(Louis Proyect: This article, the first of 2 parts, was featured prominently on the front page of the NY Times, a sure sign of the growing political importance of Indian land claims. The article is filled with two distortions. The first is that the Goshute tribe is in some way typical of tribes by inviting in a nuclear dumping corporation. Right now, as PEN-L'er and Blackfoot Indian activists Jim Craven pointed out on Friday, the Shoshone tribe is organizing a protest against a similar deal. When 92 out of 93 new nuclear dump sites are to be located on reservations, we can assume that the explanation is coercion, not bids to become more prosperous. The other thing to be aware of is that the upward mobility is grossly exaggerated. The NY Times, an ideological servant of the ruling class, feels the need to depict the American Indian in much more powerful and successful terms than is actually the case. This will allow government counter-attacks against Indian claims to be easier accept by a misinformed American population.) March 8, 1998 New Prosperity Brings New Conflict to Indian Country By TIMOTHY EGAN SKULL VALLEY, Utah -- Not long after the Goshute Indians stopped resisting the Mormons who had poured into the sun-cracked bowl of the Great Basin, the tribe seemed to disappear, gone like most natives into sepia tones of the past, their poses ever frozen -- noble, doomed, vanquished. But then, nearly a century and a half after the first state lines were stamped on an area once known as the Great American Desert, the Goshutes reappeared. Suddenly, last year, the most powerful politicians in the West became deeply concerned about the actions of a tiny tribe that had been left in the alkaline dust of central Utah. With barely 100 members, the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes declared what few people outside the reservation had taken seriously: that they were a sovereign nation. As such, the Goshutes -- looking for a multimillion-dollar infusion -- have offered to lease part of their reservation as the temporary storage ground for high-level civilian nuclear waste. Utah's Governor and Congressional representatives are outraged, vowing to block the border of Indian country to any shipments. The Goshute proposal is a very un-Indian-like thing to do, critics say; native people are supposed to be keepers of the earth, not protectors of its poisons. But in fact, the Goshutes say that what they are doing is the most characteristic action a tribe can take in the modern era -- asserting itself to be a nation within a nation, free to make its own decisions. The clash in a forgotten valley of the unwatered West is but one awakening of sovereignty by hundreds of American Indian tribes. From the smallest bands in the desert to groups that govern from glass towers in the East, native tribes are actively shoring up the bonds of nationhood. What is happening in Indian country, an archipelago of 554 nations within the boundaries of the United States, goes far beyond the popular image of modern tribes. Between two extremes of Indian life -- the poverty of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, which includes the poorest county in America, and the gambling gusher at the Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut, where Mashantucket Pequots are running the biggest casino in the country -- is a forceful drive for independence from the states. "Some people think we're living in teepees out here," said Leon Bear, the Goshute tribal chairman. "They come up to my house and see a satellite dish and a big color TV, it surprises them. We are alive and well and a sovereign nation. And we're using that sovereignty to attract the only business you can get to come here." A new generation of Indian leaders, schooled in the nascent sovereignty movement of the 1970's, has come to power at the same time that many tribes are getting their first taste of prosperity, through tribal casinos. Now, there is a convergence of economic strength, legal muscle and political will. The number of Indian lawyers has increased more than ten-fold to about 1,000 in the last 20 years, and there has been a four-fold increase to just over 300 in the number of tribal courts. "What we've seen is simply the civil rights movement for Native Americans," said John Echohawk, executive director of the Native American Rights Fund, a nonprofit legal defense group based in Boulder, Colo. "Tribal rights are finally being enforced because more and more tribes have the resources to have their own lawyers." On Wednesday, Congress is set to hold hearings on tribal sovereignty, pushed by some lawmakers who are alarmed by tribal assertions of nationhood. While the tribes fear that the hearings will be a platform to attack Indians, others see the hearings as a chance to make the case that Indian sovereignty is "un-American," as some members of Congress have called it. The tribes have never had a stronger presence in Washington, donating a record amount in the last Federal election. They share legal resources, under the mantra that a threat to one Indian tribe is a threat to all. Though some tribes fight each other over casino locations -- and seldom share the spoils with poorer tribes -- they say they are more united than ever behind the idea that sovereignty equals survival. And they are using this sustaining idea for a mix of cross purposes. Some of it is nakedly commercial, some is based purely on principle. In Idaho, the Coeur d'Alene tribe has just started an international on-line lottery, offering the chance at million-dollar jackpots to anyone on earth with access to a modem. In Montana, the Assiniboine and the Gros Ventre tribes have held up expansion of a major gold mine, using their sovereign status to protect the water and land that borders the mine, even if it deprives a neighboring small town of needed jobs. In New Mexico, the Isleta Pueblo, acting as a separate government, is forcing the City of Albuquerque to spend $300 million to clean up the Rio Grande before it flows downstream through Indian land. "What most people don't understand is that we are governments first, and racial entities second," said Anthony Pico, chairman of the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians in Southern California. People who have rarely given a second thought to the natives in their midst suddenly find there really are four major levels of government in America: Federal, state, local and tribal. Until recently, one of them was nearly always invisible. A Power Restored: Decreeing Nations Within Nations In a visit to Pueblo communities in New Mexico last month, Speaker Newt Gingrich told Indian leaders that he had trouble understanding the concept of tribal sovereignty. He was surrounded by Apaches, Navajos and numerous Pueblo tribes whose people have lived in well-ordered communities along the Rio Grande for nearly a thousand years. The president of the Navajo Nation, Albert Hale, offered Mr. Gingrich an explanation, telling him how an Indian leader would prefer to be treated. "When I come to Washington, you don't send me to the Bureau of Indian Affairs," said Mr. Hale, leader of a tribe with nearly a quarter-million members. "You have a state dinner for me." A week after the visit, Mr. Hale announced that the Navajo might block all roads for one day into their vast reservation, an area the size of West Virginia, as a demonstration of sovereignty. Three states overlap Navajo lands, and Mr. Hale's suggestion set off harsh criticism by members of his own tribe as well as neighboring communities. Local talk radio in the Southwest went aflame with anti-Indian talk, with people volunteering to arm themselves and storm past roadblocks. Mr. Hale has since resigned, under pressure over financial and personal improprieties, and the roadblock idea has yet to be revived. When Indians were held up mainly as icons, or poverty-crippled examples of failed policy, it was rare for any action in Indian country to become talk radio fodder. They were considered largely powerless. But in fact, the power was nearly always there, imbedded in Article VI of the Constitution, which holds treaties backed by Congress to be "the supreme law of the land." Congress ratified 371 treaties with native people, the first in 1778 with the Delaware, the last in 1871 with the Nez Percé. In most cases, Indians were forced to give up land in return for self-governing rights and a tribal homeland. But those rights were often ignored, and the homelands, or reservations, were sliced up or overrun. When Georgia declared Indian laws on designated Indian land within the state to be null and void, the Cherokees sued -- and won. Writing in 1830, Chief Justice John Marshall held that the Cherokees were "a distinct political society, separated from others, capable of managing its own affairs and governing itself." It was one of three Supreme Court decisions in the 1830's that established the right of American Indian tribes to be free from state control, while they remained subordinate to the will of Congress. A century and a half later, this remains the governing framework. Indian nations were not judged to be stand-alone countries. Instead, the Supreme Court defined them as "domestic, dependent nations" -- a unique status that is still subject to much contention. Indian country is an evolving political experiment, trying to live the oxymoron of being nations that are still subject to a greater political power. For more than a hundred years after the last treaty, virtually every census found Indian lands to be islands of squalor and poverty, with chronic unemployment and rates of disease and early death unmatched in the country. Then came the "new buffalo" -- gambling operations on Indian land, approved by Congress in 1988. A third of all tribes now operate some form of gambling enterprise, and though the windfall is unevenly spread, it generates more than $6 billion a year. "The Indians in California have been poverty stricken for 150 years," Mr. Pico said of the Viejas band. "We've never been to a point where we could exercise our rights. Now we have an economic base, and suddenly we're on people's radar screens." Indian country came alive, in ways both unintended and planned, with gambling. Suddenly, little patches of long-forgotten ground blossomed into cash centers in neon, which gave rise to cultural programs, language revival, scholarships, better schools. The venture into gambling also changed the average American's view of Indians, prompting talk of "rich Indians," even though an overwhelming majority of the tribes have seen no windfall from gambling. The tribes with money started to buy into the political process, giving more than $2 million in campaign contributions, mostly to Democrats, in the 1996 election. But even the tribes without money have seen their sons and daughters -- educated at law schools from Stanford to Dartmouth -- return to the reservations. They are well-versed in court rulings, treaties and laws passed in the 1970's and 1980's that gave the tribes more independence. More than ever, the tribes are acting like states and counties, levying their own taxes, enforcing their own land use regulations, building codes and criminal statutes. Some tribes are thinking of issuing their own driver's licenses. "I remember my dad used to take me out in a pickup truck, and he'd say, 'This is our land, only the people around us have changed,' " said Roy Bernal, chairman of the All-Indian Pueblo Council, which represents tribes in New Mexico. "Over the years, we have had sovereign recognition from Spain, from Mexico and the United States." But just as the full consequence of the nation-within-a-nation architecture designed by the Supreme Court is being realized, the sovereignty movement is bumping into a wall of opposition. Members of Congress from California, Utah, Washington and Montana, alarmed by the latest assertions of Indian nationhood within their states, ask: What right does a small minority have to ignore their neighbors' concerns? "I don't think this is what the Founding Fathers had in mind," said Representative Merrill Cook, Republican of Utah, referring to new tribal ventures like casinos and nuclear storage proposals. "It's just not right, this use of sovereignty. The implications are frightening for us as a nation." Nearly half the American states have no Indian tribes or reservations within their borders. But elsewhere, tribal land is etched in shades all over the national map, most of it in the West. Indian country today is 56 million acres, 314 reservations and about 1.4 million people living on or near tribal land -- less than 1 percent of the overall population of the United States spread over a bit more than 2 percent of the land. An additional 500,000 or so people who listed themselves as Indian in the last census live mostly in urban areas. The Government was supposed to hold tribal lands in trust, acting as guardian to the nations it had warred against. But instead Congress opened up tribal lands to sale, trying to make commercial landowners out of individual Indians. >From the 1880's to the 1930's, the reservations lost more than 90 million acres -- nearly two-thirds of the land base -- as big pieces of Indian country were sold to non-Indians. The low point, for many tribes, was in the 1950's, when more than 100 Indian governments were dismantled under an Eisenhower Administration policy known as termination. Erased from official recognition in exchange for cash, many tribes simply ceased to exist. Flash Points: When Tribal Law And Others Collide But in the last quarter century, there has been a strong rebound, as Indians have defiantly rejected assimilation. There are now 554 tribes, each recognized by the Federal Government as a sovereign entity with varying degrees of power. "Sovereignty sounds like something from the King of England, but all it really boils down to is the right to make your own laws and be ruled by them," said Kevin Gover, a Pawnee who is the new Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs. By any measure, Indian country is deep in social problems. Unemployment is more than 30 percent. Among people who have jobs, nearly a third earned less than $10,000 a year in 1995 -- the last full year surveyed. Indians have the highest rates of alcoholism, suicide and child abuse in the country, though some progress is being made. More than 250 languages are spoken in Indian country. There are courts and statutes that are grounded more in tribal and family customs than English common law, but basic American Constitutional rights supersede. In 1924, Congress declared that all Indians were American citizens, though many reject the label. "I don't belong to two nations," Mr. Bear said, strolling on Goshute land in central Utah. "I belong to one -- the Skull Valley Goshute Nation." Today, governments collide with greater frequency, particularly where Indian country rubs up against major urban areas. And tribes are doing what any corporation or government with something to protect has done: they have hired top-tier lobbyists, publicists and legal talent to make their case. A scholarship fund, started more than 20 years ago by the Federal Government but now guided by private donations, has allowed any Indian with the grades to go to law school. "We started cranking out 20 to 30 graduates a year back in the 1970's," Mr. Echohawk said. His group, the Native American Rights Fund, recently argued a case before the Supreme Court that would have expanded Indian country through much of Alaska. In February, the Court ruled against the Indians, saying that the native lands in that state would not fall under tribal jurisdiction. The Alaska fight was about traditional native concerns: fish, game and culture. In Washington state, the conflict is how a modern Indian nation can coexist in a big city. A plan by a historically poor tribe to build an amphitheater has engaged everyone from President Clinton to leaders of Congress. The Muckleshoots, once a fishing tribe, were all but swept away by the growth of metropolitan Seattle. The tribe has held to a patch of land granted them by treaty in 1854. Just under 3,500 acres between Seattle and Tacoma, this land has become increasingly valuable as the suburbs marched south and north. Now they are using that land, and the ability to make their laws regardless of state and county concerns, to prosper. Several years ago, the Muckleshoots built a casino -- the closest to Seattle. It has become one of the most successful tribal gambling ventures in the country. Just as the Goshutes view a nuclear waste storage site as a chance for full employment, the Muckleshoots say the amphitheater would be a major step toward economic self-sufficiency, coupled with the jobs tied to the casino. But the tribe has attracted powerful opponents. In a recent letter to President Clinton, Representative Jennifer Dunn, Republican of Washington, characterized the amphitheater as an outlaw project, rising without environmental review or state and county building permits. A group of non-Indians who live near the project has just filed suit, making the same point. The Muckleshoots say Ms. Dunn never raised any concern when the latest non-Indian shopping mall rose on wetlands south of Seattle. In her home state, she is not known as a friend of the environmental movement. As the dispute heats up, Indian children are being taunted as they wait for school buses, and in some cases fruit has been thrown at them, tribal members say. It was much easier to like the Indians, the Muckleshoots note, when they were visible only at annual salmon ceremonies. More than 8,000 people signed petitions urging the local government to block the amphitheater. The issue is not about Indians, they say, but about a project that would destroy the rural way of life. But a majority of the King County Council concluded in a recent vote that there is little they can do, unless Congress wants to intervene. Congress has been sending conflicting signals -- on the one hand pushing for greater autonomy and self-determination, on the other warning that assertive tribal governments are going too far. More than a decade ago, in amending the Clean Water Act, Congress gave Indian tribes the same authority as states to set water pollution standards. The Isleta Pueblo, living along the river just south of Albuquerque, took Congress up on the offer, setting water standards that were much stricter than New Mexico's. The tribe wanted clean water not just for health, but for religious purposes. The city fought the tribe, saying it would cost $300 million to meet the Indian clean water standards. Albuquerque officials appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court, but were rebuffed last fall. To the tribes along the Rio Grande, the court victories on behalf of clean water are part of a logical extension of their power, even though most of them have no treaties with the United States. What they do have is a long attachment to the land. The Pueblos often show outsiders the silver-tipped canes given them by President Abraham Lincoln. It was Lincoln's way of rewarding people in this part of Indian country for standing by the Union in the Civil War. The canes are stronger symbols of sovereignty, they say, than anything written. The Future: Collision Ahead Over Sovereignty In Skull Valley, cattle sleep in the middle of the main road and Navy fighter jets scream overhead. Petroglyphs older than the United States are etched in the rocks. The few people who stumble upon the Goshutes wonder why the only real tribal businesses are a money-losing mini-mart and a sliver of dry land leased to a rocket-testing company. The curious often follow the ghost trails that border the Goshutes -- the Pony Express route to the south, the Donner Party Trail to the north. "They want us to be traditional," Leon Bear said. "Sure, we'd like to be traditional. But you can't eat wild rice anymore because those lands are polluted. And you can't hunt around here -- they've poisoned the watering holes up in those mountains." He motioned toward a range with two commercial toxic waste dumps. In Salt Lake City, Mr. Cook, the Congressman whose district borders Skull Valley, sees a collision ahead. Nobody wants the nuclear waste site but a handful of Indians trying to get rich, he says. Plus, parts of Utah may be Indian country, but it is also earthquake country -- a potential safety problem, he says. "Something is dead wrong when a small group of people can ignore the will of 90 percent of our state," Mr. Cook said. It is possible, Mr. Cook said, that parallel nations may never work, a feeling shared by some experts. The sovereignty movement "is creating a hodgepodge of economically and perhaps politically unviable states whose role in the United States is glaringly undefined in the United States constitution," Fergus M. Bordewich wrote in a recent book, "Killing the White Man's Indian," (Anchor, 1997; Doubleday, 1996). Mr. Bordewich took a journalistic tour of Indian country and came away greatly worried. He imagines a future where nearly every major city has a tribal casino, and passports are needed to travel from one area to the next. The Indians scoff at such suggestions. For more than two centuries, the tribes have been in retreat. They once had a peak population of perhaps as high as 10 million people living 500 years ago in what is now the United States, according to the estimates of some historians. The population fell to barely 300,000 by the 1920's. "I believe we will be here as long as the United States will exist," Mr. Gover said. "By sheer tenacity, we have held on." The grip of life, he said, is the very sovereignty movement that scares non-Indians. But what about this nuclear waste site, these casinos and amphitheaters? What do these have to do with being an Indian, with living the old way? Leon Bear and other Indians have a ready reply. "We have our traditional values," he said, sorting through an application to bring 4,000 casks of nuclear waste to the leathery ground of the Goshutes. "Sovereignty -- that's what we've held onto." Next: The backlash against Indian sovereignty. Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company