Last week, the Bay Area’s Republican Party decided to back the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe in a big way — and it’s shaming the Bay Area Democrats who have been stalling an affirmation of the tribe’s federal status at the behest of some of the Party’s biggest donors.
The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe was previously federally recognized as the Verona Band of Alameda County and was never terminated by an act of Congress — which is the only way to eliminate a Tribe’s recognition status. One hundred percent of its members descend from that previously recognized Tribe. A federal district court judge in the Northern District of California has affirmed that the Tribe has retained its sovereign immunity despite not being on the Bureau of Indian Affairs 1978 list of officially recognized Tribes.
But California’s 68 Indian casinos are enormously lucrative and have donated overwhelmingly to the Democrat Party, and in many ways form the backbone of California’s political money machine. They bankroll the Party, and they are fiercely against affirming wrongfully unrecognized and terminated tribes, for fear of new gaming competitors.
In California, 44 tribes were terminated by the Rancheria Act of 1958. Another 135 tribes were illegally discarded by Indian Agent Lafayette Dorrington in 1927.
In recent years, Tribes similarly situated as a Muwekma have been reaffirmed by administrative corrective action, whereby the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs signs and publishes a letter acknowledging that the Bureau of Indian Affairs errored in excluding the Tribe from the original 1978 list. This has been done for Ione Band of Miwok Indians, Lower Lake Indian Rancheria, and the Tejon Indian Tribe.
The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe has been the principal target of tribes’ gaming lobbyists because its aboriginal territory encompasses the most lucrative prospective gaming market in North America. The Tribe’s members were once enslaved at Mission Delores, Mission San Jose, and Mission Santa Clara, and their aboriginal territory includes San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and Silicon Valley.
Under California law, established by two voter referendums, every federally recognized tribe is entitled to two gaming licenses to operate up to 2,500 slot machines at each of two locations inside its aboriginal territory.
The prospect of Muwekma’s allyship with the Republican Party has so frightened the State’s established Indian gaming interests that the Pechanga Resort and Casino sponsored events at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee for the California delegation. Pechanga is led by Tribal Chairman Mark Maccaro, who has been a ferocious enemy of California’s unrecognized Tribes. He also serves as President of the National Congress of American Indians, where he has pushed to ban unrecognized Tribes from its membership. His wife, Holly Maccaro, sits on the Board of Indian Country Today, an American Indian media network.
At a rally outside of San Jose City Hall, Peter Kuo, the Vice Chairman of California’s Republican Party played Amazing Grace on his violin before declaring that, “the Republican Party is in full support of the Tribe”. Santa Clara County Republican Chairman Shane Patrick Connelly offered his fullest endorsement.
Inside City Hall, the San Jose City Council was conducting regular business. It was expected that the Council would vote on a Resolution of Support for the tribe, calling on the federal government and Congress to take corrective measures to affirm the tribe’s status. But just prior to a Rules Committee meeting on August 7th, Rep. Zoe Lofgren sent committee members a deceptive letter to sabotage the resolution.
“This was supposed to be a day of celebration. Instead, it’s a day of protest,” Tribal Chairwoman Charlene Nijmeh said at the rally. The Chairwoman responded to Rep. Lofgren’s letter formally.
Peter Hernandez, the Republican nominee for Congress in California’s majority-Latino 18th district, has pledged to offer legislation that will affirm the Tribe’s federal status and enable it to establish a reservation.
In California, all aboriginal land title was essentially extinguished by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildgao of 1848, which required land claims to be brought within two years. As a result, all of the reservations that exist in California were established by executive order or by the Secretary of Interior as a matter of moving land into federal trust.
The Tribe intends to move land into trust or reservation status to build housing for its members, who are being pushed out of their 10,000-year Bay Area homeland by crushing housing costs. The Tribe also intends to pursue economic development projects.
Nijmeh has endorsed Hernandez’s campaign for Congress.
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