And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: (My note: Perhaps they may begin with remedying the water situation created when the wells dug for this casino broke into an ancient salt water reservoir. Over 70 families at this time have no water available that has not been polluted by leaching from this reservoir laced with nuclear by products and heavy metals.) --------------------------------- From: "George(s) Lessard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Organization: http://bounce.to/george_lessard To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 07:34:04 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: With New Casino, Mohawks Hope to Reverse Their Fortunes April 12, 1999 With New Casino, Mohawks Hope to Reverse Their Fortunes By PAUL ZIELBAUER NYT http://search.nytimes.com/partners/iib/services/bin/fastweb?getdoc+iib- site+iib-site+88+1+wAAA+Canada ST. REGIS MOHAWK RESERVATION, N.Y., April 11 -- In the Mohawk language, there is a word for "greetings" -- sekon -- and a word for "money" -- ohwista -- but there is no word for what tribal leaders see in the crimson-red Akwesasne Mohawk Casino, now open for business. And what they see is profit. Yet as hundreds of visitors turned off wind-whipped Route 37 Sunday and into the casino, only the second licensed casino to open in New York State, profit and ohwista and the good they could bring were uppermost in the minds of just about everyone who lives here. "We've been waiting for 10 years for this to happen," declared one Mohawk Chief, Paul Thompson, rapping his knuckles on one of the casino's 62 green- topped blackjack tables, fully stocked with both Canadian and American gambling chips. Casino gambling, the only economic engine that has ever worked on any American Indian reservation, is about to become a way of life for the St. Regis Mohawks. But here on New York's border with Canada, where people drive to Ottawa and Montreal and fly to Albany and New York City, it is a gamble borne of desperation. Few communities in America need more than the St. Regis Reservation, with a population of 10,000, does. The reservation, wedged between rural Franklin and St. Lawrence Counties, is a grim patchwork of weeds, liquor and convenience stores and gas stations, with no industry to employ its people, no high schools to teach its children and no great future to offer its few college graduates. "We have no other alternative," Chief Hilda E. Smoke, who once opposed the idea of a casino on her ancestral land, said while strolling through the $30 million casino on Saturday. "We need a way to get out of poverty. We need 20 miles of water lines, double that of sewer lines. From that money, we could build our schools." At Akwesasne, the name the Mohawks have given to their territory, gambling was once regarded as a road to despair. The emergence of private, unregulated gambling operations in the 1980's bitterly divided the tribal leadership. They made a few operators rich, but the wealth did not spread. In 1990, two men were killed in a fight over gambling after the Federal Government closed the parlors. oday, all that seems like ancient history. The Akwesasne Mohawk Casino, towering over acres of black ash and poplar trees still waiting for the green kiss of spring, will be a unifying and liberating force, not a divisive and deadly one, Mohawk elders said. Virtually overnight, the casino, with its 1,000 workers, became a larger employer than the General Motors powertrain plant in Massena, five miles to the west, and about equally as large as the sprawling Reynolds aluminum plant a few miles farther west along the St. Lawrence River. About half of the casino workers are Mohawks, and that ratio is expected to rise over time. In addition, there is pride of ownership, even if it is, for now, shared with an outside management company. Most of the $30 million needed to build the casino came from Ivan Kaufman, a Long Island investor who drew casin o managers from around the country and set up the management company to run the casino on a five-year contract. After five years, the tribe will have the option of assuming full ownership. Kaufman said he expected the casino to reap $100 million annually. More than $40 million of that will be profit, casino operators say. And 75 percent of the profit will go to the tribe, Ms. Smoke said. And that, she and other Mohawk leaders hope, will pay for much more than water and sewer mains. They envision guaranteed health care for every tribal member, a youth center, a nursing home and, if the money really flows, a Mohawk high school, built by Mohawk hands for Mohawk children. Now, teen- agers must leave the reservation to attend high school. "It's just unbelievable," said Thompson, marveling at the casino's purple- accented Art Deco interior, where ceramic-tiled columns and old-fashioned neon lettering suggest the Roaring Twenties. "It's really going to turn the tide of unemployment," which grips about half of the reservation's adult population, he said. The casino has already become a lodestone to many young Mohawks who fled the crushing poverty of the reservation years ago. Jason Cree, 24, came back in January, along with his wife and brother, after three years working at Turning Stone, a casino built by the Oneida Indian Nation near Syracuse. "I've always wanted to come home," said Cree, the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino's food and beverage manager, who sees the casino as a family business. His wife is a chef in the kitchen, his brother manages the cage where custom ers exchange chips for cash, and his mother is a casino auditor. "I've always wanted to do something for our people," he said. "And I think this will do it." As talk turned to his 8-month-old son, Skyler, he added, "I wanted him back home so he can learn his language." Despite the enormous riches casinos have heaped upon other Indian tribes -- the New York Oneidas and the Mashantucket Pequot tribe in Connecticut each reap hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from their casinos eac h year -- a windfall of cash for the St. Regis Mohawks is not a sure thing. Their casino is smaller and more remote than the others. For now, the Akwesasne casino must earn its riches solely from its 90 gambling tables, which include blackjack, craps and roulette. But its long-term success depend s upon the 1,100 video lottery terminals, the low-maintenance, dollar-gobbling electronic slot machines that generally account for about 80 percent of any casino's profits. The video lottery terminals have not been installed yet. Their arrival depends on negotiations with the State Racing and Wagering Board, which by law can tax a percentage of those profits. Perhaps the biggest challenge the casino faces, however, is attracting customers. To make millions, casino managers acknowledge, they must lure more than 4,000 people a day to blighted Hogansburg, best known for its centr al location between the rural towns of Massena and Malone. So everyone with a stake in the casino is counting on one particular type of gambler to flock here. "We're banking on the Canadians," Kaufman conceded at the casino's black-tie opening gala on Saturday. With Ottawa to the northwest and Montreal to the northeast, Hogansburg and the new casino form the lower tip of a triangle from which the casino is expected to draw 4,000 customers daily, said Richard F. Duda, the casino' s marketing manager. To better compete with casinos in Ottawa and Montreal, the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino will operate 24 hours a day every day and is equipped to accept American and Canadian currencies. One hour after opening at 10 A.M. Sunday, that strategy seemed to be working, as tourists, most of them Canadians, crammed many of the blackjack tables. "The casino in Montreal makes this look not so nice," said Dan, a Ca nadian gambler who refused to give his last name. "There's four floors, you can't get a seat." But he said he believed that the Akwesasne casino would make money, too. "There will be a big percentage of Montreal people in here this summer, because they'll get frustrated" by the crowds, he said. The link between American Indians and casinos began with the Federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, which was designed to generate wealth on impoverished Indian reservations by allowing tribes to operate for-profit games of chance. And, in many cases, the law has worked. After opening in 1992, Foxwoods, the Connecticut casino run by the Pequots, takes in more than $1 billion annually, making the tribe wealthy. Foxwoods is the most profitable casino in the nation. Turning Stone, with its 385-room hotel and convention center, has also become a pillar of financial stability for the Oneidas, though that casino is not as large and does not make the wild profits of Foxwoods. Some questions about the propriety of making the casino the fundament of the community linger. But they will probably fade if gambling proves to be the ladder that helps the St. Regis Mohawks out of their well of poverty. "It is 100 percent good? No," said Chief Ed Smoke after cutting the ribbon during Saturday night's gala, "because nothing is 100 percent. But it's a 180- degree turnaround from 10 years ago." If and when the money comes, Smoke said, he and the other tribal elders will have another ancient word on their minds. That word is "niawen," which is Mohawk for "thank you." :-) Message Ends; Signature Begins; George(s) Lessard (-: Community Media Arts, Management & Mentoring A brief Survey, contact info, subscriptions, public keyword searchable archives and CAUTIONS, Disclaimers, NOTES TO EDITORS & (c) information may be found @ http://members.tripod.com/~media002/disclaimer.htm - 30 - &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
