QUOTE(4thgenFolsomite @ Dec 15 2008, 06:59 AM)
About 160 years ago, there was a band of Maidu Nissinan Indians living in Folsom. They moved during the year between their primary housing pretty close to where historic Folsom and the Salmon Falls area, where they caught and dried eels for themselves and for trade. They lived here for literally thousands of years without a CostCo! This was their home and they left their mark on it; mortar holes and petroglyphs on granite outcrops. Then after gold was discovered, they were quickly marginalized. It became harder to hunt and gather foods because the miners scared the deer and screwed up the rivers, plus they drove them off any water sources because that's where they were mining. They were also shot at on a regular basis and viewed as animals. The State of California gave a reward for a while for an Indian's scalp when hostilities with Indians from Oregon became "troublesome." The motherlode Indians had been pretty widely disturbed by the time the Federal government tried to apply some Bureau of Indian Affair's sort of organization. Unlike other states had significantly intact Indian bands, northern California had smaller, more dessimated groups of survivors hanging on. So they formed "rancherias," the smaller version of a reservation. One of the rancheries was up in Auburn, on that hilltop as you climb up Folsom-Auburn Road into town and can look back and see Folsom Lake. They relocated the surviving Indians from Folsom up to live on that rocky, waterless land, along with other local Maidu. And they did the best they could. Over the years, different Bureau of Indian Affairs policies came and went, like the Indian Allotment Act, etc., where Indians could give up their claims to rancheria land and get some cash or more up the hill a little farther. No matter what, they all had pretty desperately poor lives, often troubled by alcoholism and discrimination. Lots of kids were forced to distant Indian boarding schools and never came back, so families were also broken up. So things weren't going so well for the people who had lived here. Until some smart lawyer somewhere realized that they were recognized by the federal government as soveriegn (indepedent) nations, just like Canada or Mexico, and that their lands were foreign land that they could do whatever they wanted on. Including set up casinos (like Nevada!). So they did. Long story short, the same Indians who used to live, sleep, work, get hitched, have babies, and die for thousands of years in Folsom until they were violently forced off and subjected to live in grinding poverty for 150 years, are now the proud owners of the Thunder Valley Casino!!
and, that, Camay, is why they can have a casino and you can't!
You don't have to explain to me how badly the Indians had it and how we stole their land and all that. My daughter minored in Native American studies in college and I have read a lot of her books.
That is not why I can not own and run a
casino. It is the state of California, the house and senate that says I can't. If we passed a law saying other individuals than Native Americans could own and run a
casino we then could.
In the mean time you can all flock to their
casinos and I will make my nice trip to Lake Tahoe.
A VETERAN
Whether active duty, retired, national guard or reserve - is someone who, at one point in their life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America" for an amount "up to and including their life".
That is HONOR, and there are way too many people in this country who no longer understand it.
-Author unknown-
