Brenda Meade

Meade is chair of the Coquille Indian Tribe.

For any Native American tribe, reckoning with history means reckoning with pain, greed and misinformation. Lies about our humanity enabled policies designed to eliminate our culture. Lies about our presence led to termination and dispossession of our homelands and lifeways.

These painful memories cut even more deeply as we honored last week the 35th anniversary of the Coquille Indian Tribe’s restoration and our decades-long fight for dignity and recognition. Although some things have improved for us, ignorance still leads to ongoing attacks on our rights and sovereignty.

Sadly, such attacks can come even from other tribes.

Recently, a handful of tribes in California and Oregon who oppose the Coquille Indian Tribe’s plan to build a new casino in Medford have claimed we are “reservation shopping” and looking to add land to which we are not justified – an unfair and inaccurate accusation. These tribes apparently fear that our proposed casino would disrupt their entrenched monopoly on gaming in the region.

But with this accusation, they are creating a reckless and baseless precedent for political attacks against hundreds of tribes like ours who have worked to legally rebuild our reservations while carefully following layers of laws and regulations. And it hinders our ability to fund essential services like health care and education through gaming.

For many Americans, the word “reservation” suggests a large and contiguous geographic area, with a border in which all land falls under tribal jurisdiction. But that’s often not the case. For the Coquille – and most tribes in Oregon – restoration of our federal recognition did not come with a set aside reservation. Instead, Congress identified a specific area where land could be taken into trust and become part of our reservation.

In 1989, Congress ended its shameful termination of my tribe by passing the Coquille Restoration Act. The act established a five-county service area for us to build a reservation. This area, which includes Coos, Curry, Douglas, Jackson, and Lane counties, was not chosen arbitrarily. Congress studied where our people lived, traded and worked, both historically and during termination. It learned that its own policies had caused us to disperse across the landscape. Much of our development has taken place in the 6,512-acre area already in trust in Coos County, but – under Congress’s direction – we own and operate businesses, support our citizens, and fund community organizations in all five counties, and have since our restoration.

In 2012, we followed this congressional road map and applied to take land into trust in Medford– part of our service area – for a new on-reservation casino. Medford had the second highest concentration of Coquille citizens at our restoration, and we have worked with community leaders in the decades since to bring new businesses to the city and support organizations that provide health care, housing and other services. A new casino – while small – would allow us to expand those services and meet the growing needs of our citizens as well as their families, neighbors and communities.

But Medford also falls along Oregon’s I-5 corridor, where gaming has been dominated by wealthier California and Oregon tribes. They have spent the last decade claiming our proposal would set a new precedent for “off reservation” gaming and have taken advantage of widespread ignorance about tribal land to make that a core point in a massive lobbying campaign.

To those who follow Native American affairs – or simply read the Coquille Restoration Act– that is, of course, nonsensical. But backed by millions of dollars in lobbying and advertising, this misinformation has spread, prompting calls on Congress to prohibit supposed “reservation shopping.”

I’d like to ask my fellow tribal leaders – and anyone who supports tribal rights – if throwing tribal sovereignty under the bus is worth maintaining a monopoly on gaming. When a sister tribe sought to open a casino just three miles from our own in Coos Bay, we also had concerns about competition but knew that supporting tribal rights was both more important and more consistent with what our ancestors taught and believed. In the years since, we have both thrived. I would be happy to speak with any tribal leader on how to balance concerns about competition in a way that lifts us all while protecting Oregon’s economy and environment.

No tribe should exploit public ignorance about reservations to score a political win. We are looking at a future in which any tribal restoration will be met with years of litigation and millions of dollars wasted on lobbying. That’s not good for tribes and it’s not good for Oregon.