Rebellion Over Tribal Fees Disrupts Resort Area : Feud: An Indian council, which controls a 28,000-acre reservation along Lake Havasu, has also raised rents. The actions are opposed by a rival clan and some residents.

Each morning the disenchanted--Indians and non-Indians alike--set up a boisterous picket line opposite the Chemehuevi tribal offices, brandishing U.S. flags and vowing never to capitulate.

“It’s like some small communistic dictatorship took over and set up a little nation out here,” said B. J. Neely, his cap festooned with miniature Stars and Stripes. “This used to be a fun joint.”

An acrimonious rebellion of sorts is rocking this usually friendly desert resort community, populated mostly by retirees, free spirits and others who lit out to the Arizona line seeking respite from the hectic pace prevalent elsewhere in Southern California.

Ostensibly, the dispute is over increased fees and rent imposed by the Chemehuevi Indians tribal council, which controls a 28,000-acre reservation that sprawls along the California side of Lake Havasu, a popular spot for waterfront campsites, vacation rentals and boat landings 250 miles east of Los Angeles.

However, the feud--marked publicly each day for the last month by the pickets--has evolved into an ugly conflict that led officials to close the elementary school for a week in January amid fears of violence.

“There is tremendous potential of mob violence,” Steven Tibbetts, acting superintendent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs office in nearby Parker, Ariz., wrote last month in a letter to the San Bernardino County sheriff.

Thomas Krumhauer, a retired Los Angeles police officer who lives nearby and is among those protesting, said: “We’re just sitting on a powder keg, waiting for it to explode.”

No one has been hurt, but several arrests have been made and a number of criminal assault charges filed, said Capt. Lin Savage of the sheriff’s office in Needles.

In the volatile atmosphere, residents who once lauded the parched desert locale as an ideal getaway--a literal oasis beside a broad lake fed by the captured flows of the Colorado River--now say all has changed for the worse.

“This place is going to hell,” declared George Bartlett, a 97-year-old retiree from Long Beach who has been coming here for almost four decades and is among those carrying the picket signs.

Parties to the bitter dispute toss about loaded words such as genocide , massacre and totalitarian like so many Frisbees. Critics of the tribal administration, Indians and non-Indians alike, say they have been banned by name from the only store within 42 miles and have reported death threats, hate mail and widespread harassment.

There was even the inflammatory allegation--vehemently denied by tribal officials--that Chemehuevi leaders ordered the removal of the U.S. flag to make a point about the tribe’s sovereign status.

“No one’s going to tell me we can’t raise the American flag,” said Darryl King, a 40-year-old Chemehuevi who hoisted the Stars and Stripes outside the tribal offices last month after hearing rumors that the flag would no longer fly.

Richie Nez, general manager of the tribe’s Havasu Landing resort, dismissed as ludicrous the notion that he issued an order to lower the flag. His van, he noted, sports a flag decal on its windshield.

At the center of the imbroglio is a Hatfield and McCoy-style feud between rival clans ofthe Chemehuevi Indians, descendants of a nomadic people who once ranged from the Tehachapi Mountains in present-day Central California through southern Nevada and a small slice ofArizona.

On one side is the tribal council and its secretive chairwoman, Christine G. Walker, and on the other detractors who accuse Walker and her allies of fiscal improprieties, nepotism, vote-rigging and downright incompetence. Walker and her supporters dismiss the charges.

The non-Indians who live on leased tribal land or in nearby private settlements have joined forces with Walker’s critics, mainly out of unhappiness over new, higher rents and feesimposed by their Chemehuevi landlords.

“We’re living under a totalitarian regime,” said Nicolas Alvarez, 30, a Walker critic and son of a former tribal chairman.

What has so enraged the non-Indians is the tribal council’s decision to hike the cost of a variety of essential local services, including a new $5 fee for entry to the tribal-owned Havasu Landing resort, the only nearby boat landing. The tribe also imposed more restrictive and expensive leases on the 400 non-Indians who park their mobile homes on reservation land. Most renters have refused to accept the terms and are continuing to pay their old rents.

Tribal officials say the cost increases--new leases would rise about 30% to an average of $206 a month--would simply adjust rents toward fair-market value. “I think they (tenants) became accustomed to unreasonably low rents for 30 years, and they don’t want to pay a fair rent,” said Nez, a Navajo who is the tribal resort manager.

Indeed, Tibbetts, the local Bureau of Indian Affairs official, said that tenants balking at the new leases “don’t have a leg to stand on, legally,” and some will likely be cited for federal trespassing violations.

For about a year, the unhappy tenants have boycotted the resort’s restaurant, marina and other facilities, costing the tribe considerable income. The resort typically generates $3.3 million in annual revenue for the tribe, mostly from the leases and assorted fees, Nez said.

So tribal officials have prominently posted a so-called “86” list, which names two dozen Indians and non-Indians who are barred from the store, restaurant and other resort facilities. Unable to enter the resort, the exiled are forced to ask friends to buy supplies and pay their utility bills.

The banned list is an appropriate means of handling “troublemakers,” according to Nez, who said he has moved his wife and children to Arizona because of numerous death threats.

Walker, the tribal chairwoman for almost four years, declined requests for an interview. Buther daughter, Patricia Mardis, the tribe’s secretary-treasurer and member of the ruling council, denied allegations of wrongdoing and derided opponents as ignorant, anti-Indian and anti-woman. “They just want power,” she added.

Dissident Indians have formed a group known as “The People Speak,” and passed out newsletters samizdat- style. Walker, the tribal chairwoman, has characterized the group in communiques as subversive.

Around the reservation, the dispute is visible in the work of an anonymous graffiti painter known as “The Serpent,” who has defaced tribal buildings with spray-painted slogansattacking tribal leaders. “Indian Justice Will Prevail,” states one example.

The critics accuse tribal leaders of threatening to evict dissidents from their reservation homes and dismissing them from tribal jobs, a lifeline in this economically depressed community.

But tribal leaders have vowed not to back down, and harmony seems more elusive than ever.

“When I came here this place was a desert paradise,” recalls Alvarez, the dissident Chemehuevi. “Now it’s become a desert hell.”