Indian wars raging again, now over casinos

By William Collins

      No casinos,

      This we plead;

      They use workers,

      We may need.

      And here we thought all that Indian stuff was centuries behind us, especially in New England. Once the natives got the drift of what we colonists had in mind, they naturally protested.

      Thereupon we killed most of them fair and square, destroyed their culture, and set up the survivors on a few niggardly wastelands they could call home. After that, we delegated the “problem” to the cavalry out West and gave the troops a pretty free hand.

      But while most local Americans Indians assimilated, the way they were supposed to, a pesky few kept up the ethnic drumbeat, maintaining reservations and tribal identities against all odds. Also against the negligence and ill will of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Even today, tribes generally get lied to, stolen from, and discriminated against. It’s never been pretty.

      Eventually though, native descendants got the hang of the system and started voting. That doesn’t mean much here, but in some parched Western states, it means plenty, and lawmakers from out there bought them off with special rights to run gambling. For us, who cared? A few garish halls far away? So what?

      Well, now we know. And while the casinos here have generated some valid complaints in host towns, overall they have been quite a boon.

      The state budget would be in big trouble without them, and so would the economy of eastern Connecticut. While we quietly resent all that money going to a few remnants of people we defeated 350 years ago, we’re joined at the hip with them now. The Mashantuckets even forked over big bucks to help fund the Republican convention.

      Nonetheless, estrangement has broken out again. Another tribe, the Schaghticokes, has had the bad grace to seek a casino, not in depressed eastern Connecticut, but in the gold fields of western Connecticut. Where’s General Custer? Stamford, after all, has a new Target Store, Burlington Coat and Marriott. Who’s going to staff all those low-wage jobs if the pay is better at a new casino in, say, Bridgeport?

      Our two senators and all our Republican congressmen are appropriately outraged, as is the attorney general. They know which side their bread is buttered on, and it’s not the American Indian side. Our Democratic congressmen, less favored by the Gold Coast, stay much quieter.

      As they review Connecticut’s appeal to disenfranchise the Schaghticokes, the congressmen from other states have been far from sympathetic to our plight, knowing a commercial power play when they see one.

      Some may even have pangs of conscience for the Indians, though conscience is rarely an early presumption in Washington. And despite corporation-inspired press reports, not every community in Fairfield County opposes the idea.

      The tribe’s chief reports that eight towns have approached him already as potential locations. Bridgeport has even passed a resolution inviting the tribe in.

      Then, to add insult to injury, the Interior Department wants to condemn 40 acres of the Schaghticokes’ near-worthless rock pile in Kent for the Appalachian Trail. After 350 years, we’re still taking their land and denying them development. God has clearly not sided with the Schaghticokes, yet.

Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk, Conn.