California’s voters will decide the fate of the casino with 2,000 slot machines that the North Fork Tribe of Mono Indians wants to build in Madera County in the northern part of the state.
Due to an initiative, Proposition 48, the tribal state gaming compact the tribe signed two years ago with Governor Jerry Brown has been challenged. No one doubts that the tribe will make millions on the casino, but many doubt that the tribe has a connection to the area where it has purchased land, and where the federal government put land into trust for it.
The tribe was restored to federal status in 1983, but without land. The tribe purchased the land 38 miles from its former reservation, a practice that many critics refer to as “reservation shopping.”
The 1,987-member tribe retorts that it hunted and lived throughout Madera County over the centuries before the land became part of the United States.
According to Maryann McGovran, vice-chairman of the tribe, interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle, “We absolutely have a legitimate claim to that land because that’s where our people were, historically. There is no doubt of that. Our trade routes went all the way through the county to Monterey.”
The tribe would benefit from the 4,000 building jobs and the 1,600 permanent jobs the casino would create, she says. The county would benefit too, she says, paying $20 million to the County over time and $11 million upfront to the city of Madera.
However, the tribe’s dreams have become caught up in a movement to put the brakes on tribal casinos not only in California but also in the rest of the country. Critics accuse the federal government of allowing too many tribes to buy land far from their reservations and put them into trust.
According to Cheryl Schmit, director of Stand Up for California, a casino watchdog group, “The North Fork tribe had no reservation, no land for itself until the federal government allowed them to pick these 305 acres at Madera, and that is a terrible precedent for the rest of the state. What’s to keep any other tribe in California from just picking whatever spot it wants, no matter how close to a city it is, and building a casino there?”
In 2000 Golden State voters amended the state constitution to allow tribal gaming under the understanding that casinos would be limited to existing tribal lands, she says.
Prop. 48 supporters have collected a $4 million war chest, largely from gaming tribes in the area who don’t want the competition. These include the Chukchansi tribal casino in Coarsegold and the Table Mountain tribal casino in Fresno County. The most recent recruit is the United Auburn Indian Community, which last week donated $100,000. The Auburn tribe operates the Thunder Valley Casino Resort 170 miles away.
