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Doug George-Kanentiio
April 11, 2000

While resort owners and business operators in the Catskills may be celebrating the Bureau of Indian Affairs' decision to approve the transfer of the Monticello Race Track to a Mohawk faction for the construction of a casino, many Mohawks, including myself, are vigorously opposed to the idea.

As one born on the Akwesasne Mohawk Territory (cited in news reports as the St. Regis Indian Reservation) I have watched with alarm as commercial gambling has torn our people apart.

A decade ago our community went through a terrible ordeal as we struggled to close 11 casinos, all of which were operating in violation of ancestral Mohawk and US federal laws. We realized then, as we do now, that gambling has no place in a community which does not have the policing powers or independent judicial system to monitor its activities and insure its fairness.

In 1990 the casino operators exploited the political divisions at Akwesasne as they ran what was then the fourth largest gambling center in the US. They demonstrated how toothless the 1988 National Indian Gaming Act truly is by ignoring all of its provisions from failing to file audit reports to openly hiring felons. To protect their operations they retained a heavily armed "warrior" group which hoodwinked the media into believing it was defending Mohawk sovereignty when in fact it was financed by the casino owners to smash internal opposition.

Our appeals to former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, a casino advocate, were ignored until two of our young men were killed during a four day gun battle in the spring of 1990. Only then, did Cuomo send in the troopers thereby forcing the casinos to close.

The casino owners had relied upon the support of a entity called the St. Regis Tribal Council, a colonial government created by an act of the New York State Legislature in 1892 over the opposition of the majority of the Akwesasne Mohawks who have, for over a century, sought recognition of our existing aboriginal administration.

The Tribal Council has been characterized by considerable internal chaos and has been cited by the US Justice Department as a "criminal enterprise." Its former "head chief" is now serving time in a US prison for various acts of corruption; this is the same individual with whom Governor Cuomo signed a gambling compact (later endorsed by Gov. Pataki) which enabled the Tribe to open its current casino a year ago.

It was also in 1999 that the US federal court had to intervene in Akwesasne when it made a decision to oust one faction of the Tribal Council in favor of another whose electoral mandate actually expired on July 1, 1999. It is anyone's guess as to who is truly in charge at the St. Regis Tribal Council which, by its own admission, is operating its current programs at a substantial financial deficit.

Last month, in an desperate effort to secure funds, the Tribe sought to use its police force to collect taxes from the service station owners at Akwesasne. The cops were to use force to prevent fuel deliveries, a strong-arm tactic which compelled the sheriff of Franklin County to withdraw the Tribal Police's deputization status. Once again, troopers from the New York State Police entered Akwesasne to perform peacekeeping duties.

And the Tribe's casino has proven to be less than successful. During its construction the Tribe contaminated the aquifer beneath the reservation which supplies drinking water to dozens of homes, a situation which has yet to be corrected. The casino building itself was so poorly designed as to force raw sewage into a nearby river, compelling some Mohawks to charge it was in violation of EPA laws and to bring the Tribe into court.

Dozens of Mohawks lost their jobs at the casino because of poor attendance and accusations of mismanagement. The initial operators, a non-Native firm from Long Island, got out when they realized the venture was a loser and sold their contract to another company the Mohawk people know nothing about.

Now, Governor Pataki is ready to give the St. Regis Tribal Council the green light to operate a casino in the Catskills, a region outside of the aboriginal territory of the Mohawks. He is seriously considering making this deal with a Tribal Council of dubious legitimacy, one which does not have a judicial system or legal police force and is viewed with mistrust by most Akwesasne Mohawks.

It is this Tribal Council, inefficient and controversial, which may well be placed in a position to determine the economic fate of the Catskills.

Douglas M. George-Kanentiio, Akwesasne Mohawk, is a columnist with the Syracuse Herald American and News From Indian Country. He currently resides in Oneida Castle, NY.