Reservation

Music

Starts:01:00:00:23

Holmes:  The Wintun tribe of northern California used to range all the way from the Sacramento Valley to the sea.

00:09

But then came the Spanish Missionaries, who took their lands in the name of God, and worked them like slaves in the name of civilisation. Next came the gold rush of the 1840s. White men poured in from over the mountains and across the sea.

00:18

Wintun members

Now the Wintun are scattered and few. Only 22 members of the Cortina Band can eke a living on their tiny reservation in the barren hills.

00:35

Holmes:  Kesner Flores's Uncle Amis still lives in one of the two original cabins built when the band moved to Cortina 50 years ago.

00:55

Amis:  He's basically taken care of and lived off the land.  Hunting squirrels, rabbits and deer.

The water is undrinkable the pasture thin, the soil eroded. Most of the Cortina band now live in the cities where the work is. They come back only a few times a year.

But the old songs and dances are not performed here any more. This is the area where we had our round house the traditional spiritual area and during the changes in seasons they would open the round house with the dances and they would go on for the three days and there was a fire that burnt for three free days using pine needles. But then poverty brought alcohol and jealousy and bad blood within the tribe.

Sometimes when things aren't right with people they chose to , instead of continue on and not doing things in the good way, that might not have been in the best spirit of their heart  and they spirituality  - they decided not to continue it. The elders decided to put the round house down.

01:03

Cabin/Holmes to camera

Super: 

Jonathan Holmes

Only a few years ago, almost all the hundred or so Californian tribes lived much like this one, on impoverished reservations, on the fringes of society, struggling for survival. But then, at least for those that were lucky enough to have land near the big cities or near the interstate freeways, there came a transformation. They're now rich and powerful beyond their dreams.

02:31

And what's brought that about is gambling.

Interior casino

Music

02:54

Holmes:  The Viejas Band of the Kumeyaay tribe makes tens of millions of dollars a year from its casino outside San Diego.

03:12

Holmes and Pico

Chairman Anthony Pico has big plans for his reservation.

03:19

Super:

ANTHONY PICO

Chairman Viegas Band

Pico:  We'll be building a museum dedicated to contemporary Native America, a golf course, a hotel for the casino and a destination resort. And then when we get there we're just going to slow down a little bit and let our people catch up and maybe the next generation will then actually use this whole valley, and then we're going to move to our motherland, which is about a half a mile over the hill here.

03:23

If economic opportunity  is there, we're going to jump on it, because we're entrepreneurs now, we understand that game.

03:43

Viejas reservation

Holmes:  There's smart new fencing on the Viejas reservation now, and smart new houses inside them.

03:50

Parents who were forced to leave school at 12 can now tell their kids that they can go to Harvard or Stanford, at fees of fifty thousand dollars a year.

03:59

And as well as giving the tribe a future, says Chairman Pico, the casino has helped it rediscover its past.

04:10

Pico

Pico:  Really what this gaming has done it has begun a cultural renaissance. The people are relearning, are learning the language, or learning our ancient songs and dances again. And it's been a focal point and a catalyst for the community to gather around something that's very sacred and very - well it's ten thousand years old.

04:16

FX:  Gaming machines

04:36

Casino interior

Holmes:  The casino and retail shopping mall at Viejas are neither sacred nor old. But they've proved hugely popular with San Diegans.  Most gambling is banned in California.

04:38

04:43

But in the theory, the Viejas casino isn't in California. The two hundred and fifty-odd members of the tribe form a sovereign nation, who pay no state taxes and are subject to no state laws.

04:55

And when the State of California decided ten years ago to introduce a state lottery, federal law allowed the Indian nations to do the same. Or so the gaming tribes like the Viejas argue.

05:09

Pico

Pico:  Governments can have gaming enterprises. The State of California has the lottery, the lotto, etcetera, and so they, as a government can, if they pass the laws, which they did, to create a gaming enterprise. So Indian reservations are governments, we've been governments before the inception and the creation of the United States of America. We're a government today, so that's why we have the same privilege.

05:21

Holmes:  In the last few years more than 40 casinos have sprung up on California reservations.

05:53

But the Federal Courts rejected the Indians' claim that their slot machines were no different from a lottery. By the middle of last year, federal prosecutors were on the point of closing down every slot machine in California, urged on by a hostile Republican governor in Sacramento.

06:00

Holmes to camera outside legislature

The constitution of the State of California seemed to offer the Indian casino owning tribes a way out. It allows for Propositions to be voted for at election time, which overrule the normal laws of the state legislature. The campaign for Proposition 5, a sweeping measure, which legitimises Indian casinos, and limits the ability of the state of California to interfere with them, turned into the most expensive political campaign ever waged in any state in the Union.

06:18

Campaign Ad

Campaign Ad:  For over 100 years, the once proud Indian tribes of California were assigned to live in a world of obscurity, beset by poverty, welfare dependency and despair.

06:44

Holmes:  The casino owning tribes spent millions of dollars to get Proposition 5 on the ballot paper.

06:57

Campaign Ad:  That's why we're circulating a petition, to put a measure on the ballot, to keep the gaming we have and continue our progress towards self-reliance.

07:03

Cheryl's farm

Holmes:  They knew they had plenty of opponents. From the governor's mansion to this hobby farm outside Sacramento.

07:14

Cheryl Schmidt has never been involved in any political campaign, until she found out that the local tribe was planning to build a casino just down the road from her back paddock.

07:22

The organisation she runs from the computer in her home - Stand Up For California - now has members all over the state.

07:35

And Cheryl herself has been commuting for months to Sacramento, to lobby in the corridors of the State Capitol.

07:45

Cheryl:   There's really nothing wrong with these tribes finding a way to make some money.

07:52

Cheryl

Super:

CHERYL SCHMIDT

Founder, ‘Stand Up For California'

Citizens are very supportive of tribes that want self-reliance. But what tribes are doing right now is illegal. They're throwing up casinos in violation of state laws, and federal laws, and when you have a casino that all of a sudden is built next to your home or the school that your child attends, or next door to your church, you get involved.

07:56

Campaign Ad

Campaign Ad:  Right now, most Indian casinos are far away from where we live. Proposition 5 will change that.

08:20

Holmes:  The fear that Proposition 5 would see a plague of casinos mushrooming all over the state is still one of the most potent weapons in the arsenal of the Indians' opponents.

08:28

Campaign Ad:  Proposition 5 gives us no vote and no voice.

08:38

Woman:  We don't have to put up with this.

08:42

Holmes:  There were plenty of other opponents of Proposition 5.

08:43

Man:  Big money and no independent regulation lead to one thing, crime.

08:46

Holmes:  Law enforcement officials, worried about organised crime, trade unions concerned about unprotected workers, businesses complaining about competition from untaxed casinos.

08:50

Campaign Ad:  I pay taxes, you pay taxes, but Indian casinos won't.

09:00

Holmes:  But none of them could have paid the millions that it cost to put their case to the Californian viewer and voter last October.

09:04

Campaign Ad:  It's a special deal for casinos. A rip-off for taxpayers.

09:11

Exterior casinos

Music

09:15

Holmes:  The real big spenders on the opposition side were not Californians at all. To find them, you have to take Route 15 across the Mojave Desert to the capital of the gambling world, Las Vegas, Nevada.

09:29

Music

09:42

Exterior Bellagio Hotel

Holmes:  The Bellagio Hotel is the latest creation of gaming king Steve Winn. At over three billion dollars it's the most expensive hotel ever built in the world so far.

09:51

But it won't hold that title for long.

10:02

Just across the street, precise reproductions, down to the cracks in the marble, of the Doge's Palace and the Rialto Bridge, are appearing on the Vegas strip. The Venetian will cost around four billion dollars.

10:08

FX:  Construction

10:23

Music

10:28

Interior Venetian under construction

Holmes:  The grand entrance will be frescoed with minutely copied Titians and Tintorettos. And above the vast casino, where the one armed bandits wait their prey, the resort's Israeli publicist, Danny Raviv, asked me to visualise a Venetian shopping mall beneath a painted sky.

10:35

Music

Homes and Raviv

Super:

DANNY RAVIV

Publicist, ‘The Venetian'

Raviv:  Vegas might be a bizarre place, you know. Have a look over here. Try to imagine the gondolas, the canals of Venice, second floor of the Venetian in Las Vegas, there'll be gondoliers singing arias and there'll be a constant Venetian carnival, with masks, and jugglers, and glass blowers.

11:00

Right now we are at St. Mark's Square, can you imagine 23 metres high, 60 metres wide, 40 metres on each side. And this is a duplication of the famous St. Mark's Square, coffee shops, restaurants, happy people, can you imagine? Have a look at all this.

11:24

Exterior Venetian/casinos

Holmes:  The Venetian is only one of many massive new projects on the Las Vegas strip.

11:45

Altogether, some 20 billion dollars is being invested. The new casino resorts -the New York skyscrapers and Arthurian towers, and Egyptian pyramids -- have to be filled somehow.  And traditionally, fully a third of the visitors to Las Vegas have been weekend gamblers from California.

11:51

Which is why Nevada's head honchos have decided to throw big money against the Indian casinos.

12:15

Sloane and Holmes

Their chief strategist is Mike Sloane, whose Circus Circus company owns seven casinos in Las Vegas. He paints Nevada's intervention in the Proposition 5 dispute almost as an act of civic minded philanthropy.

12:24

Sloane

Super:

MIKE SLOANE

Vice President, ‘Circus Circus'

Sloane:  There were a wide range of Californians who were very oppose to this. They didn't have the 70 million dollars that the Indians did from their illegal casinos. But you had all of the labour unions in California, you had the state chamber of commerce, the governor of the state, law enforcement, and a whole range of educators, Christian groups, who did not want casinos of any kind in the State of California. They got overrun by the huge expenditure that the Indians made with their illegal casino profits.

12:20

Holmes:  But why should that be your business? That's the Californians business.

13:05

Sloane:  The principle reason we opposed Proposition 5 was that it created a monopoly for Native Americans. It excluded all the people from being involved in gambling in the State of California. Since we're in that business, we felt that was unfair and perhaps unconstitutional.

13:08

Campaign Ad

Holmes:  But Nevada's intervention backfired badly.

13:22

Campaign Ad:  A secret backroom deal threatens to shut down tribal casinos the California Indians have had for years.

13:25

Holmes:  Not only did the Indian gaming tribes out spend their opposition three to one, but the Nevada casino interests made a very juicy target.

13:30

Campaign Ad:  Because big Nevada casinos want to kill competition from California Indians.

13:38

Holmes and Thompson

Holmes:  Professor William Thompson of the University of Las Vegas, Nevada, who's studied the rise of Indian gaming for a decade, believes that the entry of the Nevada casinos was what won Proposition 5 for the Indians.

13:44

Thompson

Super:

Prof. WILLIAM THOMPSON

University of Las Vegas, Nevada

Thompson:  Their whole message during the campaign was ‘Nevada casinos are afraid of us. All the Californians are going to Nevada. Nevada wants to control it all. They don't want us to have a chance.'

13:56

And it resonated well with the voters because the proposition passed with, I believe sixty-three or four percent.

14:10

Las Vegas casinos

Holmes:  But the fact that a few thousand Native Americans could outspend the might mammon of Las Vegas revealed just how rich the gaming tribes have become.

14:18

Sloane

Sloane:  That was the most expensive campaign in the history of California by one side. More than liquor or the tobacco industry, or the insurance industry has spent in the past. I mean it's astounding that people could convince the majority of Californians that they were impoverished as they spent money in an unprecedented fashion.

14:27

Cheryl

Cheryl:  Some of these casinos make a million dollars a month. Some of them more. They are not poor. They were not on welfare. They are very wealthy. They were out there on the television protecting their wealth.

14:44

Cortina Racheria

Holmes:  The lesson has not been lost on the poor non-gaming tribes. Kesner Flores and his tribal chief, the redoubtable Mary-Mae Norton, have been battling for years to get roads and electricity and drinkable water to Cortina Racheria.

14:58

So far they've received no help at all from the gaming tribes,

15:15

Mary-Mae and Kesner

Super:

MARY-MAE NORTON

Chairperson, Wintun Tribe

even from a casino-owning band of their own Wintun tribe.

Mary-Mae:  We should be helping each other because we're, most of the time we're related. And those that have been my nephews, my daughter, my grandchildren, yes I do have a bitterness that they cannot come and eat with you. They don't need to give us thousands, just a little love and care.

15:22

As of this time we have gotten nothing from them, even support on resolutions to help the little tribes get other federal grants. They're so busy with gaming, they don't support us.

15:42

Interior casino

Holmes:  According to the terms of Proposition 5, a mere two percent of net casino takings will be shared with the non-gaming tribes.

15:58

I put it to Viejas Chairman, Anthony Pico, as we sat in his luxurious new shopping mall, that that was a token pittance.

16:07

Pico

Pico:  Well you know, I tell you what, I agree with that last statement that you made.

16:15

I think it has to be significant enough so that those other tribes have an opportunity to develop their own economy, to strengthen their own government and to get off the welfare.

16:20

If we end up with a society of haves and have-nots as far as Indian country is concerned, I believe we're making a big mistake.

16:32

Rows of poker machines

Holmes:  The casino battle isn't over yet. Once more bankrolled by Nevada, the anti-gaming forces are challenging Proposition 5 in the California Supreme Court, and they may well win.

16:40

Even if they do, the new Democratic administration in Sacramento is unlikely to close the Indian casinos. But it may well insist that the takings be shared more fairly. And if that happens, then all the descendants of those who were pushed from their land by the California gold rush can be rescued from poverty by the California casino boom.

16:51

Ends:01:17:18:00