My Testimony

Not many, but a few people have asked what I said in Hood River as part of the Cascade Locks DEIS. Unfortunately, I did not get the opportunity to speak, so I submitted my comments to a court reporter and transcriber. Admittedly, my comments touched on the technical aspects of the DEIS as much, or loosely, as the majority of the various testimonies. Meaning, not much at all. If anybody is interested, here is what I said:




Cascade Locks testimony

"This is the third hearing I've come to regarding the Cascade Locks DEIS. I must admit that I am somewhat surprised at how they have been carried out. The tone and atmosphere at all these hearings could best be described as tense. More often than not I feel like these are pep rallies and contests to see how public opinion can be swayed. As a Grand Ronde Tribal leader, I haven't exactly felt welcome at any of these hearings.
Those of you who might have done your research would know that I am one of the Grand Ronde Tribal Council members who at one point voted against spending the money we have in opposing the Cascade Locks casino. I want to be up front about that. However, in saying that I've objected at times to how we've engaged in this debate does not necessarily mean that I am ready to endorse the proposal that we are all here to testify on. I am here to offer my own comments because I feel that this discussion has become oversimplified and some have lost sight of the larger picture and issues that are all a part of this decision.
I personally would love to see the people of Warm Springs prosper and improve their lot. I dislike the manner in which the Grand Ronde tribe has been demonized and characterized as greedy and selfish with nothing but financial motives in opposing this project. None of my co-workers, much less fellow members, are taking any sort of delight in this increasingly ugly debate. We are not rubbing our hands in private and cackling evilly and wishing for eternal poverty and starvation for the Warm Springs. We aren't monsters, we are human beings the same as all of you.
I want people to know that when you become a leader in Indian Country you care deeply about your people. As you interact with more tribes, join various alliances and organizations, and develop friendships with fellow Tribal leaders, you learn to care about them and their people too. You meet with them more often, at conferences and such, you learn of the numerous parallels in experiences and tribulations that all tribes face. Many of us have been virtually landless at one point, in addition to struggling with alcoholism, loss of cultural identity, and what probably ties everything together, poverty. You wouldn't think so from coming to these hearings, but yes Grand Ronde was once very poor, and worse, terminated. And many of us are aware that Warm Springs provided aid during our own Restoration. We haven't forgotten that.
On a personal level, I have come to care for the people of Oregon's tribes. I have no reason to not believe the Warm Springs people when they tell their stories of being poor and disadvantaged. Come to think of it, tribes like Warm Springs are probably who some of our national leaders had in mind when they passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act 20 years ago. However, I don't believe the way the Cascade Locks casino issue has been presented is what they had in mind though either.
I believe that the Cascade Locks casino proposal is not the best decision for Warm Springs. I've learned to avoid using the word never, so let me say that I really believe that this project is highly unlikely to happen. I hate to see Warm Springs spend more time and money towards this effort.
There are a number of factors which make this casino improbable. For one, on a national level you are seeing more efforts to tighten the restrictions on Indian gaming. Two, and I have heard very little mention of this at these hearings, people seem to have forgotten that this is a presidential election year. If BIA does not make a decision on this soon, and they are under no obligation to do so, then one year from now a lot of the discussion here will be irrelevant. One of the presidential candidates has been a huge opponent of the expansion of Indian gaming, so already that to me means a roughly 50% chance that this project will be delayed another five years. Lastly, given how increasingly high stake and occasionally nasty this issue is becoming, I would not be at all surprised to see this end up in court. So I look at Cascade Locks and think "if" it ever happens, it will be years away. That is why it saddens me to see such blind optimism around here. After 10 years and $20 million, I don't think these public hearings are much to show. Warm Springs could have been breaking ground on a new expansion somewhere else. Instead, they haven't even broke ground here, much less bought the land yet.
I believe there is a better way to handle all this. What that is, well, people have already mentioned alternatives numerous times. On the present course, I see growing animosity between tribes, resentment amongst those who would see a casino in the gorge and those who would not. Most importantly of all, with more attempts to open up the gaming industry to non-Tribal entities, I see the effort to sway public opinion towards acceptance of off-reservation gaming as a move that would ultimately backfire, hurting all tribes."

Open Eyes

Back in October, I agreed to approach this whole SMGI/Tribal Council scenario with an open mind. Nobody will convince me I haven't done just that. Not that I won't be second guessing this exercise all the way through.
I usually show up for work between 8:30 and 9:00, being a big fan of sleep. Today was one of those days in I had to come in early. In addition to being sitting board members of Spirit Mountain Gaming, Incorporated, there are a handful of committees, in actuality sub-groups of the board, that filter upward to the directors. I have yet to pick out which committees I would act as liaison to. In an effort to get a feel for these committees, I showed up at 8:30...okay more like 8:45, to give each one a test run. Out of respect for policies of Spirit Mountain Casino, I will not go into detail about these committees, other than that they are tied to fairly important departments like Finance, Audit, and Surveillance.
I can't really say that any of the committees jumped out at me more than the others, in fact all of them in some way trully fascinated me, particularly Surveillance. Catching even a brief glimpse of floor action through the eyes of our own casino Big Brother is one of those guilty pleasures. What did jump out at me though was that between the 8:45 a.m. start time and the eventual 4:30 adjournment of the SMGI session, I spent nearly seven hours of time in complete meeting mode. No wonder I have a headache.
Which gets to my real point here: The Council position some times is stretched dangerously thin. As I peruse my work email, my teeth grind at the more than 200 unread emails which have piled up in the old mailbox. Maybe that iPhone isn't such a bad idea after all.
That is probably my biggest objection to being on the casino board. In reality we are assuming a whole new world of responsibilities, and the casino trully is its own territory, with its own politics, dynamics and personalities. The last few SMGI meetings have started to bear an odd resemblance to our Tribal and General Council meetings, with Tribal members demanding time in which to air their grievances, and offer suggestions as to how we can improve this overall operation. Outcry from the membership, and/or the fear of, are alluded to often in our board meetings.
As I say all this hopefully nobody will see it as pure criticism. More than anything it's observations from a unique position, of a unique situation. Indian gaming must be enigmatic to newcomers. My own guess is that gaming tribes, especially those where the line of tribal government and business (i.e. casinos) intersect, are kind of a hybrid organization, and I really wonder if there has ever been some model of administration designed that would incorporate both. If there is I sure would like to see and learn about it, because there are definite challenges here.
The biggest challenge of course is time, and you realize that when the monthly report comes in, loaded with numbers, summaries, comparisons with previous years, budgets versus actuals, etc. Expertise is a close second. The role of a Tribal Council member within the tribal community already is a time-consuming vocation. Taking on a multi-million dollar business on the side is a considerable workload to add, and I question whether we have the time to dedicate to doing it right.
The expertise is another argument. To be honest, in the limited time I've been involved, I can't really say that my peers are clueless to how this business is run. They know more than I do. But there are a number of managers and directors that report to us as a body who occupy positions with skills and experience that, to be nice, none of us Council members could apply for were the jobs vacant and be expected to have much chance of getting. I certainly wouldn't be taken seriously if I did. There is something to be said for that.
It's all moot, though. The membership let us know months ago they were comfortable, barely, with the present scenario. Me, I remain skeptical. Yeah, I see now, but my vision hasn't changed much.

Tribe against tribe

By Tuesday morning, I will have put about another 800 or 900 miles on my pick-up over the past week. Much of that will be the typical 30 mile one-way trip to Grand Ronde from McMinnville, plus incidental personal use. A lot of it will have been miles driving from home and Grand Ronde to multiple sites like Cascade Locks, Hood River, and Portland for the public hearings on the Warm Springs' proposed "Bridge of the Gods" casino in the Columbia River Gorge. I missed Wednesday's hearing in Stevenson, Washington. Most of the Council left after lunch, but I had a commitment back in the office, forcing me into a late start. Ultimately, I called a co-worker about halfway there, pretty sure that the Portland rush-hour traffic would force me to miss half the meeting. Traffic jams are high on the list of those things that test my patience.
Tomorrow night in Hood River is the finale of the hearings, the first one having been in Warm Springs two weeks ago. The two I have attended, Cascade Locks last Monday and Portland on Thursday, were put on before packed houses. A clear majority of people testifying at the hearings have spoken in favor of the gorge casino. A lot of those people have been Warm Springs members, many Elders, transported to the sites for the purpose of testifying. Grand Ronde has taken similar actions. The hearings feel like a sporting contest, as if there is a competition to see who can pack the room with their side more, the intentions of both to make public opinion look as if it favors their side. I would say that Warm Springs could be winning, but then again tomorrow is only my third meeting. The order of speakers in Cascade Locks appeared tampered with. At all meetings the speakers have run over the allotted time, and the carryover started the following hearing.
I've never much cared for the entire nature of the gorge casino debate. After these hearings I am even more uncomfortable. There has been an air of borderline hostility in these meetings, and the tension is thick. Warm Springs members, some of them leaders, who I have worked with and gotten to know over the past fours years will give me the time of day, but conversation is pretty minimal. Under the circumstances, social interactions are expectedly awkward. Conversations go nowhere near the topic surrounding us. One notable member who knew my opinions laments that if I had been there, on the Grand Ronde Tribal Council, maybe I would "talk some sense into them." I inform him I am on the Council, however I am no longer Chair. Evidently, that was news to him.
Other regional Tribal leaders speak out in favor of the gorge casino, as do assorted local politicians. All of them are pretty convinced that this project will happen. All of them are pretty convinced that this casino will revive Cascade Locks economy, that there will be little pollution, that there will be no problem accommodating a small army of Warm Springs residents who will commute the supposed 40 mile one-way drive for work.
Opposition feel, well, almost the opposite. After 10 years and $20 million, the project will not happen. Cascade Locks will not rise from the ashes of economic despair, the gorge will be irrevocably tainted, and the 109 mile one-way commute is completely unrealistic.
Despite what studies show, I don't think there is any way we will ever really know unless the event actually happens. Quite frankly, that doesn't appear very likely to ever happen, for numerous reasons. I personally believe we will start to see tighter restrictions on Indian gaming, and there is guaranteed to be a new presidential administration within a year. On top of that, given the stakes and tone of this debate, you can't really rule out litigation the further along this project continues. While I haven't been 100% behind how Grand Ronde has chosen to get involved in all this, I can't quite agree with how Warm Springs is choosing to proceed either. At some point, I think, you have to be realistic. These public hearings, while enlightening, aren't much to show for a decade of time and money.
I am seriously considering speaking tomorrow and saying basically what I've written here. My main reservation though is that people will be confused. A Grand Ronde leader would be expected to be completely in support of what his Tribe is doing, which I'm not. But on the flipside I can't in good conscience say I support what Warm Springs are doing. They have been paying handsomely to be led down a road that might lead nowhere, and I can think of one person whose name I will not mention, who has probably made a lot of money convincing them to do this. There is, I am convinced, a better way to deal with all this. It is not a black and white issue. It never has been.

If Anybody Wonders

If anybody is wondering, I haven't given up blogging as a hobby. Like everybody, in my adult life I've learned to prioritize some things correctly. For the three weeks, a large portion of my time has been spent bedside, at one point in a hospital, and now at our Tribe's own Adult Foster Care Facility. This is mainly because of the health of my great-grandfather Hubert Mercier.
Don't worry, he is doing fine now, although about three weeks ago I would not have said that. For personal reasons I won't get into what his problems have been, as they have been numerous, and the progenitor in it all was his stubborn refusal to give up the life he has known for close to 98 years now, notably sharp power tools. I doubt he will be able to continue these "hobbies", at least not with the frequency before.
It has been interesting, though, all this time with him. For one we barely know eachother, having been interacting on a regular basis for only a six or seven years now. The depth of his life, 97 years and counting, is more than triple mine, 32. In other words, he has a lot more to say. Somebody pointed out to me at the hospital weeks ago that in his lfetime he has probably known just about everybody of note in Grand Ronde. Names that get tossed around in a historical context by some of our cultural folks are frequently people who he knew, often quite well. As a cousin of mine pointed out, Hubert probably in his childhood held hands with people who had known life before the Reservation Era, before the treaties, who possibly didn't even speak English, nor Chinuk. That just floors me
Two weeks ago I bought a device that will allow me to remove the hard drive from my old 1995 Compaq Presario and transfer much of the used memory of that, Word files mostly, onto my newer Dell XPS 400. I would give most of my worldly possessions to somehow invent a way to make a similar transfer of memory and information from the mind of my great grandfather into my own, just to know and remember what he does. He tells a lot of stories, especially now in his less mobile state. I listen to him as if he were a college history professor, though in this case the lectures are real life experiences. The words that exit his mouth are living history, a link to a past that only a few living souls these days have gotten to know and see.
Hospital staff to a man were greatly impressed that he lived alone at his age. They were even more impressed by his overall health. Because most of his stories are a constant first person narrative of different vignettes, he doesn't always get into general details of day-to-day life in early 20th century Grand Ronde. I can't help but assume he spent much of his life working, probably seven days a week for months at a time. His work was labor, logging, picking moss, fishing and even helping to construct Oregon Highway 101. The constant hard work, in addition to giving up alcohol and smoking earlier in life, presumably do more to account for his health at this age than anything else.
It has only dawned on my over the last year that by the time he was my age, World War I and the Great Depression were afterthoughts. World War II, a period that has always fascinated me, was just getting under way. He would go on to see the Korean War, Vietnam, the rise and disbanding of the Beatles. He would also live through Termination, and still be quite spry at Restoration.
Years ago I wrote a story on him in the "Smoke Signals". Many of the quotes weren't entirely accurate, as he is known for using profanity. I had hoped to use the typical "(expletive)" to capture the mood of some of his quotes, but the swear words ended up being edited out entirely, the words stripped from the sentence entirely. I guess our newsletter just wasn't ready for that back then.
My biggest regret is not doing a lot of this listening ten years ago, when his mind and memory were sharper. Of course, I might not have been able to catch up with him back then, as ten years ago he still had a driver's license. I was just finishing college back then, but on my visits to Grand Ronde once in a while you'd see him heading up Grand Ronde Rd. to the Reservation, probably to pick moss or snatch some firewood. Getting that license revoked was incredible disheartening to him, like declawing a cat, clipping a bird's wings.
But just like three weeks ago, he found a way to get by. Just like he has every day since 1910, when Grand Ronde was a different world, and like his ancestors then, a person just found a way for life to go on.