RESEARCH ARTICLES Statement of Dave Nenna Tribal Administrator, Tule River Indian Tribe Before the National Gambling Impact Study Commission Dave Nenna Tribal Administrator, Tule River Indian Tribe July 29, 1998 - San Diego, CA Good afternoon. My name is Dave Nenna and I am a member of and the Tribal Administrator for the Tule River Indian Tribe. Tule River is a federally recognized Indian Tribe established by Executive Order in 1873, and was one of the four original reservations in California created by executive order. The Reservation consists of approximately 55,641 acres in Tulare County, California. The membership of the Tribe consists of approximately 1,495 members, 841 of which reside on tribal lands. Many of the Tribe's members no longer residing on the Reservation have left because of the lack of opportunity. Prior to gaming the unemployment rate on the reservation hovered between 69% and 80% and crime was widespread, ranging from homicides to petty theft. The tribal government was desperately under-funded such that it was unable to provide basic services to its membership. Federal funding of tribal programs has been drastically cut, causing the tribal government to rely on tribal economic development for its very survival. In the beginning, the Tribe possessed natural resources such as timber and water. However, our water rights were taken away by the Secretary of the Interior in 1922. Our timber provided a sustainable yield of approximately $400,000 to $600,000 per year, which is not enough to run an entire government on timber revenues along for approximately $200 to $400 per tribal member. With such under-funding, there is not enough income to provide any other form of economic opportunity for our 1,500 Tribal members. On March 10, 1992, the Tule River Tribe requested compact negotiations with the State of California, and made an earnest effort to negotiate under IGRA. The effort was futile. It was only after years of silence from Governor Wilson that Tule River opened up its facility without a compact in 1997. For over six years, the Tribe has waited for the commencement of compact negotiations by the State of California. Nonetheless, the Tribe is still at the table an waiting to negotiate a fair deal. Only to date Governor Wilson still refuses to negotiate in good faith. Currently, approximately 266 people are employed directly from the Tribe's gaming operations. Of those employees, 143 are Tribal members, 38 are Native Americans from other tribes, and 18 are spouses of Tribal members. In additions, the Tribe employs another 47 persons to support casino operations. Most are full time employees at a decent wage. The profits of the gaming operation are, by provisions of the Tribe's code, reserved for governmental purposes. Those funds shall provide the means to establish and implement social programs and economic development opportunities, to improve the living conditions of Tribal members, including social programs for elders, the children and disadvantaged members of the Tribe. Most of the funds have been earmarked for reinvestment back into the gaming facilities in order to generate even more employment and greater revenues. Since the beginning of its gaming operations, conditions at the Tribe have improved dramatically. Unemployment has dropped to 30%. The crime rate is way down. The Tribe has funded economic diversification and opportunity on the Reservation, it has drastically reduced its debt, funded youth programs, job programs and education grants, and supplemented the school’s activities. In a word, the Tribe has resurrected itself and positioned itself to become truly self-sufficient with the resources necessary to steward its lands and provide for its members. It has helped the surrounding community dramatically, as well, providing job opportunities at a time when the region was losing major employers. All of this results from the Tribe’s ability to offer gaming. What we have accomplished is only a shadow of what we could accomplish. The constant threats and challenges to our gaming has destroyed the business certainty we need to make long-term capital investments and governmental planning. The time and resources that we necessarily commit to defending our rights take away from our efforts to strengthen our government and diversify our economic base. With a more certain environment, our employment figures would be higher, our governmental programs would be stronger and our future as a tribal government will be more secure. We will never be able to recover that lost opportunity, and the blame rests squarely at the doorsteps of Pete Wilson and Janet Reno. In March of 1998, the United States Attorneys entered into an agreement with certain officials of the State of California designed and intended to force an illegal and unconscionable agreement upon Indian Tribes. The United States aids and abets the State of California’s illegal acts by threatening federal enforcement action against Tribes unless the Tribe either signs a compact with material terms identical to those in the alleged compact between Governor Wilson and the Pala Band of Mission Indians, or shuts down and accepts the State’s illusory offer to waive its immunity from lawsuits brought by the tribes under IGRA. Such actions constitute violations of IGRA, the federal government’s trust responsibility towards India Tribes, and other provisions of federal law. The Pala compact that has been entered between California and the Pala Band is the product of coercion and duress, and is not the product of good faith negotiations. California has embraced the tactic of dictating to other Tribes that they sign the cookie-cutter compact presented to them, and with all its arbitrary market restraints and prohibitions on any type of machine gaming, and all of its intrusions into areas that have nothing to do with the effective regulation of gaming. The Tule River Tribe has no realistic option but to pursue and defend its opportunities to conduct and engage in Class III gaming without a tribal-state compact. The Tribe had already tried to negotiate in good faith with the State of California for Class III gaming devices as permitted by State law with no success. No closer to any of the economic benefits for tribes as intended by Congress in passing the IGRA, the Tribe now seeks relief from its poverty, unemployment and lack of social services through the operation of Class III gaming without the tribal-state compact that the State of California has already refused to negotiate in good faith on numerous occasions. We applaud the decision last week by the Honorable Judge Ishii when he refused the federal government’s efforts to close down the Tule River Tribe’s machine gaming activities. He has wisely decided to stay the federal government’s enforcement actions pending the resolution of the tribe’s lawsuits under IGRA, in light of the State’s eleventh hour waiver of the Eleventh Amendment Immunity. We hope the State’s purported waiver is valid. They have lied to us before on this issue and slip and slide their way around the court’s authority to provide an adequate remedy. We will pursue this avenue, and are hopeful that it will result in the remedy Congress intended when it passed the Act in 1998. If not, we have instructed our attorneys to pursue every possible legal avenue to defend our rights. We are in this fight to win because what we seek is right and just. WE will not let the Tule River Tribe and its members return to a world of hopelessness and despair.