Oh, the games being played in this casinos debate. Never meaning what they say, never saying what they mean. This is because the issue comes down to what no one is talking about. It comes down to race. Yes, race. Yet not a peep of it. Not a breath. Not a hint. In fact, the opponents say it’s not even about morality. It’s only about jobs. Nonsense. It’s about race. The red race. So-called Indian casinos. So-called because it pits them vs. us. Guess who wins that one?

If the debate is carefully phrased to avoid race as the issue it is because race is the issue. When dealing with the rights of native peoples it always is. Period. “Racism ye always have with ye.” It is like the effect of the wind on a tree growing on a hill. You see the tree, stunted and stilted, growth directed by that force, but you do not see the wind. So, too, the force of racism.

“We cannot escape history,” Abraham Lincoln said. We cannot ignore that the long history between the state of Maine, its precursor, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the history of this society deliberately ravaged original peoples. Our organic law is derived directly from those governments. We cannot selectively unbridle ourselves from the full picture of profound abuse. It is not hysteria to call it state-sponsored ethnic cleansing. Scalp bounties on children were real. So were deliberately infected blankets.

So was a policy of war and murder to obtain land. As one native historian observed, “We were not the savages.”

Ancient history? What’s that all got do to with today? Plenty. There is hardly a deed in Maine that cannot be traced right back to this struggle.

The paper trail of murder for a deed underpins our land ownership system today. The struggle against the original peoples continues on almost every level. No tax-free sales. No control over water quality. No control over cigarette sales. No casinos. No future. No hope.

The genocidal impact continues. Maine’s original people are the continuing victims of the white society’s racism. They die here at rates that are shocking. The average Maine Native American has a life expectancy of one-third less than the average Mainer, 54 years vs. 73 years. This disparity is intolerable. To put it into context, consider that in your own life you spend about one-third of it asleep. If you realize that all the time you will have spent is the time lost to them because of death, or realize that if you are reading this and over 50 years old and if you were a Maine Native American, you would be dead. We justified an aggressive pre-emptive war against Iraq because of the terror imposed upon their people. Yet the life expectancy in Iraq is 67 years, 13 years longer than our own original people.

The levels of unemployment, illness, morbidity and mortality all reflect a society devastated by poverty. The numbers in alcohol and drug abuse, obesity, suicide and despair are at levels that would never be tolerated in our own white world. Ominously, while the rates of infant mortality have almost normalized they can increase to a level that is worse than Uganda or Zimbabwe. This here in Maine. Now.

This continued economic oppression is scant whispered. The sanctified disparage the kinds of jobs a casino will create. They need not bring out the morality argument (gambling is bad) because it risks too much response on the hypocrisy scale (i.e. the state sells lottery tickets and alcohol, churches sponsor bingo). The issue is morality. One racist, and so smugly held, it need not be spoken. The other looks at the chance for Maine native people to obtain justice. In the end, if they win, so do we.

When the corrupt and oppressive regime of apartheid fell in South Africa the native people were left indigent and powerless in their townships. They turned to casinos as one of the only avenues available. It has been a mixed success. They did one thing right. They required that a percentage of the monies be used to preserve their indigenous cultural heritage and identity. From those monies have already come a flowering of art projects and a national museum to the history of the native peoples and the brutal system of apartheid. There is something to learn from that.

A vote for the casino does not ensure native peoples will prevail in their struggle. However, one way to become equalized in white society is with cash. When all is said and done this is what all the howling is about.

Thomas J. Connolly is an attorney in Portland.