Pick the poor Indian in America nowadays and it’s the Indian without a casino. They’ve sprung up everywhere even in states where casinos are banned because Indians generally come under federal law. But when one Indian tribe – the Tiguas of west Texas – got their chance to roll of dice, they lost. The Tiguas had economic salvation in their grasp when they opened a casino in El Paso. But as Evan Williams reports, they hadn’t counted on the opposition of east Texas conservatives, who used their influence to have the casino closed.
My name is Marty Silvas.
Silvas: I still call myself the war captain of the Ysleta Sur Pueblo, 02:14
Silvas: because it is a lifetime position. 02:11
Silvas: This is the people of the sun emblem. The arrow represents the Rio Grande. 02:17
It is a map given to us by the people in New Mexico, and offer us one day to reunite and get back together again. 02:21
Williams: Marty Silvas is -- or was -- a Tigua Indian from Southwest Texas. 02:30
Williams: Trapped in poverty for generations the Tigua Indians became rich in the 1990s. How? 02:35
Williams: By curing their own social ills with what many Texans regard as another -- 02:41
Williams: they opened the Speaking Rock Casino in El Paso. 02:46
Diamond: the Casino became the new buffalo. The buffalo at one time was the centre of Indian existence -- it was their food, their clothing, their shelter -- the buffalo supplied everything. 02:52
03:03
Diamond: This is the new buffalo. It gave them the ability to earn a living, it gave them an ability to educate their children, it gave them the ability to build homes, it gave them the ability to reacquire their land base. It took the place of the old buffalo economically. 03:07
Williams: But under Texas law, casinos are illegal, and while Speaking Rock was allowed to operate for almost a decade, suddenly the Texas government has ordered it closed. The wealth it generated -- like the buffalo -- has gone.
03:23
Diamond: There’s a lot of people have opposed Indians from day number one when the first European landed on these shores there was an anti Indian attitude as far as whose land this is, and what rights Indians have.. 03:41
Diamond Williams: Tom Diamond is a 78-year-old attorney and honorary Tigua. In the bad old days, people would have called him an Indian lover. Some still do. 03:53
Diamond: There’s no doubt about it, I’ve caught a lot of heck over these Indians and people have accused me of creating them and particularly have said Diamond just got some Mexicans together and taught them how to dance. And I don’t resent that at all. In fact it’s a great compliment. 04:03
Diamond: and what I’ve done working with these people is the good thing I’ve done in my lifetime very proud of it, and happy that I've done it, and believe you me, all I did was discover something that no one else could see. 04:18
Black and white still of Indians and their homes
Williams: Forty years ago, a journalist friend told Tom Diamond about some down and out Indians living in slums on El Paso’s outskirts Diamond: He said well, there’s an Indian group here that’s 04:29
Diamond: in terrible shape, all their homes are in foreclosure, they haven’t got jobs or they’re picking cotton it’s just terrible what’s happening to them. The kids can’t stay in school, because they can’t even afford shoes. 04:42
Black and white still of Indians Music 04:53
Diamond: The Federal Government want Indians to assimilate into the whole society and to stop being Indians. The Indians just couldn’t -- they refused to do it. They held on to their tradition, to their culture. 04:57
Drums
Avidrez: We’ve had to survive genocide, we had to survive relocation, we had to survive reservation life, 05:10
Avidrez Avidrez: and we survived. We've had to survive blood quantum issues, and we’ve had to survive all these facets that have been governmentally imposed. 05:16
Avidrez Williams: Albert Avidrez is a Tiguan leader - the tribe’s governor. 05:24
Avidrez: For a long time Indian tribes have been criticised and we've been viewed upon as being liabilities to the United States -- never an asset. We’re supposed to not be able to work, we're not supposed to want to work, we're supposed to sit, be lazy, beat on drums ,live in our tepees and hang out at home and suffer from alcoholism. What we now have in this new century is native American communities wanting to improve their communities. 05:28
Inside Casinos Music 05:51
Williams: What they did was open a Casino on Reservation land -- Federal land, not Texas land -- something most of America's 200 Indian tribes have done in states across the country. As they’re technically sovereign nations, this is quite legal even in States where gambling is banned. But what the Texas Indians did back in 1987 has returned to haunt them. They signed an agreement binding them to state law in exchange for Texas agreeing not to oppose federal recognition of their tribe. And as we’ll see, it’s turned out to be their undoing, but for a time they never had it so good. 05:54
Diamond: They were clearing 06:33
Diamond: at the end there $6 million a month in profits, which was going into investments, it was going into re-acquisition of their land base and acquiring service stations and commercial sites and commercial properties. 06:34
Indian artefacts Williams: And the Tiguans shared their wealth. 6:47
Diamond: This tribe was contributing more to charities in El Paso than all the other charitable organisations combined. 06:50
Munoz: We helped everybody in the city, beginning with the fire department, and to the candle lighters and all these different charities. I think the tribe made clear over, close to $10 million in donations. 06:57
Williams: In those heady days Vincent Munoz was governor of the tribe, 07:12
Bush Rally Williams: and conscious of the anti-gambling sentiment in Texas, went to see the man then running for state governor, the man who now occupies the White House. 07:17
Munoz: Well, I actually asked him, I said what are you going to do Mr. Bush with the tribe. I said you know we have a casino, what are you going to be doing with that, and he said I’m not going to bother the Indians. I took his word, I really believed him at that time. We were campaigning for him. And Lordy behold, now we've seen the result -- he becomes the President -- the Governor then President and now Speaking Rock is closed. 07:26
Williams: But as well as their conflict with the state, the Tigua were having big trouble in their own ranks. 07:59
Silvas: I guess when the casino was opened, it was too much of a change for our people. You know, too much money came rolling in too quick. 08:06
Silvas: People started separating, you know, there were factions because of the political control over the money and that was not good you know. A lot of people forgot about the traditional way. 08:15
Black and white still of two Indians with the sacred drum
Williams: Suddenly the tribe’s sacred drum – the ageless symbol of its identity and unity – became a symbol of its division. As war captain Marty Silvas was the sacred drum’s keeper. 08:28
Silvas: The drum, I guess, is the heartbeat of the tribe. You know, the drum is a symbol of who we are. The drum is the spirit that, you know, always takes us back and takes us forward. It’s what keeps the tribe alive. 08:40
Williams: But appalled by the loss of respect for tradition, and caught up in a struggle over leadership, Marty Silvas hid the drum. It was the signal for the break-up of the Tigua 08:59
Silvas: I held on to it, I held on to it for some time. I did as the chief ordered me to do. For doing that we were punished.Williams: How?Silvas: A lot of our people , especially my family, were taken out of the tribal roles. Our benefits were taken away and we were told we were no longer Indians, we were no longer Tiguas. It's like somebody telling you, you're no longer who you say you are. 09:10
Williams: For centuries, simply surviving has been the name of the game for the Indians of these mountains. Geronimo once led the Apaches here – Apache who fought the Tigua and dismissed them as mud Indians for the adobe houses they built. Today, no Apaches roam the mountains, but the Tigua are still baking bread in their mud ovens and have a much tougher enemy than the Apache -- the Texas government and the conservative voters who support it. 09:49
Diamond: Back in East Texas we have a Bible Belt attitude -- born again Christians, and they have a very strong view with respect to gambling -- it’s a sin , and I’m sure that that is a factor 10:19
Diamond: in the politics of this situation. People will see opposing the Indian gambling activities as a good political stance. 10:36
Bush: Let's make it official. I'm a candidate for Governor of Texas. 10:45
Munoz: He needed to do something, showing that he was going to -- he didn't allow gambling. That was one of the ways he was going to win East Texas and all the votes. I think he targeted us and I think very unfairly. 10:51
Mundoz: I think he lied to us. I think he misled us 11:06
Indian dancing Williams: El Paso, of course, is west Texas, far removed from the bible belt in the east, a town doing it hard down on the Mexican border. Because it’s poor, it’s always voted Democrat, not for Bush’s Republicans and local Senator Eliot Shapleigh thinks that’s got a lot to do with it. 11:11
Shapleigh: There is an element in the Republican Party in this state that is akin to the Taliban, where it has become a moral issue. You have a whole segment that says we need to take care of this moral issue by shutting down the Tigua tribe in El Paso Texas and it’s an extreme position in my view.Williams: Who are they appealing to?Shapleigh: I think a constituency in the far right of their party, frankly. 11:34
Williams: In the eyes of the Tigua, there’s a clear double standard at work. They say when the Texas state government changed the law to allow itself to run what’s now one of the country's richest lotteries – that allowed them to open a casino. Texas insists casinos are still banned – but the Tigua say George Bush ally and attorney general John Cornyn 11:57
William: is simply trying to impress conservative voters with is newfound resolve to enforce the ban. 12:22
Cornyn: I cannot, as the Attorney General , as the chief law enforcement officer of the State of Texas enforce the laws selectively. I can’t enforce some and not others. 12:28
Williams: While the two sides slug it out in the courts, the Tigua have lost their newfound wealth.Diamond: That income stream has gone. We didn’t go back to the abject poverty that existed in 1965, but we certainly took a big tumble. 12:39
Diamond: The tribe may be forced to sell off its assets to survive. 12:58
Munoz: The economic impact has been very great, not only for the tribe, but for El Paso. 13:03
Munoz: Eight hundred people lost their jobs. I think he hurt the whole area, not just the Tigua. He hurt El Paso as a whole.Protester: This is an important time in America, 13:09
Protester: in El Paso. We cannot afford to lose any jobs and it’s real clear that the Tiguas are great corporate partners. They pay above minimum wage, they have health benefits, they have retirement options and where are these people going to find jobs like that. 13:18
Dancing Indians Music 13:33
Williams: But El Paso’s misfortune is that the Tigua’s economic salvation came 13:35
Inside casino Williams: from something Texas conservatives won’t tolerate – the casino. With their appeal to the U.S. 13:40
Dancing Indians Williams: Supreme Court, the tribe still hopes to have it re-opened -- if only to assure their future survival. 13:46
Munoz: At one point there were at least over 800 tribes in the State of Texas. There’s three now. That is exactly what the State of Texas has done to the Native Americans in this state. I’m hoping 13:54
Munoz: that everything turns around and we can continue, but I really feel that the tribe will survive. We’ve been thrown obstacles in our faces. 14:07
Dancing Indians Munoz: ace for many years and this is just one more obstacle that we will have to overcome. 14:17
Credits:
My name is Marty Silvas.
Silvas: I still call myself the war captain of the Ysleta Sur Pueblo, 02:14
Silvas: because it is a lifetime position. 02:11
Silvas: This is the people of the sun emblem. The arrow represents the Rio Grande. 02:17
It is a map given to us by the people in New Mexico, and offer us one day to reunite and get back together again. 02:21
Williams: Marty Silvas is -- or was -- a Tigua Indian from Southwest Texas. 02:30
Williams: Trapped in poverty for generations the Tigua Indians became rich in the 1990s. How? 02:35
Williams: By curing their own social ills with what many Texans regard as another -- 02:41
Williams: they opened the Speaking Rock Casino in El Paso. 02:46
Diamond: the Casino became the new buffalo. The buffalo at one time was the centre of Indian existence -- it was their food, their clothing, their shelter -- the buffalo supplied everything. 02:52
03:03
Diamond: This is the new buffalo. It gave them the ability to earn a living, it gave them an ability to educate their children, it gave them the ability to build homes, it gave them the ability to reacquire their land base. It took the place of the old buffalo economically. 03:07
Williams: But under Texas law, casinos are illegal, and while Speaking Rock was allowed to operate for almost a decade, suddenly the Texas government has ordered it closed. The wealth it generated -- like the buffalo -- has gone.
03:23
Diamond: There’s a lot of people have opposed Indians from day number one when the first European landed on these shores there was an anti Indian attitude as far as whose land this is, and what rights Indians have.. 03:41
Diamond Williams: Tom Diamond is a 78-year-old attorney and honorary Tigua. In the bad old days, people would have called him an Indian lover. Some still do. 03:53
Diamond: There’s no doubt about it, I’ve caught a lot of heck over these Indians and people have accused me of creating them and particularly have said Diamond just got some Mexicans together and taught them how to dance. And I don’t resent that at all. In fact it’s a great compliment. 04:03
Diamond: and what I’ve done working with these people is the good thing I’ve done in my lifetime very proud of it, and happy that I've done it, and believe you me, all I did was discover something that no one else could see. 04:18
Black and white still of Indians and their homes
Williams: Forty years ago, a journalist friend told Tom Diamond about some down and out Indians living in slums on El Paso’s outskirts Diamond: He said well, there’s an Indian group here that’s 04:29
Diamond: in terrible shape, all their homes are in foreclosure, they haven’t got jobs or they’re picking cotton it’s just terrible what’s happening to them. The kids can’t stay in school, because they can’t even afford shoes. 04:42
Black and white still of Indians Music 04:53
Diamond: The Federal Government want Indians to assimilate into the whole society and to stop being Indians. The Indians just couldn’t -- they refused to do it. They held on to their tradition, to their culture. 04:57
Drums
Avidrez: We’ve had to survive genocide, we had to survive relocation, we had to survive reservation life, 05:10
Avidrez Avidrez: and we survived. We've had to survive blood quantum issues, and we’ve had to survive all these facets that have been governmentally imposed. 05:16
Avidrez Williams: Albert Avidrez is a Tiguan leader - the tribe’s governor. 05:24
Avidrez: For a long time Indian tribes have been criticised and we've been viewed upon as being liabilities to the United States -- never an asset. We’re supposed to not be able to work, we're not supposed to want to work, we're supposed to sit, be lazy, beat on drums ,live in our tepees and hang out at home and suffer from alcoholism. What we now have in this new century is native American communities wanting to improve their communities. 05:28
Inside Casinos Music 05:51
Williams: What they did was open a Casino on Reservation land -- Federal land, not Texas land -- something most of America's 200 Indian tribes have done in states across the country. As they’re technically sovereign nations, this is quite legal even in States where gambling is banned. But what the Texas Indians did back in 1987 has returned to haunt them. They signed an agreement binding them to state law in exchange for Texas agreeing not to oppose federal recognition of their tribe. And as we’ll see, it’s turned out to be their undoing, but for a time they never had it so good. 05:54
Diamond: They were clearing 06:33
Diamond: at the end there $6 million a month in profits, which was going into investments, it was going into re-acquisition of their land base and acquiring service stations and commercial sites and commercial properties. 06:34
Indian artefacts Williams: And the Tiguans shared their wealth. 6:47
Diamond: This tribe was contributing more to charities in El Paso than all the other charitable organisations combined. 06:50
Munoz: We helped everybody in the city, beginning with the fire department, and to the candle lighters and all these different charities. I think the tribe made clear over, close to $10 million in donations. 06:57
Williams: In those heady days Vincent Munoz was governor of the tribe, 07:12
Bush Rally Williams: and conscious of the anti-gambling sentiment in Texas, went to see the man then running for state governor, the man who now occupies the White House. 07:17
Munoz: Well, I actually asked him, I said what are you going to do Mr. Bush with the tribe. I said you know we have a casino, what are you going to be doing with that, and he said I’m not going to bother the Indians. I took his word, I really believed him at that time. We were campaigning for him. And Lordy behold, now we've seen the result -- he becomes the President -- the Governor then President and now Speaking Rock is closed. 07:26
Williams: But as well as their conflict with the state, the Tigua were having big trouble in their own ranks. 07:59
Silvas: I guess when the casino was opened, it was too much of a change for our people. You know, too much money came rolling in too quick. 08:06
Silvas: People started separating, you know, there were factions because of the political control over the money and that was not good you know. A lot of people forgot about the traditional way. 08:15
Black and white still of two Indians with the sacred drum
Williams: Suddenly the tribe’s sacred drum – the ageless symbol of its identity and unity – became a symbol of its division. As war captain Marty Silvas was the sacred drum’s keeper. 08:28
Silvas: The drum, I guess, is the heartbeat of the tribe. You know, the drum is a symbol of who we are. The drum is the spirit that, you know, always takes us back and takes us forward. It’s what keeps the tribe alive. 08:40
Williams: But appalled by the loss of respect for tradition, and caught up in a struggle over leadership, Marty Silvas hid the drum. It was the signal for the break-up of the Tigua 08:59
Silvas: I held on to it, I held on to it for some time. I did as the chief ordered me to do. For doing that we were punished.Williams: How?Silvas: A lot of our people , especially my family, were taken out of the tribal roles. Our benefits were taken away and we were told we were no longer Indians, we were no longer Tiguas. It's like somebody telling you, you're no longer who you say you are. 09:10
Williams: For centuries, simply surviving has been the name of the game for the Indians of these mountains. Geronimo once led the Apaches here – Apache who fought the Tigua and dismissed them as mud Indians for the adobe houses they built. Today, no Apaches roam the mountains, but the Tigua are still baking bread in their mud ovens and have a much tougher enemy than the Apache -- the Texas government and the conservative voters who support it. 09:49
Diamond: Back in East Texas we have a Bible Belt attitude -- born again Christians, and they have a very strong view with respect to gambling -- it’s a sin , and I’m sure that that is a factor 10:19
Diamond: in the politics of this situation. People will see opposing the Indian gambling activities as a good political stance. 10:36
Bush: Let's make it official. I'm a candidate for Governor of Texas. 10:45
Munoz: He needed to do something, showing that he was going to -- he didn't allow gambling. That was one of the ways he was going to win East Texas and all the votes. I think he targeted us and I think very unfairly. 10:51
Mundoz: I think he lied to us. I think he misled us 11:06
Indian dancing Williams: El Paso, of course, is west Texas, far removed from the bible belt in the east, a town doing it hard down on the Mexican border. Because it’s poor, it’s always voted Democrat, not for Bush’s Republicans and local Senator Eliot Shapleigh thinks that’s got a lot to do with it. 11:11
Shapleigh: There is an element in the Republican Party in this state that is akin to the Taliban, where it has become a moral issue. You have a whole segment that says we need to take care of this moral issue by shutting down the Tigua tribe in El Paso Texas and it’s an extreme position in my view.Williams: Who are they appealing to?Shapleigh: I think a constituency in the far right of their party, frankly. 11:34
Williams: In the eyes of the Tigua, there’s a clear double standard at work. They say when the Texas state government changed the law to allow itself to run what’s now one of the country's richest lotteries – that allowed them to open a casino. Texas insists casinos are still banned – but the Tigua say George Bush ally and attorney general John Cornyn 11:57
William: is simply trying to impress conservative voters with is newfound resolve to enforce the ban. 12:22
Cornyn: I cannot, as the Attorney General , as the chief law enforcement officer of the State of Texas enforce the laws selectively. I can’t enforce some and not others. 12:28
Williams: While the two sides slug it out in the courts, the Tigua have lost their newfound wealth.Diamond: That income stream has gone. We didn’t go back to the abject poverty that existed in 1965, but we certainly took a big tumble. 12:39
Diamond: The tribe may be forced to sell off its assets to survive. 12:58
Munoz: The economic impact has been very great, not only for the tribe, but for El Paso. 13:03
Munoz: Eight hundred people lost their jobs. I think he hurt the whole area, not just the Tigua. He hurt El Paso as a whole.Protester: This is an important time in America, 13:09
Protester: in El Paso. We cannot afford to lose any jobs and it’s real clear that the Tiguas are great corporate partners. They pay above minimum wage, they have health benefits, they have retirement options and where are these people going to find jobs like that. 13:18
Dancing Indians Music 13:33
Williams: But El Paso’s misfortune is that the Tigua’s economic salvation came 13:35
Inside casino Williams: from something Texas conservatives won’t tolerate – the casino. With their appeal to the U.S. 13:40
Dancing Indians Williams: Supreme Court, the tribe still hopes to have it re-opened -- if only to assure their future survival. 13:46
Munoz: At one point there were at least over 800 tribes in the State of Texas. There’s three now. That is exactly what the State of Texas has done to the Native Americans in this state. I’m hoping 13:54
Munoz: that everything turns around and we can continue, but I really feel that the tribe will survive. We’ve been thrown obstacles in our faces. 14:07
Dancing Indians Munoz: ace for many years and this is just one more obstacle that we will have to overcome. 14:17
Credits: