Staying in the game

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Special Report Part Two

Flipping through a well-worn copy of an anthropological study of his native tribe published in 1940, Penobscot Nation Chief Barry Dana finally found what he was looking for.

“Here we go,” he said, turning to a description of a once-popular Indian game of chance involving intricately carved bone dice and a flat, wooden dish. “I guess this is where it all started.”

Maine voters will decide the future of Indian gaming in November when they vote whether to allow the Penobscot Nation and the Passamaquoddy Tribe to open a $650 million casino if a quarter of the revenue from an estimated 4,000 slot machines goes to the state. Sanford is the tribes’ leading choice for a location.

Although not the case with the complex dish game described by anthropologist Frank Speck in “Penobscot Man,” Dana has become well-versed in the intricacies of casino gambling in recent months, but admittedly not by choice.

Despite early skepticism about the project – and a continuing personal aversion to casino gambling – the 44-year-old former elementary school teacher said he became convinced a southern Maine casino could help lift his tribe out of poverty after witnessing vast improvements in the living conditions at reservations with successful casinos.

“When you go from tar-paper shacks with the wind blowing through them to homes with double-pane windows, you’re doing something right,” said Dana, already pondering possible projects for casino revenues including additional housing and improvements to the tribe’s health center, the basement of which habitually is flooded.

Today the Penobscots’ 315-acre Indian Island reservation is by no means overrun with tar-paper shacks.

But poverty persists on the island, a maze of one-way streets lined with an eclectic mix of government-subsidized housing built after the tribe gained federal recognition in the late 1970s and older homes dating as far back as the 19th century.

Today in those newer homes, as well as those in the Old Village at the foot of the bridge connecting the island to Old Town, nearly 25 percent of the people live in poverty and 13 percent of the working-age population are unemployed. Both figures are more than

double state averages.

Tribal leaders are concerned about those numbers, which were brought to life on a recent tour of the island.

“I’ve given him two more weeks to sell that,” said Mike Bear, the tribe’s second-in-command, as he slowly drove past a particularly unkempt house, eyeing a ramshackle truck for sale for $150 on the front lawn. “It’s been there for two years.”

Bingo, buses and bucks

It’s been more than two decades since the Penobscots and the Passamaquoddys signed off on the 1980 Maine Indian Claims Settlement, splitting $81.5 million and agreeing to abide by most state laws.

Most of the money, about $54 million, was earmarked to purchase land in remote areas of the state. The rest is held in a federal trust account, which currently pays individual tribal members between $250 and $400 a year in quarterly installments.

The 130,000 acres purchased by the Penobscots has helped the tribe stay afloat by supplying about $170,000 each year in stumpage fees, about one-quarter of the general fund, according to Dan Nelson, the Penobscots’ financial director.

But while affording the tribes land, the settlement prevented them from operating the sort of casinos that have pumped millions of dollars into the coffers of other federally recognized tribes that are covered under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988.

The prospect of an added $25 million each year from the proposed southern Maine casino put an ever-so-slight glimmer in Nelson’s eye during an interview in his tiny office in the tribe’s community building.

“It would make a lot of things possible,” he said.

The tribe’s general fund is even more dependent – to the tune of $200,000 in gross revenue each year – on Penobscot High Stakes Bingo, the oldest Indian bingo in the country, a banner proudly declares inside the Sockalexis Bingo Palace.

On a recent Sunday, about 1,500 people took their seats in lines of long tables inside the tribe’s former hockey rink where the scoreboard hanging from the ceiling now tallies bingo numbers instead of goals.

The Penobscots run the high stakes bingo game seven times a year. At this recent game, about 75 percent of the players had come on 28 buses, some from as far away as New Jersey, filling up local hotels.

All were hoping to shout a certain five-letter word.

“Bingo!” one middle-aged woman finally squealed, holding up her card and giving high fives to several women at her table – and neighboring tables for that matter – after filling in the last square needed to complete the triangular pattern and win the $1,199 prize.

Watching the victory from a skybox window high above the floor stood Miles Francis, a Penobscot who has managed the tribe’s bingo operation for nearly 30 years. He also has advised officials at some of the country’s largest casinos, including southeastern Connecticut’s Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun.

Francis, a lifelong resident of Indian Island, said he saw a certain irony in the Maine settlement forbidding the tribe to open a casino while other tribes, including Connecticut’s Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan, earn millions from their gaming operations.

“We’re certainly no less entitled,” said Francis, who managed Foxwoods, now a $1.1 billion operation, in its early years under a contract between the Pequots and the Penobscots. “We deserve to be self-sufficient as much as any tribe.”

‘Stabbed in the back’

One hundred miles east at the Passamaquoddy Tribe’s reservation at Pleasant Point, tribal elder Maynard Stanley was equally perplexed how his tribe could be denied what he considers its sovereign right, especially considering the tribe’s allegiances to the U.S. government since the American Revolution.

“When will the leadership in this country appreciate what people here have done and what they still do,” Stanley said, sitting in front of his coffee table, piled high with papers, ashtrays, incense and videotapes. “It’s time for payback.”

On the outside, Stanley’s small home looks like many others at Pleasant Point, the state’s poorest reservation, where the per capita income of $9,096 is less than half the statewide average and 38 percent of the population lives in poverty.

Between drags of his du Maurier cigarette, the 56-year-old said revenues from a casino in southern Maine could be used for local economic development to help combat some of the tribe’s – and Washington County’s – most persistent problems: drug addiction, unemployment and the exodus of young people from the area.

“There’s a hopelessness here,” said Stanley, staring straight ahead at the closed curtains, a small crack in which let a sliver of sunlight into his otherwise dimly lit house. “But I’m hopeful.”

Stanley may be hopeful, but like some others in his tribe, he also feels betrayed by Maine Gov. John Baldacci, an outspoken casino opponent and arguably the project’s most formidable political enemy.

“One day, he’s out here having one of those spaghetti suppers and he’s talking about working in partnership,” Stanley said, referencing Baldacci’s signature pasta-plentiful gatherings during his gubernatorial campaign and those he waged previously as Maine’s 2nd District congressman. “I felt I got stabbed in the back, plainly.”

Stanley’s sentiments echo those of some Penobscot leaders who, during the gubernatorial campaign, sensed some willingness on Baldacci’s part to compromise.

“His only concern was that it not go in a place that didn’t want it,” Dana said, summarizing a conversation he said tribal leaders had with Baldacci only a few days before the then-gubernatorial candidate denounced the idea.

Baldacci, in a recent telephone interview, called that recollection “inaccurate” and denied any show of support for a casino.

“I’ve never given anybody any daylight on this,” said Baldacci, who prefers his plan to create Pine Tree zones that would offer businesses tax incentives to locate in economically depressed areas of the state including Penobscot and Washington counties. “[The tribes and I] have just come to an agreement that we’re going to disagree about this issue.”

Within the tribes themselves, there are varying levels of dissension, with some members morally opposed to gambling and others wary of the deal because it doesn’t specify how much money each tribal member will receive.

“They promise you the world, but that don’t mean nothing,” said former Penobscot Nation Governor Francis Mitchell. “Tribal government might get something out of it, but the lowly people of this tribe live hand to mouth … and there’s nothing in there that guarantees them anything.”

While Mitchell said he personally doesn’t care for a casino, he suggested Maine voters would be foolish to reject the potentially lucrative plan, predicted to generate $100 million a year for the state.

“They’re going to cut off their nose to spite their face,” he said, predicting the measure’s defeat in November.

Historic tensions

Tense relations between the state and the tribes are nothing new, and in the years since the settlement, tribal sovereignty has become a central issue.

On that note, the Maine Indian State Tribal Commission, a nine-member panel created by the 1980 act, is considering changes to the settlement that would lessen state regulation over the tribes in some areas.

The casino referendum itself would be a change to the settlement act, the terms of which, the act says, only can be amended by an agreement between the state and the tribes. That’s why there needs to be a statewide vote.

The requirement for the tribes’ endorsement has casino opponents concerned because it would prevent voters from reversing the law before its expiration in 20 years without the tribes’ consent.

“How is it fair to ask the voters of Maine to give the tribes an exclusive right to own a casino, but take away the right of voters to change their minds?” asked Casinos No! spokesman Dennis Bailey.

The referendum’s passage would give the Penobscots and the Passamaquoddys the right to operate one casino for 20 years, unless extended. It does not prohibit the Legislature from giving the right to operate commercial casinos to others.

Tribal members say that the state already has its share of gambling, earning tens of millions of dollars each year from the Maine State Lottery. In the last 25 years the lottery has put $500 million in state coffers.

“I don’t understand that they have it but they don’t want the Indians to have it,” said Penobscot Ruth Jewell, 58, of the reluctance of Augusta lawmakers to consider the plan. “It’s like they don’t want the Indians in the same shoes they’re wearing.”

Fairness aside, tribal leaders say the casino simply could provide the tribes with enough revenue to become self-reliant instead of wards of the state and federal governments.

“The question really is, ‘How far away are we from being a 100 percent dependent tribe?'” said Passamaquoddy tribal Rep. Fred Moore III, sitting with other tribal leaders at a breakfast meeting called to discuss the casino plan. “The answer is, right now, not far at all.”

Tomorrow: The wonder of Foxwoods