreed with the faction that seeks a casino. Casino supporters are included in Echo Hawk’s action. Dominguez and her extended family are not.Those who do not seek a casino are left out.
The reaffirmation split apart a single family, leaving on opposite sides of a widening legal chasm two bloodline cousins whose mothers were sisters. They share the same great-great-grandmother and the same great-uncle.
Lobbyists
Lavish spending—more than $200,000 spent for well-placed attorneys and lobbyists in 2008-2009 alone—is alleged to have accelerated return of the ‘registered’ status for the pro-casino members of the newly-branded “Tejon Tribe.” The re-registration qualifies it as an autonomous sovereign government eligible to build a casino. Those left off the tribal membership lists are those who disagreed with that priority.
Who Paid For It?
William C. Wortman, 64 is said to be the source for most of that funding. He is managing director of Millennium Gaming, Inc. and Cannery Casino Resorts, LLC from Las Vegas.
They have a joint venture with a group called Tribal Financial Advisors to “identify, pursue and enter into agreements with Native American Indian tribes throughout the United States for the financing and management of…existing or new gaming properties,” according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
Their announcement also said the joint venture would help tribes obtain capital investment.
Searches of databases by The Mountain Enterprise in 2009 yielded records showing that in 2008 lobbyist Patton Boggs, LLP is reported to have been paid $120,000 and lobbyist Tew Cardenas was paid $50,000 by the Tejon Indian Tribe. The industry category for their lobbying is listed as “Casino/Gambling.” Payments reported in 2009 were $20,000 paid to the Patton Boggs firm—which had a long relationship with Larry Echo Hawk well before he entered the federal government.
On June 2, 2015 Wortman appeared before the Kern County Board of Supervisors with lawyers from Patton Boggs, Bakersfield lobbyist Gene Tackett and the tribal chair for the casino faction of the tribe, Kathryn Montes Morgan.
She and her attorneys said they wish to enter into negotiations as a sovereign nation with the government of Kern County. That is a step in preparing to develop the casino.
‘We have no plans’
This is the same Indian casino which former Tejon Ranch Company CEO Robert Stine told the Kern County Board of Supervisors on October 5, 2009, “will not be built.”
The TRC developer was speaking at a hearing to ask Kern County to certify the environmental impact report for Tejon Mountain Village.
He was responding to questions raised by Dominguez and other Native American groups about the cumulative impact of all the proposed developments by Tejon Ranch along the Interstate-5 Grapevine corridor—including an Indian casino.
Stine was seeking entitlements from the county to subdivide Tejon Ranch Company property in Lebec for 3,450 homes (including single family residences, resort condominiums, luxury apartments and townhouses in a private, gated community), 750 resort hotel rooms, two 18-hole golf courses, two heliports and substantial commercial facilities—much of it set within endangered California condor critical habitat. Supervisors voted unanimously to approve Tejon’s plan.
Leapfrog
Three years later, the Tejon Indian Tribe’s path to reaffirmation triggered comment throughout the country in the Native American press.
In April 2013 the Inspector General for the Bureau of Indian Affairs said in a scathing investigative report that the Tejon Tribe’s application was granted by Larry Echo Hawk without following the BIA’s own long-established rules for ensuring tribal membership.
One segment of the Tejon Indian Tribe had been given reaffirmation without consideration of 10 other eligible groups of relatives. That included the January 15, 1996 application on behalf of the entire Tinoqui-Chalola Council of the Kitanemuk and Yowlumne Tejon Indian tribe, made by Morgan’s own cousin, Delia Dee Dominguez, 15 years earlier.
Six additional tribes in other parts of the nation also said their petitions had been in the pipeline well before that of Morgan’s group.
Tribes in other parts of the nation also said their petitions had been in the pipeline well before that of Morgan’s group.
Echo Hawk Resigns
Larry Echo Hawk resigned from government on April 27, 2012—three months after the Inspector General began looking into Echo Hawk’s actions.
Dominguez said Morgan (financed by Wortman’s casino interests) broke off from the tribal members that opposed letting the tribe become indebted to and controlled by casino investors.
Morgan states that the purpose of the proposed casino “is to improve the economic status of the tribal government so it can better provide housing, health care, education, cultural programs, and other services to its members.”
Her cousins, Dominguez’ side of the family, have received no such benefits. That side still seeks a reunification of the family and is seeking to learn how much debt the tribe now owes to the casino speculators.
But Dominguez has not yet found funds for legal representation to get their protests heard in federal court.
Hitting the Jackpot
Meanwhile, the MOU with Kern County’s Board of Supervisors last month signals that a political decision has been made to recognize Morgan’s new group as a sovereign nation with whom the county will negotiate.
On December 6, Kern County’s Board of Supervisors also voted unanimously to allow Tejon Ranchcorp to build their Grapevine project—12,000 new homes and five million square feet of commercial development—on the doorstep of the proposed casino complex. Tejon Ranch Company stock soared.
Photo captions:
The family of Magdalena Olivas has split down the middle.
One side wants a casino. The other side doesn’t. Guess which side the Las Vegas investors, lobbyists, lawyers and the BIA director flocked to? Now David Couch and the Kern County Board of Supervisors have too.
Disputes about Indian casinos have become a trigger for tribal disenrollment across North America, as economic and political interests are given more weight than blood ties.
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This is part of the December 30, 2016 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.
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