Casino Revives Tribe’s Old Rivalries

John Gomez Sr. will never forget the battery-powered car he received from the Santa Claus who showed up at the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Mission Indians’ reservation one Christmas 45 years ago.

“I never saw it run,” Gomez recalled. “My family couldn’t afford batteries for that little car, so I pulled it around the house on a string.”

That was back when the Pechanga reservation was a dusty patch of dirt roads, junked cars, stray dogs, mobile homes and destitute families.

The Pechanga Resort & Casino, which produces an estimated $184 million in revenue a year, changed all that.

As one of the tribe’s 990 enrolled members who receive about $10,000 a month from casino profits, the 55-year-old Gomez now tools around the Inland Empire in a new Jaguar, vacations in Spain, collects fine art and bids at silent auctions. While he enjoys making his own smoked turkey in the traditional Indian manner with aromatic wood, he likes to polish it off with an excellent California Merlot.

But Gomez has a problem. As tribal revenue has grown, so have old rivalries and suspicions on the reservation. Recently, the tribal enrollment committee decided to drop Gomez and about 130 people from the tribe, claiming they do not meet ancestral requirements to remain part of the Pechanga Band.

The people targeted for ejection have sued seven committee members in an attempt to stay in the tribe. On Tuesday, a Riverside County Superior Court judge will decide whether he has the authority to hear their lawsuit. The plaintiffs allege that members of the tribe’s enrollment committee are trying to increase their wealth by reducing the total number of tribal members eligible for shares of casino profits.

Five years after voters granted tribes the exclusive right to operate lucrative Nevada-style slot machines, numerous Native American groups are fighting over tribal membership.

In Northern California, the Redding Rancheria tribal council recently dropped nearly one-fourth of its membership. A year ago, the Table Mountain Rancheria near Fresno refused to recognize half of its members after its casino started operating.

The Pechanga Band’s defendants have generally declined to discuss the ejection of the members, or the lawsuit.

Even in court arguing against the request for the restraining order, tribal attorneys wouldn’t comment on the merits of the allegation. Rather they assert that the tribe’s sovereignty makes it exempt from review by any state or federal court. And Pechanga Band Chairman Mark Macarro, while not responding directly to his members’ claims, said in a prepared statement that the dispute should be resolved internally.

Outcome is Significant

The stakes are high. If the tribe is successful in dropping these members, families would be prevented from returning to their homes, tribal employees would lose their jobs, people of all ages would lose medical services, students could be cut off from funds needed to attend college, and relationships and cultural identities would be severed irrevocably, according to the lawsuit. Then there is the loss of casino profit payments, which are expected to grow in the years ahead.

Tribal elder Michael Salinas, 83, is among those facing ejection.

His grandmother was Manuela Miranda, a feisty granddaughter of Pechanga Band Chief Pablo Apish. Enrollment committee members say that although Salinas shares Pechanga blood, he and the other plaintiffs should be disenfranchised because Miranda allegedly cut her ties with the tribe by moving off the reservation 80 years ago.

Salinas said his grandmother had no intention of rejecting her tribal identity. As for the prospect of losing his income from the casino, he said, “Those payments didn’t change my life much, but they sure helped my two grandkids. For Christmas, we gave each of them $5,000.”

Seated at the kitchen table of his San Jacinto home, Salinas stared at a 59-year-old black-and-white snapshot taken when he returned to the reservation after serving as a combat medic during World War II. “That’s me and my grandmother,” he said, holding up the photo of a trim young man in uniform with his arm around the diminutive, dark-skinned woman whose descendants comprise 10% of the Pechanga Band’s population.

“Grandmother was quite a lady; smart and lovely, with a great sense of humor,” he recalled. “She was also a proud Pechanga Indian. She wouldn’t be happy about what’s going on right now.”

The tensions among tribal factions are thick at reservation meetings and social gatherings. In their lawsuit, plaintiffs referred to the defendants as “a rogue element” within the band, out to enrich themselves by erasing the Miranda family from tribal records. Now, plaintiffs say they have been called “troublemakers” and “Pechanga wannabes” by defendants and their friends on the reservation.

Gomez’s son, John Gomez Jr., 36, was fired from his position as a tribal legal analyst shortly after the lawsuit was filed in Riverside County Superior Court on Jan. 15. Three others, all of them casino employees, have been placed on administrative leave.

“The hard part, the thing that really tears me up, is that people I regarded as respected friends, even some former clients, have stopped talking to me,” said Salinas’ nephew, Gabriel Salinas, a financial consultant who was able to retire at 32 with the help of profitable business transactions, and his casino profit payments. “Yet, this whole issue is being driven by a group that wants to strengthen its control over the tribal government, and where the money goes.”

Gomez Sr. said, “It all boils down to a family feud.”

“It’s gotten so bad that the defendants have formed alliances with some of our relatives who went to their side,” he said, shaking his head. “My mother’s cousin is on the enrollment committee. My mother’s great-grandmother, Manuela, was her great-grandmother also.”

At the core of the dispute pitting cousin against uncle, grandfather against grandchild, is a cornerstone of reservation doctrine: not only can tribal administrators decide who to enroll as members but they can also eject them.

Tribal leaders and their attorneys contend the dispute is an internal matter shielded by sovereign immunity from legal challenges in state or federal court. To hear them tell it, all tribes will suffer if the case is allowed to proceed. As Macarro put it: “The United States would never let the United Nations determine who its citizens are.”

Jon Velie, who is representing the members seeking to remain in the tribe, argues that California is one of six states granted jurisdiction under a 51-year-old law to hear disputes between Native Americans that arise on Indian lands.

“We’re not saying the tribe can’t determine its own membership,” Velie said. “Instead, we are alleging that the defendants have violated established tribal laws -- and that Congress has granted individual Native Americans access to their day in court.”

Laura Wass, spokeswoman for the American Indian Movement chapter in Fresno, said she believes the case could set a precedent by creating a legal forum for other Native Americans erased from tribal rosters.

“If that Superior Court judge in Riverside agrees to hear this case I’ll kiss his feet,” she said.

“It would mean opening a whole new venue for these disputes, which are occurring in California more and more,” Wass said. “Most courts don’t bother with them because they involve sovereignty, and politics.”

As it stands, “When it comes to family-versus-family issues on a reservation,” she added, “all it takes is the snap of the fingers and you’re gone.”

Raising Concerns

That worries Louis Herrera, 38, a bass player in the Los Angeles rock band the Exies who is one of those the tribe wasn’t to drop.

Herrera was raised in a small trailer on the reservation, and still recalls rushing outside with his mother to greet the “commodities truck” that rumbled into the area each day.

“Every tribal member got a box that contained a big block of cheese, flour, canned fruits and a box of dried milk,” he said. “It was better than nothing.”

Now, cushioned by casino income, Herrera said he has been able to concentrate on his music, and his mother has moved into a two-bedroom home.

“I get choked up when I go to the reservation and see how far it has come -- the casino has been such a blessing,” he said. “This much is certain: I’m a Pechanga Indian. Nobody can take that away,” he said.

According to the Pechanga Band constitution, full membership requires proof of lineal descent from an original Pechanga member, and a family line contained in the “official enrollment book of 1979.”

The family line in that book, from which Miranda’s heirs trace their lineal descent, reads, from left to right: Miranda-Flores-Apish.

In late 2002, however, individuals on the enrollment committee demanded additional documentation of lineage from members of the Miranda family on grounds Miranda had allegedly cut her ties to the tribe by accepting a homestead off the reservation. In their lawsuit, Pechanga members accused enrollment committee members of violating tribal law by arbitrarily demanding that they meet stricter membership standards than required by the Pechanga’s constitution. They also point out that Miranda’s Pechanga Band heritage was certified by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

With more than 500 pages of legal documents to review, Superior Court Judge Charles D. Field temporarily barred the Pechanga Band from ousting the Miranda family members while he researched the legal arguments.

“I’m risking everything on the outcome; my family and their children and grandchildren could end up being Indians without a tribe,” Gomez Sr. said.