A taste of native wit

Howard Hamilton

I CAME across an interesting newspaper article a few years ago that serves to demonstrate the effect of pragmatic planning and responsible management in the use of gaming as an engine for economic growth.

The history of the native American people mirrors our own in a number of ways. To cut a long story short, they, like the majority of our people are dispossessed of their land. Once the sole owners of the vast continent now called America, they were relegated to the backwaters of America to live on reservations.

It is against this background that I find a study of the Pojoaque Pueblo in New Mexico to be of interest.

Like us the Pojoaque people suffered as slaves to the Spanish, who first conquered them, a struggle which gave way to oppression by American settlers and the U.S. government.

Their pueblo was destroyed twice and doggedly they rebuilt, but the ravages of history and the oppression it brought has left the tribe with a population that numbers only in the low hundreds: 239 members in 1999 to be exact.

However, this small tribe has positioned itself as the second largest employer in northern New Mexico.

How did they do it? They ran a casino. The Cities of Gold Casino, with 600 employees and an $8 million annual payroll is the engine of their economy. Tribal government and a dozen or so tribally owned businesses provide another 300 jobs. An additional 75 jobs are being provided by investment in a 30-unit apartment building, a medical office complex and a 25,000-square-foot supermarket.

The pueblo has enough money to run its government, invest in new businesses, pay for extras for its people -- such as a health club, college scholarships and new housing -- and launch a vigorous program to rebuild Tewa arts and culture. We should be so lucky!

All of this flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which holds that ventures such as this will not only lead to crime, social rot and decline, but will also erode the local culture. Similar claims were made by the doomsayers when Jamaica first began to take serious note of tourism's potential. We were warned that tourism was too fragile, fickle and unreliable and, apart from all that, it would certainly erode our culture. Today, were it not for jobs on the tourist circuit, many Jamaican entertainers would have to live abroad to survive.

Pojoaque tribal chiefs say no one could have imagined such prosperity 20 or 30 years ago. Until the beginning of the 1990s, New Mexico's Indian tribes offered almost no employment opportunities, giving tribal members the choice of commuting into a city to work or staying at home and living off unemployment benefits.

For our part, we send our workers to cut cane for people who consider it demeaning to do the job themselves, while denying ourselves the opportunity of enriching the treasury and retraining our people to make the transition to running a service producing economy.

Twelve of New Mexico's 22 tribes have gone the gambling route. And the list of economic development projects in the works at New Mexico pueblos and reservations -- some backed directly by casino profits, others financed with casino-backed loans and some financed by non-gaming tribes -- is growing.

One New Mexican pueblo, the Santa Ana Pueblo has attracted Hyatt hotels as a partner in a 350-room resort hotel, 18-hole golf course and 30,000-square-foot convention centre.

Clarion hotels is pursuing a similar partnership with San Juan Pueblo. Construction has begun on a 100-room hotel and 60,000-square-foot casino.

It is no secret that the only new hotel constructed in Jamaica in recent years, the Ritz Carlton is experiencing real difficulties and that even our all-inclusives are experiencing a levelling off of profits. Indeed, what seems to account for the continued viability of those hotels is the low cost of labour in Jamaica compared to other destinations in the region.

Of the 10 tribes that have not chosen gambling as part of their economic future, only the Navajo have taken the choice to voters. Others have opted out because their pueblos are too isolated to support profitable casinos or because they don't want the lights of casinos and the tourists they attract to encroach on their communities, which have historically been close-knit and private.

A survey by the New Mexico Indian Tourism Association of New Mexico of tribes found concerns about balancing privacy with the attention of tourists was a concern, although they were warming to the tourism as a clean industry that they could control.

According to Lorentino Lalio, director of the Indian Tourism Division of the New Mexico Department of Tourism through their gaming experience, tribes have realised that tourism is a natural economic asset,.

Elsewhere in that state Santa Ana and San Juan pueblos are leading the way in developing high-end resort communities tied to their casinos. All this while preserving their culture. It seems that at Pojoaque, where culture was lost during the years the pueblo was deserted, casino profits have helped to jump start tribal traditions. The huge adobe Poeh Center, which travellers see as they pass the pueblo, is re-teaching adobe-building skills and will serve as a centre for Tewa pottery-making and other arts. Tribal dances are also being revived.

As sculptor George Rivera said, "You don't have to be poor to have your culture."

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