Indians in Arizona Split Over Land Developer’s Promise of Jobs, Money

Gary Bailey parked his battered sedan on the side of a road on a hill overlooking a landscape of mesquite trees, saguaro cactus and jagged peaks 10 miles south of Tucson.

To the west, Black Mountain, a cactus-covered hill where some of his ancestors died defending their land against neighboring tribes, towered above the desert floor. To the north, the bleached adobe walls of nearby San Xavier del Bac Mission reflected the last rays of the setting sun.

“This is the land the developer wants from us,” said Bailey, 25, one of many Tohono O’odham (Papago) Indians battling a plan for the largest residential lease of Indian land in U.S. history.

‘Has Opened My Eyes’

“If the developer hadn’t of come here, I would never have gotten involved in tribal affairs,” Bailey said. “But this has opened my eyes.”

Bailey is one of many who considers the proposal a threat to the tribe’s land, sovereignty, culture and water rights, and a classic example of the deals that have depleted Indian resources.

The issue of whether to approve the proposal has split the tribe between those who fear a swindle and those who simply see a chance to earn money from land that has not changed appreciably since the reservation was created in 1890.

The case typifies what can happen when whites want Indian land.

Sam Stanley, a retired Smithsonian Institution anthropologist who has studied reservation economies, says development deals frequently win the approval of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and tribal councils. Often, individual Indians, fearing a rip-off, will resist. But “regardless of the outcome, the Indians do not participate meaningfully in the development of their own resources,” he says, meaning big profits from any such projects often end up off the reservation.

Planned Community Sought

Palm Springs developer Jim Rothschild hopes to win a 90-year lease for up to 18,000 acres of mostly allotted land (property held by individual Indians) for a planned community of 100,000, including condominiums, golf courses, swimming pools and light industry.

The San Xavier Reservation contains 71,000 acres of land, about 40,000 held by individual Indians (allottees), and the rest tribally owned.

Rothschild has promised more jobs and money than the 13,000-member Tohono O’odham Nation has ever seen. “It is one hell of a deal for the Indians,” Rothschild said.

But a group of Indians--Defenders of O’odham Land Rights--has organized to fight the proposal. Their Tucson attorney, Lewis W. Barassi, calls the 70-page lease “extremely complex . . . shocking and insidious.” The developer stands to gain control of tribal water rights some believe to be worth half a billion dollars, he says.

“The water rights come with the land . . . without water you can’t develop,” said Rothschild. But he added that he would first seek to obtain water from the City of Tucson before using tribal reserves.

Gets Tribal Approval

Rothschild first presented the lease in 1983 and won approval in form by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, tribal attorneys and the tribal council.

He then paid some Indians $25 for each signature they could obtain on the lease from the 750 Indian owners of allotted land on the proposed development site. That effort proved impractical and was dropped after one month, Rothschild said. Since then, using Indians paid hourly wages, he has collected about 450 signatures, which he said represents an overwhelming majority in support of the project.

Under terms of the proposal, Rothschild’s Santa Cruz Properties of Tucson would lease 15,000 acres of land held by individual Indians and 3,000 acres of land owned collectively by the tribe for 65 years with a 25-year option.

The Indians would receive a minimum $50 an acre per year in the first year. Rent would drop to a minimum of between $10 and $30 an acre in the next 10 years, and then gradually rise to $900 an acre in the final years of the option.

The Defenders and Barassi contend the land is worth more than that.

“This is the most complex legal document I have ever seen, and many Indians who signed it do not speak English,” Barassi said.

‘Indians Against Indians’

“I can’t believe the audacity of a man who would use Indians against Indians this way,” said Michael Enis, 49, an O’odham Indian and president of the Defenders group. “It is so easy for an Indian to get a signature from another Indian if you speak their language. . . . They will sign thinking no harm will come to them.”

“These people made a decision and signed the lease in good faith,” said Jane Johnson, spokeswoman for Santa Cruz Properties. “We thought we were offering an opportunity and all they had to say was yes, they wanted it, or, no, they didn’t. Half of the allottees said yes.”

The Defenders say they have managed to persuade at least 100 people who signed the lease to rescind their signatures. However, Rothschild says: “We still have about 13,000 acres (of allotted land) signed up. We are not planning to walk away at all.”

Rothschild suffered a setback in mid-September when the O’odham Nation’s tribal council voted to terminate the lease on tribally owned land and to impose a moratorium on non-Indian residential development.

It was unclear whether the tribal council has authority over individual landowners who have “started making noises that they want this (lease) to happen,” tribal chairman Josiah Moore said.

Concerned for Children

Francis Flores, 52, is one of them. “My land on the reservation is idle now. I want my children’s inheritance to be more than 80 acres of sand, cactus, mesquite, scorpions and rattlesnakes,” he says.

Meanwhile, the BIA has refused to cancel an environmental impact study of the proposal despite requests to do so from critics including the Pima County Board of Supervisors. The county officials fear that the environmental impact study constitutes a major step toward development.

In an article published in the Arizona Daily Star on Aug. 26, Supervisor Ed Moore called the development proposal “the biggest land scam that has ever been proposed in the state of Arizona . . . and the BIA is totally at fault.”

“This is like selling Manhattan for beads,” agreed Dr. Peter Warshall, a biologist and expert on environmental reports, who examined a 400-page draft of the environmental statement published in March and deemed it “the worst I have ever seen.”

Decision Months, Years Away

A final decision on the issue could be months or even years away. The controversy has given new meaning to the tribal logo of a person standing in a maze with an orb of truth at its center.

The logo, which appears on everything from tribal letterhead to woven baskets, symbolizes the O’odham belief that man’s lot is to deal with a lifelong series of difficult, sometimes dangerous, choices.

“We are somewhere in that maze now,” Enis said. “So is the developer.”