Jackpot Blood: A Nick Herald Genealogical Mystery (9 page)

“That’s right. UL Lafayette . . . I’ll never get used to that. We’re awful proud of Stu.” As if grading him, the chief eyed the obviously embarrassed Stu. “Thank you, son.”

When the young man had gone, the chief continued. “He’ll come back to the tribe with new skills this casino paid for. Because there’s something for him to come back to. Today, gambling is our buffalo; it
provides for us in many ways. And now it’s the Katogoula’s turn to join us.”

“Chief Claude says Indian gaming accounts for almost ten percent of gaming revenue in the U.S.,” Tommy said. “We want to get in on the party before someone yanks away the punchbowl.”

“Your casino’s going to put us over ten percent,” said the chief with complete conviction. “Since the great victory we won in 1988, with the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, the white man has tried to take even our gambling away from us. Just another treaty to break.” Chief Claude sipped his coffee, shaking his head as if in disappointment at a friend who had double-crossed him once too often.

He continued: “Most states are at war with us over reservation gambling. They talk about ‘states rights’ and ‘devolution.’” He gave a wise old grin. “Greed, that’s what it is. Now some in Congress are scheming to ambush us, kill the spirit of the IGRA. And the Supreme Court decision against suing states that don’t make compacts with us hurt, too. See, they all want to get at our tax exemption somehow, they want those tax dollars. Well, I tell them, every dollar we make is taxed 100%—by us! We’re a sovereign nation and decide how to help our people with our money.”

Federal law stipulated that tribal income earned from reservation sources could not be taxed; individual Indians paid income tax, like all Americans, but most reservation-derived income was exempted, with the exception of per-capita distributions of casino profits, a big gray area that cloaked constant experimentation—critics called it questionable accounting—by tribes partnered with non-Indian casino companies.

Chief Claude was one of the first American Indians to realize the potential of the tribal-tax-exemption loophole when combined with the landmark 1988 legislation, which required states to negotiate the issue of reservation gambling. In succeeding years, he led his tribe from small-time weekend bingo to big-league casino profits.

“My genealogist friend here,” Chief Claude said, “is one of our great weapons against the envy of the white man. He helps us in our rebirth. We call Nick the Midwife-of-Yesterday Man.”

Nick had never been overly fond of the title. But in spite of the slight revulsion he felt at being the midwife of anything—the sight of blood made him queasy—as a former teacher of literature he admired the chief ’s evocative style.

Tommy had lapsed into a reverie over his coffee cup. He shifted in his chair and sat up straighter. “Chief Claude—”

“‘Chief ’ implies power that’s hereditary or oligarchic,” the older man interrupted. Nick knew him to be unflappable, sometimes irritatingly dogmatic and didactic, but good natured in even the hottest debate. “These days we’re democratic. I’m elected, and any adult can be. Your tribe ought to be set up the same way, like a business with a board of directors accountable to the stakeholders. People are supposed to call me ‘chairman,’ but nobody does.”

Nick said, “It’s a sign of respect, Chief.”

“Respect, my foot!” the chief exclaimed. “You ought to sit in at one of our council meetings.”

The three men laughed.

“As far as your business analogy goes,” Nick said, “the titles ‘chairman’ and ‘CEO’ have become synonymous with ‘crook’ in my mind. Every time I look at my IRA statement, I feel less like a stakeholder and more like a ‘shameholder’! You might want to stick with ‘chief,’ after all.”

This amiable interlude seemed to help Tommy vocalize what was on his mind.

“It’s all sort of overwhelming,” he said. “I mean, I’ve worked in a lumber mill all my life, and now I’m supposed to be, well, the chairman. How do I get started? I’m not really sure we
are
a tribe, now that the government says we’re one. Some of my people are having second
thoughts. They’re saying recognition isn’t a good thing. Especially since my brother was”—he looked down at his work-toughened hands—“since Carl died. I’ve had some requests to get our congressmen to reverse the recognition bill. Most of us didn’t even know about the old pending application.”

Chief Claude grinned at Nick. “We Louisiana Indians are a superstitious bunch. You mix the old Indian ways with Catholicism, see what you get? A mighty jumpy critter, that’s for sure. They had a meeting, Nick. It was a slim margin to go on with establishing a proper tribe and start looking into building a casino.”

“Irton and Grace Dusong broke the tie,” said Tommy.

“That close, was it? I remember good old Irton from Korea. Nick, we used one of our ancient languages,
Yama
—the Mobilian Jargon, you whites call it. Used it to talk in code over the radio, like the Navaho Marine Code Talkers of World War II. Except we never got as good a press as they did. Maybe you can write up one of your articles on us.” A twinkle in his eyes, he turned to Tommy. “How’d you vote, son?”

“For, of course,” Tommy stated, slightly offended. “But my wife, she voted against. Brianne’s kind of a headstrong girl, worries about what gambling will teach our kids about life.”

“They should learn from all of this,” Chief Claude said, “that fighting a bear needs a trick or two.”

Nick hoped Tommy was only momentarily dispirited; he felt yet another handsome paycheck slipping away. “I’ve heard of tribes being terminated by the government—the Miami of Indiana, the Menominee of Wisconsin, dozens of tribes in the fifties and sixties.”

“The Menominee got it back, though,” Chief Claude interjected.

“Right. Nineteen seventy-three, I believe it was,” Nick confirmed, silently admiring the chief ’s depth of knowledge about Indian matters. “But I’ve never heard of a tribe refusing recognition. Does recognition
have to mean a casino? If it were my tribe, I’d take the BIA assistance money and run, and worry about the casino issue later.”

“You have good people on your side,” the chief said to Tommy. “It will all fall into place. Some of us Chitiko-Tiloasha were afraid, too, at first. Now, as far as being an Indian, if you think you are, that’s a big first step. The Census Bureau says that anyone who asserts they’re an Indian, is an Indian. But to get into a tribe, or to form one, you got to prove it to the BIA. Y’all got lucky; that limited research your daddy commissioned didn’t tip the scale. No, I believe somebody pulled strings up in Washington.”

“Do you know who?” asked Tommy.

“No, not even with all my connections. These politicians can hide inside their legislation or get out front when it suits ’em. You’ll find out, I guarantee,” answered the chief. “He’ll hit you up for a big contribution to his reelection campaign, his party, and his favorite think tank. Could be a her, for that matter. That’s how they do. Anyway, I wanted to be in on this first meeting to help you and Nick get acquainted, since I recommended him. He’s proven the lineages of many of our tribe members. Once he gets going, you won’t need me anymore. But I’ll be here, all the same.”

“I guess I’d better ask you, then, Nick,” Tommy said. “What do I do first?”

Nick said, “The classic approach is to start with the known, Tommy, your own family, and follow the line back. Once you’ve done that, you move on to the others who’ve remained in the traditional tribal group. One important thing is to begin getting the testimony of the oldest tribe members, to learn what they remember.”

“Six families I know of go pretty far back,” Tommy said. “They all hid out in the forest during the Removals. I can start with the elders of those. The ones that are left.”

“Meanwhile, I’ll tackle the written records,” Nick said. “I’d like to review the documents from the previous effort to get recognized.”

Tommy cleared his throat. “I did have them. They’re . . . missing. We think somebody got into a closet out in my garage. Stole some other stuff, too.”

“I’ll check with the BIA acknowledgment branch,” Nick said, making a note. “Maybe they can send me copies of what’s on file, though they always tell me they’re swamped by recognition cases and legislative mandates. You’ve had a rough time of it, lately. Does the theft of the records have anything to do with the death of your brother?”

“I don’t know,” Tommy said. “Some say that all that important stuff going missing is another sign recognition is going to cause us more grief than it’s worth.” He pushed his cold coffee away. “Look, if you don’t mind, let’s stick to the genealogy. How long will it take? I mean for all the Cutpine folks to be enrolled. We have thirty-five families, twenty-three with men who lost their jobs when the sawmill closed. When the BIA payments start, I want everybody to get their share as soon as possible. Maybe that’ll change some minds about recognition. We all got doctors’ bills to pay, house notes, car notes . . . this is real tough on us.”

Tommy had recently been informed, by way of an onslaught of paperwork, that the federal government provided assistance payments to needy Indians. And, it turned out, some of Tchekalaya Forest was tribal land still held in trust by the United States, a bizarre arrangement lately discovered to be riddled by bureaucratic mismanagement and political manipulation dating back to the late nineteenth century. As a result of the recent recognition and the subsequent discovery of a dusty packet of apparently authentic documentation, the Katogoula were in line to receive accumulated logging and natural-gas revenues. No one was sure yet how much was forthcoming. And the divvying up of the proceeds all depended on who was in, and who was out, of the tribe.

“You got to get off on the right foot with a system, son,” the chief advised. “Today the government allows you a lot of freedom to say who’s Katogoula and who’s not. But even so, you’re going to find that some of those families won’t qualify. Either they should belong to another tribe, or they’re just plain wrong about having any Indian heritage. I know from experience, it’s a painful thing. . . .You need a Katogoula system, not anybody else’s, so there’s no room for favors and abuse—or anger. Nick will help you with the blood-quantum technicalities.”

“What’s the deal with that?” asked Tommy, frustration evident in his voice. “I been studying up on it, but . . . well, it’s confusing.”

“Simply put, blood quantum is the percentage of Indian ancestry in an individual,” Nick said. “It’s just a mathematical result. But political and emotional elements are even more important and need to be factored into the equation. Requirements vary from tribe to tribe; by and large, it’s their call.”

“25 CFR Part 83,” Chief Claude said. “That’s the code of federal regulations dealing with tribal acknowledgment. The BIA works with this authority and uses seven mandatory criteria to decide what teams are in the league. But—and this is an important ‘but’—the tribes pick the players.”

“Good analogy, Chief,” Nick observed. “The Ute Mountain Ute of Colorado require a blood quantum of five-eighths; but the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma requires descent from any person named on the 1906 Dawes Commission roll. Today, with all the casino development, blood quantum is a hot topic.”

“And a hornets’ nest,” Tommy said, “from what I been reading on the Internet.”

“Exactly,” Nick agreed. “The controversy is causing the Indian community to turn on itself. Some tribes hate the idea as the government’s patient, sneaky plan for ultimate Indian assimilation. Other tribes use
it as bureaucratically approved racism to keep rolls small and gambling payments large.”

“This man speaks his mind,” Chief Claude commented with a chuckle. “No offense taken.”

“None intended,” Nick said. “Blood quantum for federal tribal recognition—which has already happened in the Katogoula’s case—is different from blood-quantum enrollment issues at the tribal level. The BIA uses blood quantum to establish the ‘purity’ of some base tribal roll or petitioning group. Personally, I think you’re spinning your wheels if you go to the BIA these days for initial recognition with a tribal blood quantum of less than one fourth. But the old one-quarter rule for individual enrollment in an established tribe seems to have fallen by the wayside. There have been successful court challenges and some tribes have unilaterally lowered blood-quantum requirements; some have done away with it altogether. The BIA still has tremendous authority on what tribes get recognized, and it still has the power of the CDIB—”

“The what?” Tommy asked.

“Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood” Nick said. “But now tribes seem to have the upper hand in deciding who can be a member.”

“Won’t be so easy for us Katogoula,” Tommy said, “deciding on membership rules and blood quantum and all. Nobody ever took a census of our tribe, that I ever heard of. The tribal leaders refused to cooperate with the white officials, didn’t trust them on anything. I want every Katogoula to benefit, no matter what his CDIB might say.”

Chief Claude spoke now: “The BIA, over the years, has created a monster of crazy regulations. People don’t fit in boxes on a piece of paper; we aren’t horses you buy or sell based on our bloodlines. Sometimes the confusion looks like bad faith or worse, but in general these BIA folks mean well. Lot of times, they’re Indians, like us. I want to tell you a story, Tommy. You know of the Jena Choctaw?”

The chief was referring to another central Louisiana tribe, which had fought a long battle for recognition.

“Sort of,” Tommy said. “I think they got recognition not long ago, didn’t they?”

Chief Claude nodded. “In 1901 the government told the Jena Choctaw they maybe could have land in Oklahoma, Indian Territory. A group went on up there to meet with a federal commission, but they came back two years later without any agreement. Then the government up and tells them, yes, they do qualify for land, no doubt about it; but they got to go back to Oklahoma. They said forget it and stayed. In the seventies and eighties, they got their act together and finally made a formal application for recognition, and it was approved in ’95. How you like that story? Almost a hundred years jumping through the government’s hoops. This blood quantum rule was another sneak attack by the white man: he knew that scattering us would weaken us, that intermarriage with whites and blacks and whatnot would one day make the Indian blood just a drop in a big lake.”