Siletz News II
April 21,1993
V°l- 5, no. 1
All Modesty Aside
A Proposition
With Indian gambling on the downhill slope,
the question becomes what will be the next get rich
quick scheme in Indian Country. The hazardous/
nuclear waste storage business, of course, has been
made to look lucrative to U.S. Tribes. Then again, this
is pretty old news, too.
But both nuclear waste storage (Yucca Moun
tain, NV tops the list of proposed permanent nuclear
dumping grounds) and high-stakes gambling have as
sociations with Nevada. If our wish is to predict the
next wave of “economic development” for Indian
Country, maybe we ought to consider what else the
State of Nevada is famous for.
I might be mistaken, but I believe that the only
state that allows prostitution under its laws is Nevada.
Tribes (with federal urging, of course) could break
Nevada’s current monopoly by legalizing prostitution
themselves.
Like nuclear-waste storage and casino-style
gaming, brothels would be a sure money-maker for
U.S. Indian tribes. We're talking about the United
States, afterall, where the sale of sex is a thriving and
growing industry.
The question is when will tribal governments
deal themselves into the millions of U.S. dollars spent
each year on w hat’s been called Europe’s oldest profes
sion.
My legally-minded friends tell me that there is
only one hitch to this plan. The U.S. Supreme Court has
ruled that state criminal statutes overrule tribal laws and
practices to the contrary. In short, the Feds say that
Indian tribes can’t operate brothels in states that call
prostitution a felony.
Land trades between tribes may be a way around
this impasse, however. For instance, the Siletz Tribal
Council— recently blocked by the governor of Oregon
from building a gaming center in the state capitol of
Salem— could contact the Ft. McDermitt Paiute Tribe
in Nevada whose Tribal Council is planning to open a
nuclear waste storage facility. The one hitch at Ft.
McDermitt is a federal law that says only sites outside
the State of Nevada can be considered as potential
temporary dumps for nuclear waste. The Ft. McDer
mitt Tribe has a small amount of land inside the
continued on page 2, "Proposition"
Editorial
J u s t F lu s h
The wave of interest in Indian high-stakes
gambling, like all ways to make quick and easy money,
will soon play itself out. The question at Siletz is
whether the Tribe will be able to cash in any chips
before the wave is history.
More than just money, of course, is at work.
Anyone on the Siletz Tribal Council, for instance, will
tell you that Siletz is championing the cause of Western
Oregon tribes who have precious little reservation
lands suitbale for gaming centers and other forms of
“economic development.” How the other Western
Oregon Tribes see us is another matter. A clear
majority of the Tribes whose cause Siletz is champion
ing are also opposed to the Siletz plan to build a gaming
center in Salem. Oh, well, this appears to be a detail that
will not detour us from our pursuit of Justice (or is that
spelled “Just Us?” ).
On a still deeper (and more hopeful) level, the
Siletz Tribal Council’s pursuit of gaming in Salem can
be seen clearly to oppose the psychology behind most
official actions of federal and state bodies: the psychol
ogy of elimination. Elimination is a funny word. It
means both “to kill” and “to defecate.”
Attempts to “eliminate” the Indian sum up most
U.S. federal and state relations to Indian tribes. When
it proved impossible to kill outright specific Indian
peoples, white governments have historically turned
toward “eliminating” these Indian nations outside the
area of white supremacist rule. Witness the relocation
of the Cherokee or any other program that sought to
confine Indian people behind certain boundaries.
This is what the US Government has meant by
“reservations.” They’re notso much places for Indians
to live as they are places to contain what white society
imagined they were eliminating: Indians. To be more
direct, as whites imagine their collective selves and
their governments to be a “body” (and they do this quite
a bit— witness such phrases as “body politic” and
“corporation,” a word that comes from the Latin corpus
which means “body”), so they figure the Indian into the
equation as shit.
Now, Siletz is asking a U.S. District Court to go
against this psychology and history of elimination.
Siletz is asking that Indian tribes be able to acquire
continued on page 2, "Flush"