And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
from Victor's pechanganet -
Martha
Las Vegas Tribe Says It Gets Cold Shoulder, Disrespect From City
Indians: The Paiutes claim police have repeatedly entered their
reservation without permission. Law enforcement officers say emergencies
require them to cross jurisdictional boundaries.
By JOHN M. GLIONNA, Times Staff Writer
LAS VEGAS -- As Ramona Salizar tells it, the police showed up just
before dawn, their shotguns drawn as they pulled four young Indian men
from a darkened home on reservation land just blocks from the glitzy
downtown casinos.
The 40-year-old Salizar, a full-blooded Southern Paiute who serves
as a tribal health care worker, saw the flashing lights and walked out
to confront a dozen Las Vegas police officers who had responded to
reports of gunshots.
"I asked them, 'What are you doing here? Get off our land! This is
Indian land!' " Salizar recalled. She too was briefly handcuffed.
Within minutes, an officer from the reservation's 10-member police
force arrived to ask the Las Vegas police to leave. They complied, but
in the days after the May 3 incident several Paiutes were issued traffic
tickets as they drove off the tiny reservation--a move the Indians say
is retribution for the standoff.
Recently, the Paiutes say, Las Vegas police have repeatedly entered
the reservation without permission and in violation of tribal
sovereignty. Las Vegas police say they have only reacted to emergencies,
such as the gunfire that morning, which require them to cross
jurisdictional boundaries.
The incident is one of several that have escalated tensions between
America's fastest-growing city and what the Bureau of Indian Affairs
calls the nation's most urbanized Indian reservation--a collection of
two dozen trailers known by its 60 residents as "The Colony."
While many of the nation's 320 other reservations are located close
to cities or even within their limits--such as those in nearby Reno and
Palm Springs--few occupy a setting as grim as the 18 acres the Southern
Paiutes call home.
Nor are many urban reservations as ignored as The Colony, its
residents say.
"We get frustrated," said tribal chairman Curtis Anderson, who also
oversees a 3,800-acre reservation outside town on which the Paiutes
operate two golf courses. "It's like we're a forgotten people. No city
officials consult us on anything, even on issues important to the tribe.
I don't think they respect us. They seem to forget that we were here
first."
Since 1911, the Southern Paiutes have lived on downtown land willed
to them by the wife of a wealthy rancher who was concerned that Indians
employed by her family would have nowhere to go once the ranch was sold.
As the decades passed, Las Vegas grew up around them. Today the
tribe is surrounded by what even civic leaders say is not the city's
prettiest side, an area few visitors ever see: Within blocks of the
reservation are several homeless shelters, vacant strips dominated by
tumbleweed and a topless bar called the Satin Saddle.
The tribe worries that such blight is turning their home into a
skid row reservation.
Until they built a fence recently, Colony residents often found
homeless people defecating on what they consider a sacred tribal burial
mound, which also became littered with condoms and liquor bottles.
Several truck drivers have been arrested for romps with prostitutes in
the cabs of their big rigs across the street from where tribal children
wait for the school bus.
And tribal police officers often wait at the Colony's only entrance
to stop carloads of suspected gang members they believe come to recruit
Paiute teenagers.
In March, tribal officials were rebuffed by the Las Vegas City
Council, which denied their request to sell beer and wine at the tribal
smoke shop. The panel, which under a 1953 Supreme Court ruling must
agree before alcohol can be sold on sovereign Indian land, said in an
area dominated by the homeless, there already were too many stores
selling alcohol.
But what most angers Paiute leaders is what they call the complete
disregard for tribal sovereignty by Las Vegas police. Colony residents,
who refer to any location off the reservation as "The Outside," see
their tiny home as an island of safety in an otherwise declining
neighborhood. Now, they say, they no longer feel as safe.
Said resident Marie Wilson, who claims her son was arrested by Las
Vegas police without reason: "We have more security here than they do on
the outside. We're safe from most everything--except the Las Vegas
police."
Reservation Police Chief Tonia Means, 35, who grew up in the
Colony, wrote a letter to Las Vegas Sheriff Jerry Keller--who heads the
city's combined metropolitan police force--to complain about the
situation.
"Not one police officer has ever called the tribal dispatcher to
even alert us they're coming," said Means, one of only two female tribal
police chiefs nationwide. "I don't care how crucial they think their
business is. You don't call us first, you're not welcome here."
She called the recent traffic tickets issued to Colony residents
"Mickey Mouse tactics."
Las Vegas police say the accusations simply aren't true. "I can
assure you with the number of events we have on our plate every day, for
us to sit outside their reservation and give bogus tickets simply isn't
realistic," said Lt. Rick Alba, a police spokesman.
He added that emergencies often supersede claims of police
jurisdiction. "The fact that there's an imaginary line there wouldn't
stop our officers from responding to a citizen complaint to see that no
one was injured," he said.
Nonetheless, tribe officials say Las Vegas police should not cross
the line under any circumstances.
Referring to the May 3 confrontation, Alba said: "Apparently, the
request was to release the people and leave immediately, and that's in
fact what they did." Tribal police say they are investigating the
incident.
Still, Means is tired of her force's reputation among local police,
whom she says consider tribal officers glorified security guards who
couldn't cut it on any other department. "Let me tell you, this is no
Mayberry and I'm no Aunt Bea. This is a bona fide police force."
The 13-year tribal police veteran says that while investigating
crimes that have taken them off the Colony, officers have been told by
sneering local police: "Don't you think you ought to go back to the
reservation?"
Tribal leaders also are miffed by City Council members who denied
their request to sell beer and wine on the reservation.
"They didn't give us the time of day," said tribal chairman
Anderson.
Councilman Gary Reese, who was instrumental in the decision, says
the Paiutes are too sensitive. "They get respect," he said. "I don't
know what they're talking about."
He called the neighborhood's homeless problem a fact of life,
adding that other residents suffer as well--including a mortuary whose
customers are panhandled during funerals. Another liquor store would
just be adding "more fuel to the fire," he said.
Angry tribal council members have threatened to sell beer and wine
anyway, and to protest plans to build several new homeless shelters in
the area.
"Tribal elders tell me to be more aggressive, but how pushy can I
be?" asked the 51-year-old Anderson. "I guess I can get mean, but then I
won't like myself."
Shelter operators say the tribe has no business complaining about
the homeless, who regularly buy cigarettes at their smoke shop. "They
can't have it both ways," says Ray Max, manager of the nearby Salvation
Army day shelter. "Their customers have got to live someplace."
Counters tribal attorney David Colvin: "It's one thing to be
somebody's customer. But it's another thing to defecate on their sacred
burial ground."
Anderson said the city has offered to purchase the tribe's downtown
land, but the Paiutes are forbidden to sell it by the widow's will. "So
they're trying to run us out with all their eyesores," Means claims.
"But you know what? We're not going anywhere."
For now, Colony residents say they will endure their proximity to a
culture they say is slowly changing their way of life.
"Remember those old cowboy and Indian movies you used to see where
the Indians were always surrounding the white people?" asked tribal
elder Kenneth Anderson. "Around here it's just the reverse. The white
people are surrounding the Indians."
Copyright 1999 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved
http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/ASECTION/t000044255.html
Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
doctrine of international copyright law.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
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