The Legislature’s basic policy on gambling — that it’s bad, except when the state’s running the games — is frustrating, baffling and incomprehensible. The same can be said for the Legislature’s basic attitude toward the state’s Indian tribes — that they deserve a shot at economic development except when it has anything to do with gambling. Events of this past legislative session make it clear the time for resolution is long overdue.

The Passamaquoddy Tribe’s effort to erect a bingo hall on land it owns in Albany Township was the issue. Due to a technical point on dates in a 1992 amendment to the Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement Act, the state’s Supreme Court ruled early this year that the land in question was not tribal territory, the legal designation necessary for tribal gaming activities. Rep. Donald Soctomah, the tribe’s representative, turned in a bill to correct the error. It was reasonable legislation that deserved support.

The House passed the bill. The Senate, however, shot it down April 8. This surprising reversal of what had always been portrayed as a correction to an 8-year-old legislative glitch was credited to widespread senatorial pique over a suggestion that surfaced a few days earlier that the Passamaquoddys might initiate a licensing program for fishing on its lakes and streams. Although it turned out later that the licensing program was not nearly as imminent or encompassing as it first seemed, the damage was done.

Recent newspaper commentary by Rep. Donna Loring, the tribal representative for the Penobscot Nation, contains an excerpt from her legislative diary, in which she berates several senators, by name, for failing to support the amendment. Rep. Loring is unsparing in her anger over the vote, calling it “a verbally abusive attack” waged against her and Rep. Soctomah and “yet another Indian massacre,” in which “white men win and Indians lose again.” She also gives significant attention to injustices waged against Maine’s Indians in past years, calling native peoples those “who have been slandered, cheated, abused and murdered for our resources and our lands.”

A bit vitriolic, perhaps, but understandable. The Passamaquoddy Tribe clearly was mislead into believing the amendment was a mere technicality. Even if the fishing-license situation had been as fleshed out, definite and offensive as it initially seemed, it had absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand, the legal designation of tribal territory, and had absolutely no business coloring the debate in any way.

There clearly is a gaping chasm in relations between Maine’s original inhabitants and its majority newcomers. With her angry response, Rep. Loring now may be accused of widening it, of making consensus and compromise that much harder to attain. From the Senate debate, though, it seems there never was much to lose. And Rep. Loring’s central point is entirely valid: The Legislature is hysterical over the prospect of Indian gaming coming to Maine, but does nothing to wean itself from gambling’s revenues.