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GAMBLING
WITH THE FUTURE Drive out from Florence on Highway 126 toward Eugene, and all will seem soft, hushed, peaceful. The Siuslaw River is a wide silvery plain at this point, and mist rises sleepily from the river into the pine-carpeted hills. A tender rain patters against the windshield of your car, and all is softness and blurry edges. It's low tide, and a little girl in a pink jacket stomps across the mud flats beside the river, boots squelching in the muck, pants rolled up above her knees. Behind her comes her watchful father, clamdigging bucket in hand. It's a scene that takes you back in time, one that may make you think, if you're so inclined, "What a great place to raise kids." But before you reach the clamdigging flats, you might notice two warring signs. First, to the right, there's a red sign with big white letters. Blotting out a big chunk of the scenic river behind it, the sign reads, "NO CASINO," then, in smaller letters, "PACT legal fund — CONTRIBUTE NOW." (As we go to press the "NO CASINO" sign at this site has been taken down.) Before you've had the chance to take that in, your car has carried you to the next sign, this time on the left. This one says, "YES CASINO" and then, in medium-sized letters, "Coming Soon." After 10 years of planning — and nearly as many years of controversy — the one thing that no longer seems to be in question is that a casino has indeed arrived in this town of 7,500 inhabitants. A 16,000 sq.ft. tent housing the casino's 268 slot machines and six blackjack tables sprawls behind a fringe of evergreen trees near the highway. The casino is opening for business this week, and it is called the Three Rivers Casino, in honor of the rivers — the Coos, Umpqua and Siuslaw — that bear the names of three local American Indian tribes. For some local residents, the casino is a long-awaited dream come true; for others, it's a nightmare. And concerns about children come up on both sides of the issue. For the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw, who are building the casino, it represents a chance to provide their children — and their children's children — with a future. About a third of the tribes' population is under age 18, says Dr. Lorre Lewis, the tribes' associate director for special programs, and poverty, drug and alcohol abuse and diabetes are all afflictions that plague the tribes. The answers to these problems, say tribal administrators, are prevention, employment opportunities, a sense of pride and accomplishment and, above all, education — the earlier, the better. But the power to get an education, and to choose the kind of education their members receive, has not always been in the hands of the tribes. Since the 1850s — when members of the tribes were marched at gunpoint to an internment camp at Yachats, where half or more of them died of starvation and disease — several other generations have systematically been taken away from their families, tribes and culture. Indian Training Schools were one way this was done. "My grandfather went to Chemawa Indian School in Salem," says Bob Garcia, economic development director for the tribes and a tribal member himself. "They were told how to act, what to value and not value. My grandfather ran away more than once from the school. It was an institution designed to break down the culture." Today tribal members are widely dispersed, another result of the tribes' repeated removal from their land. The tribes currently provide services to members in five Oregon counties, with the greatest number living in Coos County. At the Learning Center run by the Confederated Tribes in Coos Bay, some of the lost knowledge is being restored to the tribes' youngest members. Children who participate in the after-school program also get help with their homework, as well as one-on-one time with the Learning Center teachers — important in families where single parents, and sometimes single grandparents, are taking care of several young children.
In the bright, primary-colored Siuslaw Room at the Learning Center, 7-year-old Eagle, a small boy with big eyes who is part Coos and part Thai, pulls a spelling test out of his Jurassic Park backpack. He's excited to show his after-school program teachers that he's gotten a good grade. Eagle has forgotten the "a" in "because," but has aced a long list of other words: "buck, but, cut, hug, rug, duck, buy …" Glossy-haired, round-cheeked 6-year-old Ariana looks on, her bright, dark eyes at attention. "Even if we just get them used to doing their homework, that's important," says Nancy Caffey, Learning Center coordinator. "Even if we do nothing else but educate the little guys that their futures depend on a quality education…you just need to plant the seed." Caffey has noticed changes in several children in the year that the Learning Center has been operating. In the beginning, one of the girls was mad all the time. "You couldn't touch her or hug her. Now you can." And one of the boys was flunking most of his spelling tests before starting the program; with coaching from his after-school teachers, his scores got much better. "My thought for the Learning Center is that we can really help the young tribal members to meet their dreams," says Lewis. The push to educate younger members of the tribe doesn't stop when they graduate from high school; the tribe is currently paying for more than 20 members to go to college. But funding is tight, and the tribes are not able to pay for as much of their members' education as they would like. "That is definitely one place where the tribe is going to want to put some of the money from the casino: Making education available to more members of the tribe," Lewis continues. "If we did not have the casino coming online, we would be looking at a reduction in services in the next three to five years." Initiatives such as the Learning Center and educational scholarships can help children from the tribes to rise above what, for too many families, has become a vicious cycle of poverty, lack of education and unemployment. Tribal members point out that helping families leave poverty behind is good — not just for the families themselves, but for the community as a whole.
A house with a picket fence in Florence has a flock of fluttering chickens in the yard, and 8-year-old Dylan Dewberry is getting an education of his own. Dylan's mother, Susie Dewberry, is president of a local organization called PACT (People Against a Casino Town), which has twice initiated lawsuits over the Confederated Tribes' right to build and operate a casino in Florence. Like Eagle Roy back at the tribes' Learning Center, Dylan is all big, eager eyes under his bowl-cut brown bangs. He scampers forward on long, coltish legs to show off a helicopter he's made out of Legos. It's quite a leap from Legos to lobbying the governor, but Dylan has made that leap. An e-mail he sent to Gov. Ted Kulongoski last December reads: This is our town. We will not give up until we are Sure the casino is out … 126 is a very dangerous road. The casino will make more cars com. [sic] Susie Dewberry is a former Florence schoolteacher who home-schools her two young sons in their house, which is off North Fork Road — the road that, for a short length of asphalt, will connect Highway 126 to the casino. When Dewberry first got involved in PACT in March, 2003, the organization consisted of a group of women sitting around a table at the library. "Most of the five women who first started PACT were mothers or grandmothers," Dewberry says. Given three and a half days to put together a petition that called to stop the tribes from building the casino, the five women collected 1,300 signatures; Dewberry presented the petition to Gov. Kulongoski with Dylan and her 6-year-old son Andrew in tow. Today the group is both larger and more diverse. "Many people on the steering committee are retired, from all sorts of jobs: from a rocket scientist to a milk truck driver," Dewberry says. Dewberry herself is most concerned about the social repercussions of the casino. Among the potential effects is increased traffic on Highway 126, the highway that most Siuslaw High School sports teams must travel to get to league games. Dewberry also worries that members of the community will become addicted to gambling, and that this will affect their children. "As a teacher you see the hardships of a kid in a normal life, all the other addictions out there," she says. "It's like it cannibalizes people, what the gambling addictions do." As to the tribes' plans to improve education for their children, Dewberry says, "Education is very valuable, but it goes back to whether they'll really be benefiting the tribe and the community. I have a hard time seeing the 6 percent of casino profits that the tribes will eventually be giving back to the community as philanthropy, because of the costs to peoples' lives. I'm sure that there will be some good that comes of it, but, in my mind, there are problems with money that causes harm to other people." The issues that concern PACT members, Dewberry stresses, are as diverse as the organization's members themselves. "People who are fighting this are fighting it for a variety of reasons. It's just how it would change the whole community, the flavor. The having a 24-7 bright-lights, honky-tonk feel, it's just not what people want." Tribal Administrator Francis Somday has his own opinion on this: "Really what they're after is, they don't want to see anything that will increase traffic
and population. They love this town. What they forget is that land was taken from the tribes at gunpoint with a treaty that was never fulfilled. And that is wrong." Members of PACT are also concerned about the effect on local businesses of competing with a casino. "One hundred dollars spent in the casino are one hundred dollars not spent in other businesses," says Dewberry. In a community where 10 percent of families live below the poverty level and where logging — a traditional source of income — now employs few, any adverse impact on local businesses can have people running scared. But Bob Garcia disagrees with what he sees as a pessimistic view of the future. When the casino opens at the end of this month, it will employ 117 to 130 people. Of these jobs, about 80 will require no prior casino experience. This is no small number in a community with a 3.3 percent unemployment rate. "There aren't logging jobs anymore, there aren't mill jobs," says Garcia. "As the casino goes forward, it will first provide employment to local residents, and second contribute to the economic self-sufficiency of the tribes. Right now, every dime the Confederated Tribes has comes from the government." PACT supporters point to casinos located outside of the state as examples of what the future may hold for Florence. Some tribally run casinos' records have been murky, giving few benefits to the communities in which they're located and delivering little aid to the tribes they're meant to serve. But Garcia points to other tribal casinos within Oregon as better examples of what can be expected from the Three Rivers Casino, saying, "In Oregon, their records are crystal clear."
At Florence Café this morning, the waitress is distracted. Big-boned and wholesome as a milkmaid, she plops plates heaped with home fries onto a table, then stalks off toward the fogged-up window at the front of the restaurant. She smoothes the long braid that falls down her back and gazes south down Highway 101, the highway that intersects 126 on its way through Florence. These days, in Florence, hers aren't the only eyes looking southward. Fifty miles down the coast — out of sight but not out of mind — lies a glimpse of what the future could hold. In the town of Coos Bay, at the intersection of the highway and the road leading to the beach, there's a green sign rimmed with gold glitter. This sign announces the Mill Casino, which is owned and operated by the Coquille Indian Tribe. Frantic messages ("MICHAEL WON $8,500!!") roll onto its screen and flash twice before melting into new ones. "AMY WON $3,800!!" The sign's frenzied activity is mirrored inside. At every other slot machine a player perches precariously on a stool and leans, rapt, into the screen. It's 11 o'clock on a Saturday morning and throughout the casino, whether they're playing the slots or standing in line at the Cook Shack or the General Store, people have the jittery, pretend-casual look that says they're spending money they don't have. At the same time, behind the scenes, there are people with jobs: Waiters and managers and janitors and head chefs. This, in Coos County, which has historically been one of the most economically depressed counties in Oregon. The tribally run Coquille Economic Development Corporation, which operates the Mill Casino along with other concerns as diverse as cranberry bogs and high-speed Internet, has become the second-largest employer in the county. And a percentage of the profits from the casino are donated to local causes such as Oregon Food Share, which provides food for poverty-stricken families. Elsewhere in Oregon, the Siletz tribe has used a portion of its casino profits to donate land for a new high school, and the Siletz are also the largest employer in their county.
Back in Florence, the two signs staked at each side of the highway say it all: This is a community at a crossroads, a community divided by its hopes for the future. But concerns for the future of this small town take second place to the rights granted by Oregon law to its citizens. At least for now, the law seems to stand firmly on the side of the Confederated Tribes' right to build a casino on this land; PACT's last lawsuit was thrown out of the Oregon Supreme Court. Still, says PACT's Dewberry, the fight is not over. "We're really confident that once it gets heard, we will win." As the battle wages on, the smallest citizens of these coastal communities are caught in a crossfire not of their own choosing.
"We were just making the kids realize that it was OK to be Indian" before the controversy got so heated, says Siuslaw tribal member Jill Barrett. Barrett's concerns are echoed by others: "Even non-Indian kids are very affected by some of the things they start hearing said," says Somday. "We're experiencing, from younger tribal members, questions like, 'Why are they saying these things? We're friends, we play together.'" At the Learning Center, Eagle has decided he wants to be called "Justin." One teacher speculates that it may be because other kids are teasing him for being Indian. Another little boy doesn't want to be picked up at school in the big maroon Learning Center van because he's been teased about it. Eagle (now Justin) plays a guessing game over the soup that's served as an afternoon snack. "I'm thinking of a person with yellow hair and yellow skin," he says, as he perches on a tiny blue plastic chair. He's talking about Sue Harper, known to the kids as Teacher Sue. The European-American, non-tribal wife of a tribal member, Harper is sitting across from him. Then: "I'm thinking of a person with black hair and brown ears," comes his lively voice. This time he's talking about Ariana, who pulls her miniature chair back from the table, crosses her arms across her chest, and looks around with big, sorrowful eyes. "He called me brown," she says. Eagle hasn't meant to hurt Ariana; he has his own shade of soft brown skin. What's clear is that it's not easy to be a kid caught in the middle of a controversy in these small Oregon coastal communities — and brown skin has become very visible these days. Will the casino be worth it? The tribes hope so, and thoughts of their children's future are very present in their minds. Says Somday: "My hope is that the Three Rivers Casino will provide a sense of pride for a group of people who've been historically mistreated. A sense of accomplishment, and the ability to provide for themselves and for generations to come."
Ideal Location? When it comes to Oregon tribal casinos, location is everything. The inauguration of the Three Rivers Casino will mean a total of nine American Indian casinos in the state. Among these, the most profitable are located at strategic points along well-traveled roads and highways. Oregon's most visited tourist attraction, in fact, is one such casino. Located on state Highway 18, about 60 miles from Portland on the way to the coast, Spirit Mountain Casino is owned by the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde. It attracts 3.5 million visitors per year. The Three Rivers Casino also looks poised to benefit from an ideal location. Situated at the juncture of two of Oregon's busiest highways, the casino is just 65 miles from Eugene via Highway 126, and is easily accessed from points north and south along Highway 101. "It's a great coastal location," says Bob Garcia, the tribes' Economic Development Director "The city of Florence has a lot of interesting attractions, including the dunes and the beach. Our casino will be quite a bit smaller than Spirit Mountain, but hopefully we'll be able to grow in the future." — Jasmine Pittenger |
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