Dear Editor,
My comments regarding an Indian casino providing economic help
to Indians means a lot to the Indian people. I am from Calaveras
County, but not with the people who are trying to start the casino.
The sad part about all this gaming is the real truth is not known
to the non-native people
– that these millions of dollars don’t help all Indian
people.
Dear Editor,
My comments regarding an Indian casino providing economic help to Indians means a lot to the Indian people. I am from Calaveras County, but not with the people who are trying to start the casino. The sad part about all this gaming is the real truth is not known to the non-native people – that these millions of dollars don’t help all Indian people.
Example: the Indian groups that have their federal status receive gaming opportunities and the Indian groups that are struggling to get their federal status back from the time it was taken away from their groups do not receive any type of help from the gaming operation.
What I am trying to say, is, when your own Indian family knows that you are Indian people but they will not help you in any way because the government doesn’t acknowledge you at the time as Indian people, they also treat us as if we are not Indians by waiting for the government to say: “Ok, now you can give some money to that group because us non-native people have acknowledged these people as Indians.”
The sadness of this, is, when you are cousins to these Indian groups but not from their band but they still know you are Indian and won’t lift a finger to help their own family.
Help build homes for us, help on house insurance, help send our Indian kids to college, help us get our status back because we are Indians and we don’t have that type of money to challenge Congress or the Secretary of the Interior in Washington D.C.
Also, what gets me as a Miwuk Indian woman is when there are members receiving funds from a tribe that has no connection to that tribe and the Bureau of Indian Affairs allows this and so does the Secretary of the Interior.
Our tribe feels if the people can better them selves that is a wonderful thing, but when the information is out there to the public as all Indians are receiving help, this is untrue.
Our Tribe, the Calaveras Band Of Mi-Wuk Indians are Miwuk people from our grandfather (Frank Fisher) who received our Indian Land from the president in the1920’s when we were relocated from his old village area (Heina). This means roundhouse grounds and we now and have been living on the land we still reside on in West Point California since the 1920s, but we don’t have our name on the Federal Status List (West Point Rancheria) and that was left off from the BIA in the mid-1970s.
We are traditional Indians and have given some of our Indian Land to have our traditional ceremonial grounds for our customary traditional practices and we have needed help re-doing our Roundhouse (Church) for the last two years. We can’t even get one of the casino’s to help us with funds or, most important, the people coming to help us with their hands. Our tribe wishes the best for all Indian people and we soon will have our name on the federal List.
Debra Lynn Grimes, Calaveras Band Of Mi-Wuk Indians
