“Fee-to-trust is about returning lost land to the tribe and returning it to the local control of the one government that was in place long before the present county government or any nearby city government existed.”
“Fee-to-trust is local control.”
“The community plan should not apply to the Chumash, just as it does not apply to the incorporated cities of Buellton and Solvang.” These are the words of the Chumash Casino Tribe (Santa Ynez Band) that came after Preservation of Los Olivos (POLO) hired attorney Barry Cappello to research their proposed “Cooperative Agreement.”
Attorney Cappello’s letter to the Board of Supervisors states: “The Board of Supervisors (“board”) would be violating the law and corrupting the planning process if it signed the Agreement.” (To see the Cappello letter, go to www.polosyv.org)
The Chumash Casino tribe’s response was to say they are the first government and that the Community Plan should not apply to them. If the politicians go along with this assertion, then every property that the Chumash Casino tribe owns, (Old Federicos, Old Royal Scandinavian, gas stations, etc), and every property that they purchase in the future, will be outside any county jurisdiction. Future additions and development could be anything. Surrounding properties and value would be greatly impacted.
It is important to remember that Tribal Chairman Vincent Armenta can make any assertions that he wants – including entitlement to 7,000 square miles of Chumash aboriginal territory (2008 Testimony to House Committee on Natural Resources), and the need for more land for housing for their growing tribe. They are now claiming 1300 descendants – the same tactic other casino tribes across the United States have used to demand entitlement for more land under their control.
However, the local, state and federal government have to go along with it to make it happen. They have to agree to further dismantlement of the United States Constitution and State sovereignty, and disregard of the U.S. Supreme Court. Unfortunately for the citizens of Santa Barbara County, our local representatives seem to be turning a blind eye to the Constitution and are more concerned with representing the 140 members of the Chumash Casino tribe instead of the thousands of affected citizens of Santa Barbara County.
Recently when the Chumash Casino tribe asked to expand their liquor license, approximately 100 citizens filed written protests. We watched supervisors Gray, Carbajal and Lavagnino ignore those citizens, and the county sheriff, who stated he did not have the money for law enforcement to address the hundreds of episodes of reported crime at the Chumash Casino and Resort (the casino’s security may not report all crime) let alone the anticipated increases in crime that would come with expansion of alcohol sales.
Without any discussion, these three board members voted for expansion of sales of alcohol. People who have viewed the meeting on POLO’s website are dumfounded by the vote to expand alcohol sales. To see it for yourself, go to www.polosyv.org.
Now the casino tribe is claiming to be a super-sovereign with continued rights of taxpayer subsidy yet beyond the taxpayers, and local and state governments because they are the first government. Bottom line: There was no one Chumash government as they claim. We must continue to write, call and fax every supervisor, and Congressman Elton Gallegly, and tell them to uphold their sworn duties and object to this assertion and stop further separatism efforts by this entity.
Let’s remind our elected representatives that in 2005, in response to the Chumash Casino tribe’s application to take 5.68 acres into federal trust, Gov. Schwarzenegger’s office protested that application stating the following:
“While there are numerous discrepancies on details, historical accounts of the Chumash agree that prior to European contact the Chumash did not constitute a single political entity but rather were an amalgam of peoples speaking roughly six to eight different but related languages in contiguous linguistic territories.” (page 4) “Within each linguistic territory there were villages typically of 15 to 50 dwellings that constituted separate and independent political entities each controlled by a chieftain (though some chieftain at various times may have controlled more than one village.) (page 4) “Though the United States has subsequently compensated individual Indians for lost lands in several acts … the purpose of those enactments was not to recognize sovereign title by any government or title by any individual Indians. Instead, their purpose was to foreclose possible claims of aboriginal title altogether.” (page 5) “Simply put, in pre-contact times there was no Santa Ynez Band of Mission Indians or any single independent political entity constituting a collection of the many different villages in the Santa Ynez Valley.” (page 6)
“The Santa Ynez Band’s territory is the territory assigned to it by the federal government because of the United States’ policy to provide land for homeless Indians whose survival depended on the provision of such land.” (page 6)
The Board of Supervisors are well aware of this 2005 letter from the Office of the Governor. They cited it in a Feb. 16, 2006, letter to the Secretary of the Interior.
However, many politicians appear to have memory deficits so we must continue to remind them.
In addition to the governor’s letter, in 2002, the Chumash Casino tribe’s own attorney, Brenda L.Tomaras, noted that all the lineal descendants who had the right to live on the land were dead, stating: “In 1903, the Santa Ynes Land and Improvement Company deeded certain parcels of land to the Secretary of the Interior of the United States for the benefit of five families of the Santa Ynes Band of Mission Indians … This deed contained a right of reverter which stated that in the event of the death of all of the five families and their lineal descendants, the property would revert to the Santa Ynes Land and Improvement Company or its successors … Both the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Tribe have verified that there are no living lineal descendants of the five original families.”
(To see the letter, go to www.polosyv.org.)
To donate to POLO’s legal defense fund for past and future legal research and action, and to view referenced documents, including the YouTube link to the supervisors’ meeting on alcohol expansion, go to www.polosyv.org. Elected official contact information is also available on the POLO website, in addition to the Santa Ynez Valley Journal newspaper and website.
Preservation of Los Olivos, POLO, is a grass-roots citizen group.