CAGNY Vice Chairperson Distant Eagle included some extended remarks regarding the governance of the Mohawk people and the related issue of casino gambling.  Subsequent to the meeting, he summarized those remarks in an e-mail:

Empire Resorts is suffering huge financial losses. It lost $8 million in the first six months of 2007. The company is therefore desperate for revenue, and is bearing down on all potential income sources. 

It cannot at this time provide the $600 million in capital needed to build the proposed Mohawk casino at Monticello. It needs the St. Regis Tribal Council to secure and provide capital. However, ostensibly sovereign governments cannot put up collateral and cannot be held liable for default, so no lenders will ever agree to provide the advance. So Empire pushed the SRTC to call for a referendum among Akwesasne Mohawk voters on its 1995 constitution.

There are three governments at Akwesasne. The SRTC is a puppet government that was created by the New York State Legislature in 1892 with powers equivalent to those of a county government. This entity is not recognized as legitimate by the vast majority of Akwesasne Mohawks, an overwhelming majority of whom ignore its called elections. Many contend that this entity is invalid under the Rotinoshon:ni (Iroquois) Constitution, the Gaianekgo:wa, the Great Law of Peace, which is the parent of the U.S. Constitution, and which was ratified on 31 August 1142. Most Mohawks recognize rather the legitimacy of the Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs, which exists under this Great Law of Peace. (There is a third entity, another puppet government which acts on the whim of the Canadian government on the Canadian side of the reservation.) 

The SRTC is amenable to casino development in the United States; the MNCC, under Gaianekgo:wa, cannot support it, and the Rotinoshon:ni Grand Council (the Iroquois equivalent to a federal government) has clearly and specifically stated its opposition to all casino development.

The SRTC’s 1995 constitution would effectively make the SRTC a legal corporation for purposes of securing loans by putting up collateral and accepting liability in the case of default. Translation: this would sacrifice the sovereignty of the Mohawk people for the sake of the chimæra of casino revenues. If the Monticello casino were to fail, Empire wouldn’t bear a penny of liability; the Mohawk people would. 

The SRTC has done a terrible job at its existing casino on the Akwesasne Reservation: it has never been profitable, and has done little to provide jobs or help the nation; therefore, it is unlikely to gain enough trust from lenders to secure a loan in any case.

After the voters rejected the 1995 constitution, the SRTC ironically asked the U.S. federal courts to impose it unilaterally on the nation: translation, it sought to usurp power at the cost of sovereignty, by asking the courts of a foreign country to authorize its legitimacy. In this case, Justice David Peebles ruled that the BIA had erred procedurally in determining that the SRTC was the proper negotiating partner and representative government of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation, and that the BIA must reconsider whether it recognized the right government. The BIA ducked this decision by declaring that the issue must be solved internally, by the Akwesasne Mohawks. 

This led to a new referendum being held on 18 August, largely at the behest of Empire Resorts. In this referendum, 308 votes were cast out of approximately 8,000 enrolled members of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation. Of those votes, 214 were “no” and 91 were “yes”. As a result, at this time the possibility of a Mohawk casino in the Catskills seems considerably less.

However, this does not mean the battle is over. The Stockbridge-Munsee is a far more serious threat: it is a self-financed proposal, and the tribe would operate the casino itself, without a “partner” like Empire Resorts. The tribe is doing a full environmental review, unlike SRTC/Empire. Its Achilles’ heel is that its claim to being a New York state tribe is tenuous, and, since it is founded on the Oneida giving them shelter and protection during the Trail of Tears, and Ray Halbritter and his associates, currently in power over the Oneida Nation, are unlikely to advance the cause of a potential casino competitor. Also worth noting are that the casino would be built on a former auto graveyard which I have visited several times, and which surely has a considerable amount of toxins in the soil, despite the claims by the Stockbridge-Munsee that the tribe has cleaned the property up. The tribe also proposes to use a self-contained diesel power system, with considerable air pollution potential, and an enclosed septic system; should either of these leak fuel or waste, the extremely ecologically fragile Neversink River basin is not far from the site.