A ‘great rift’ widens

 

By Kevin Diaz
McClatchy Washington Bureau

 

To the small group that runs the fabulously successful Mystic Lake and Little Six casinos in Prior Lake, Sheldon Wolfchild was the wrong kind of Indian.

It didn't matter that he was one of the real Indians in the movie "Dances with Wolves," or that he claims descent from a hero of the 1862 Dakota rebellion in Minnesota. When he asked a decade ago to join the 200-member tribe that has grown rich from gambling profits, he was denied.

But now Wolfchild and 22,000 other descendants of Minnesota's Dakota Indians are laying claim to the casino riches. And they have been bolstered by a federal judge's suggestions that the government may have erred in 1980 when it determined who could control the tribal land.

The case could leave U.S. taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars. It also could leave Indians across the country wrestling anew with the meaning of tribal identity.

"They recognized the wrong Indians," Wolfchild said. "The government was supposed to check these people out, and it didn't."

In a series of decisions during the past two years, Judge Charles Lettow of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims has ruled that the federal government has breached a trust to "the loyal Mdewakanton and their lineal descendants," who were promised land in the 1800s because they were deemed friendly to whites. Leaders of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux (Dakota) Community, which runs the casinos, recoil at Wolfchild's suggestion that they are not true descendants of those Indians or that their community was illegally constituted.

"They don't have a case," said Keith Anderson, secretary-treasurer of the Shakopee tribal government.

The judge has not made a final ruling and appeals are certain. But the case has revived the dark days of the state's early Indian wars.

The ghosts of two chiefs

When Wolfchild stands outside the stone walls of Fort Snelling where two Dakota chiefs were hanged in 1865, he can almost hear the mournful whistle of a train.

"I get all kinds of flashes there," said the 60-year-old former tribal leader from the Lower Sioux Indian Community in Morton.

The executions of Chief Medicine Bottle -- Wolfchild's great-great-grandfather -- and Chief Little Six seemed to be the last chapter of the Sioux uprising. Instead, it became a prelude 140 years later to his lawsuit.

The Dakota Conflict of 1862 was short but bloody. Nearly 500 white settlers and an untold number of Indians died.

The violence erupted when a group of Mdewakanton Sioux, famished from crop failure, rose up in the Minnesota River Valley against white traders who refused them credit to buy food. Despite warnings from elder chiefs, attacks against settlers spread. The Sioux were quickly subdued.

In November 1862, nearly 2,000 Mdewakanton were forced to march 150 miles from the Lower Sioux agency in Morton to Fort Snelling. There, they were imprisoned in a tent encampment for a winter and then shipped by steamboat down the Mississippi, then up the Missouri River to Crow Creek, S.D.

Hundreds died on the drought-stricken prairie. Those who lived were moved to the Santee Sioux Reservation in Nebraska and joined by several hundred Mdewakanton men who were condemned to death in Mankato in December 1862 but pardoned by President Lincoln.

Not all the Dakota left Minnesota, though. A small group stayed behind, first hiding in woods and ravines but ultimately judged as "friendlies" by the U.S. government.

"It was a great rift in the Dakota community," said Minnesota author Diane Wilson, whose great-great-grandmother, Iron Cloud, was caught up in the war. "Split-second decisions had to be made about taking sides. If you were a mixed blood, you were going to take a side against your family no matter which way you went."

Congress determined that a group of 264 of these Indians had helped white people during the war. They were named in U.S. censuses in 1886 and 1889, and three parcels of land near the Minnesota River were set aside for them. That land became the modern Shakopee, Prairie Island and Lower Sioux communities.

A hundred years later, Congress gave a small group of Sioux, the newly constituted Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux (Dakota) Community, jurisdiction over the land near Shakopee, including parcels in Prior Lake.

The group had been created by Norman Crooks in 1969. It has control over the land and the casinos, which earn millions of dollars in profits every year.

Now, thousands of Dakota who say they can prove a link to the "friendlies" of the 1886 census want some of the casino largess. But those who identify more with the banished Dakota say the fight is tearing their community apart.

Maude Bluestone Williams is an 89-year-old tribal elder on the Lower Sioux reservation in Morton. Her father, Sam Bluestone, was on the 1886 census. Although she gets a modest stipend from Lower Sioux's Jackpot Junction Casino near Morton, she has signed on as a plaintiff in the Wolfchild suit.

The whole matter, she says, has cut like a knife through the Mdewakanton Sioux. "There's so much hatred," Williams said.

Patriarch at center of the dispute

At the center of the dispute is Crooks, the legendary patriarch of the modern Shakopee tribe who died in 1989.

Census records show he grew up in Redwood County, Minn., Long Beach, Calif., and Nebraska, where he was an enrolled member of the tribe at Santee. By the 1960s, he and his wife, Edith, had settled in the Twin Cities area, where he found work in construction.

Dissatisfied with life, they moved to what was then a growing Mdewakanton Sioux community on reservation land around Prior Lake.

Looking for economic aid from Washington, Crooks and 12 others sought recognition as a tribe, based not on the 1886 census but on a new one they took on the lands near Shakopee in 1969. There were 33 names on that list, about half members of Crooks' family or his wife's.

Charter members of the new tribe were not required to prove 1886 ancestry, only that they were of "Mdewakanton Sioux Indian blood."

Subsequently, all others trying to become members would have to prove they were at least one-quarter Mdewakanton and trace their ancestry to the 1886 census.

An even bigger stumbling block for prospective new members was the need also to be "qualified by the governing body" -- by whatever criteria the tribal leaders choose.

On March 26, 1975, as the new tribe's chairman, Crooks wrote himself a letter to do just that and provide a shield against any challenges to his own Mdewakanton heritage.

"Dear Member," it began. "You have been determined to be eligible for membership and your name has been placed on the tribal roll." It was signed: Norman M. Crooks, chairman.

Nonetheless, some still question his lineal inheritance.

Shakopee tribal officials say that Crooks' father was named Amos Crooks and that he was the grandson of John and Mary Crooks, who were listed on the 1886 census.

But Wolfchild plaintiffs, mining old tribal records, have raised doubts. A 1940 Santee Sioux census certificate in Nebraska identified Crooks' mother as Ellen F. Crooks. His father was listed as "not given."

Meanwhile, questions about the rights to Mdewakanton lands at Shakopee persisted. Congress seemed to settle the matter in 1980 by turning over control of the land to Crooks' tribe. The move had been pushed by Sen. Hubert Humphrey and others supporting the movement for Indian self-government.

Judge Lettow has since ruled that whatever Congress intended in 1980, it did not extinguish the original trust to descendants of the Mdewakantons on the 1886 census.

Wolfchild traces his family to both the banished Sioux and "friendlies." Medicine Bottle was a rebel leader, but an ancestor -- George Crooks -- binds Wolfchild to the family of Shakopee's current tribal chairman, Stanley Crooks.

Still, Wolfchild was denied membership in the Shakopee tribe. He and others rejected call it a "popularity contest."

Doubts raised about land control

Lettow has not granted Wolfchild membership in the Shakopee tribe, but he is expected to rule shortly on whether the tribe must appear in his court to answer Wolfchild's challenges.

Records in the case show that by the early 1970s, before Congress gave the Crooks-led tribe control of the Shakopee lands, federal officials raised questions about who was qualified to use them.

One question came from the Interior Department, which warned in 1970 that assignments on the 1886 lands at Shakopee remained available "only to eligible Mdewakanton Sioux Indians."

The next year, Washington asked local Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) officials to verify the eligibility of everyone living on the 1886 lands.

On Sept. 15, 1971, Norman Crooks produced the affidavit stating Amos Crooks was his father. It was signed by his mother's sister and brother. Two months later, Crooks asked the Santee Sioux tribe in Nebraska to drop him from its rolls. Enrollment in another tribe could have disqualified him from tribal membership at Shakopee.

Several years later, the questioning continued. In May 1976, Crooks received a letter from the BIA's Minneapolis area director George Goodwin:

"I have become acutely aware of the many problems and disputes that arise from the administration of the 1886 Mdewakanton Sioux lands," he wrote. "Until further notice, land assignments on 1886 Mdewakanton lands will be issued only to persons who can prove descendency [sic] from the 1886 Mdewakanton residents."

But Goodwin did not seem inclined to undo mistakes that may already have been made. Thirty years later, Goodwin's assertion is being cited by Wolfchild's lawyer, Erick Kaardal, as proof of a "knowing breach" by the government.

By the late 1970s, Indian tribes in Florida were making millions off casinos. Inspired by their success, Crooks led the way to the opening of the Little Six Bingo Palace in 1982. His successor and political rival, Leonard Prescott, rolled out Mystic Lake Casino next door 10 years later, bringing the tribe immense wealth.

Bingo to riches

Mystic Lake revenues have provided enrolled members at Shakopee, including Crooks' son Stanley, opulent lifestyles. The casino's proximity to the Twin Cities helps make it among the most profitable in the nation.

Mystic Lake now boasts 600 luxury hotel rooms, more than 4,000 slots, 100 gaming tables, and, of course, bingo. Prescott says it generates about $700 million a year in revenues. Last year it donated more than $13 million to other tribes in the Midwest.

Tribal members get annual casino payouts of more than $1 million. Many live in mansions on their hilly reservation of hotels and golf courses. They drive luxury cars and winter in Arizona.

Each passing year, interest in tribal membership at Shakopee has intensified. And so has the legal turmoil.

At a 1994 meeting, amid hundreds of enrollment applications, tribe member Linda Sconberg vented her frustrations: "These Mdewakanton that are coming back here," she said, "they have never lived here and never been enrolled here and yet they want to come here."Everyone wants to be an Indian now," Prescott said in a recent interview. "In the '60s, when we had trailers and septic tanks, nobody wanted to come to Shakopee."

But to all challenges from the outside, including Wolfchild's, the Shakopee community has stood behind its inherent right of tribal sovereignty, which keeps it largely beyond the reach of courts.

The court has made no rulings on the true heritage of Crooks, or the legitimacy of the tribal government he formed. But in ordering a national search for descendants last summer, Lettow opened the door to the possibility that there are more 1886 trust beneficiaries than the 900 or so who are members of the Shakopee and Prairie Island Indian communities.

The original suit, filed three years ago, listed Wolfchild and 133 others claiming lineal descent from the 1886 census. The list has grown to 22,000.

Some analysts say that while there are no claims against the Indian communities, a large judgment against the U.S. government could force Congress to alter the distribution of gaming revenues on the 1886 lands.

Any damages would be borne by U.S. taxpayers, which could put pressure on Congress to review the tribe's legal foundation. Shakopee community officials say that will never happen.

The Shakopee Indian community plans to keep building on the promise of its founding fathers, who started high-stakes bingo with a decidedly low-stakes ambitions:

"Our main purpose," Norman Crooks said in 1982, "is to earn some money to get our roads improved."

'We're the bad Indians'

On the modern Santee reservation in Nebraska, set in scrublands along the Missouri River as a virtual penal colony of the banished Mdewakanton, the memories and the divisions persist.

"We're the bad Indians," said Santee bison manager Kalon Strickland, with a rueful smile. "We're the ones who fought."

Nonetheless, about half of Santee's 4,000 enrolled members claim descent from the 1886 census by virtue of relatives who either returned to Minnesota, or never left. Many have joined Wolfchild's suit.

They have done so over the objection of their tribal chairman, Roger Trudell: "The whole thing diminishes us as a people," he said. "We're the real Mdewakanton. The ones who stayed in Minnesota renounced their tribalism."

The connection between the Shakopee Indians and their relatives out West has faded over the years, but never disappeared.

Santee children still celebrate their Minnesota roots in murals on their school walls. One panel shows the river boat packet "Florence" steaming up the Missouri with a cargo of brown faces: The children's Minnesota ancestors.

Only recently, though, has the story of the Mdewakanton come back to life across Indian Country, where the Wolfchild case is all the rage.

Divisions pitting those who chose traditional ways in the 1800s against "cut-hairs" who farmed like white people have resurfaced. "The feelings that were created back then were so powerful, they are still resonating today," said author Wilson, whose book, "Spirit Car," recalls how her own Mdewakanton family survived the war. "People remember whose family was on which side, and what they did."

Since 2002, Mdewakanton activists have been retracing their ancestors' march from Morton to Fort Snelling at the end of the Sioux uprising. They remember the long caravan of starving women, children and elderly, tired and desperately under-clothed.

Wolfchild and his followers now ride horses every year to retrace the journey of the war's defeated men, the 38 who were hanged the day after Christmas in 1862.

Medicine Bottle and Little Six were not there. They escaped to Canada, where many more Mdewakanton descendants remain. But the two chiefs eventually were captured, returned to Minnesota and executed, to the sound of a mournful train whistle.

Frozen out of the benefits of the Mystic Lake and Little Six casinos, Wolfchild and his followers have formed a virtual government-in-exile, Oyate, which in their Dakota language means The People.

"Medicine Bottle fought back," Wolfchild said. "Now I am, too."

MONDAY: Across the nation, Mdewakanton Sioux scour attics and courthouses for birth certificates and other family records.