MALICE IN WONDERLAND
by Annette Stark
A Chumash tribe development in the bucolic Santa Ynez
Valley has pitted crunchy celebrities vs. Native Americans,
with nasty racial overtones. Visions of things to come?
Our first clue that something is strange in Solvang: We can’t get a
ride to the casino. The local taxi driver assures us he’s at least an
hour away, even though you can walk from one end of this village to
the other in five minutes. And, according to the Chumash Casino
dispatcher, the free shuttle that used to take tourists from the
cutesy themed Danish motels and candy stores on Mission Drive to the Casino three
miles down the road isn’t available anymore. Twice the shuttle man says, “Call back
in 15 minutes.” The third time, he flat-out refuses. “Sorry, we don’t do that
anymore.”
Unless you’re driving, dinner is a problem in this small town. The flower-lined,
“historical” streets fold up early. By 9 p.m., it’s either eat the salted licorice from
Ingeborg’s Chocolates or change this driver’s mind.
“I’ve never heard of a casino that doesn’t want customers,” I emphasize.
We decide to drive. It’s Saturday night, the casino is packed. Gamblers line up to use
the slot machines. If you leave your machine, maybe to get change for a twenty,
good luck getting it back. Another strange thing: We can’t get a drink. Unlike nearly
every casino we’ve been to in the free world, this place doesn’t serve alcohol.
In fact, the only place to get a drink is upstairs in the Willows restaurant. You can
order a drink at the bar, but only if you also order appetizers. And both the
restaurant and bar stop serving promptly at 11 p.m. Two security guards are poised
at the door, in the event some lawless diner might wander out with her glass of
wine.
“You’re serious about this?” I ask the waiter. “Eleven?”
He shrugs. “Problems between the tribe and this town.”
Solvang is a squat but pretty little place, located 30 miles north of Santa Barbara in
the rustic Santa Ynez Valley. Known for its quasi-Danish heritage (half fabricated,
half real), wine-tasting rooms, homemade pastries and sweets, Solvang is also
famous for its proximity to local celebrities. David Crosby, Bo Derek, John Forsythe,
and Doc Severinson are among the full time millionaire residents with lavish ranches
somewhere just beyond this road. Reagan’s ranch is out here. So is Michael
Jackson’s Neverland.
The following morning, another clue, this time in a letter to the editor in the July
2004 edition of the Santa Ynez Valley Journal. Signed by Ron Ely, the letter is titled
“No Peace In the Valley.”
“A shameful story is playing out in the Santa Ynez Valley. A real journalist would
have had it months ago. A dedicated daily newspaper would have put the story on
page one and told the truth to its readers … . The Chumash people are being glared
at and openly confronted in public. Their children are being shunned and harassed in
school. It sounds ugly and mean-spirited and it is happening on a daily basis …
because Fess Parker has agreed to sell Santa Ynez Valley property to the tribe … .”
Daniel Boone’s Farm
People on both sides of this debate agree about one thing: Santa Barbara hotel
developer and winery owner Fess Parker didn’t say much last March about his
negotiations with the Santa Ynez band of Chumash Indians. It was news to everyone
that Parker was in talks with the tribe to co-develop his 745 acres of agriculturally
zoned land into homes for tribe members and possibly a resort. Even then, the feud
started with an apparent misunderstanding. There isn’t going to be any new casino.
The TV Western star who became famous for his roles as Davy Crockett and Daniel
Boone in the 1950s and ’60s has been in clashes with the community before,
especially during the building of his other two properties. But negotiations over this
new development haven’t even been finalized and the valley is up in arms.
Most of the information that Santa Ynez residents could glean about the proposed
development was off a map that was supposedly stolen from Parker’s office and
ended up on display by the coffee stirrers at the Santa Ynez Roasted Bean. According
to longtime Parker friend Ron Ely, the map wasn’t even correct.
“Fess consulted with a land-use guy who drew the map,” recalls Ely when I contact
him by phone. “When the guy heard ‘Chumash’ he wrote down casino instead of
hotel. Fess had this up in his office.”
Ely became famous on TV in the ’60s as Tarzan. He began writing mystery books in
the early ’90s and his novels Night Shadows and East Beach are centered on the
character Jake Sands. Right now, Ely is also serving as spokesperson for Parker, his
longtime friend for 35 years.
Ely continues: “Someone came in to Fess’s office and stole that map. And they put it
up in a local coffeehouse. Fess went over there and took the map off the wall.”
But by then, photos of the map had circulated everywhere and a lot of angry people
were poised to fight a casino the tribe had no intention of building.
“We proposed with Fess Parker to build houses for our tribal members. We have 153
tribal members and right now not every member has a home,” says Francis Snyder,
spokesperson for the Chumash tribe. “We also proposed a five-star resort and golf
course on the Parker property. Our opponents keep saying we’re going to build
another casino, but we have a casino one mile away.”
They couldn’t build another, even if they wanted to. Their existing casino already has
2,000 slot machines, the maximum number allowed by California law. The Chumash
are not one of the tribes that have signed with the governor, seeking more machines
in exchange for more fees paid to the state.
“We were not involved in circulating that map,” insists Santa Ynez Valley Concerned
Citizens executive director and cofounder C.J. Jackson. Concerned Citizens was
formed in 1997 and counts real estate developers as well as David Crosby, Bo Derek,
John Forsythe, Doc Severinson, and Elton John lyricist Bernie Taupin among its
approximately 400 members. The purpose of the group, according to Jackson, is to
“deal with many issues.” So far, the only issues these citizens are concerned with
apply to their Chumash neighbors.
“The first issue for us was in 1997 with a property purchased across the street [from
the casino]. It was being used as a parking lot,” Jackson recalls. “So the group went
to the county and got the county to encourage the tribe to not utilize this property in
this fashion.”
With the Parker proposal, one big issue is that the community has been left out of
the loop. “There has been no discussion or sharing. Their development process goes
quickly, primarily because the community isn’t even aware of how it works. With this
project, they have said, look, we have no plan. Suddenly they have plans and the
process moves very rapidly to a result.”
That, as Jackson sees it, is just one big problem. Not all.
“The intensification of what they are proposing is beyond the valley’s capacity to
accommodate,” Jackson argues. “Five hundred homes would not only be the most
intensive development in this valley ever, it would also be one of the largest in the
county. Between zero and five hundred is probably something that could take place.”
First off, their numbers are wrong, says Chumash Chairman Vincent Armenta,
referring to numerous press reports that he says speculated on the number of homes
without getting confirmation from tribal leaders. “The only thing we know for sure is
houses, but we have no idea how many. All numbers out there are incorrect.”
Also, regarding local and state land-use laws, community approval isn’t included in
the tribal process. Their concerns are federal. To acquire the Parker farmland, the
tribe must petition the federal government, and go through much more stringent
federal guidelines than that which would be imposed by a community. If the deal
should go through, the Chumash would then have to put the land in a federal trust.
In other words, should they be successful at whatever they’re planning, the
Concerned Citizens would be looking at a development that would be completely
legal under federal law. And they would not be the first people in California to live
next to a perfectly legal development that they didn’t want.
The tribe speculates that Jackson simply doesn’t want the competition. The Jackson
family’s gorgeous Alisal Ranch in Solvang is not unlike the one Chumash could build
(at least as it’s been described). The Ranch features a golf course, homes
surrounding the course, a hotel, and miles of equestrian trails.
A difference, Jackson says, is in the size. “Yes, yes, we have something of a
comparable nature,” he admits. “There are 64 homes. It’s vastly smaller.”
To Snyder, this is just more rhetoric. “He doesn’t know what we’re building. We’re in
talks, but we haven’t even purchased the property or formalized it, so how can he
comment on the size?”
The Hot Zone
Casino or not, on April 7, the town had a meeting. According to the Concerned
Citizens, 1,000 people attended. Many of the celebrities associated with the cause
were also there, and, of course, there was press.
Project manager for the Santa Ynez Community Plan, Steven Peterson, was not there
and he says he’s glad he missed it. “But I heard it was a real humdinger.”
The keynote speaker was Cheryl Schmit, founder of Stand Up for California, a group
that advises California communities about how to fight or control the onslaught of
Indian gaming. The question was, with no other casino in the Chumash’s immediate
future, why had they brought someone to fight Indian gaming?
Schmit’s presence was particularly offensive to the Chumash, and further fueled their
mounting charges that some Concerned Citizens had racist leanings. “She’s antitribal casino,” says Snyder. “She says she’s not anti-tribal casino, just anti-gaming.
She’s anti-Native American. We all know her.”
Also speaking were two Palm Springs residents, who live in homes on Indian land.
They spoke about how their rent was raised by their Native American landlords.
Peterson says officials here are under a lot of pressure to keep the area from
changing. Many people moved to the area to escape L.A. “The Chumash thing scares
people because it’s a sovereign tribe and the community feels it has no control or
ability to have their concerns addressed,” says Peterson. “A normal project affords a
lot of public input; the project is going to be held to a high standard and it may not
even get approved. The question is where does it end when the tribe has a money
machine like the casino?”
But Peterson admits that the area has real issues with affordable housing. At one
meeting he attended, the suggestion was “we need to plan for apartment rentals,
affordable housing so you can have a place where the firemen, a teacher, and
normal people can live. There was a storm of opposition to it. We heard a storm of
scary elitist arguments about the kind of people who might be living there. So I felt
the group that was concerned about affordable housing was in the minority.”
“This is the most volatile community I ever worked for as a planner,” he concludes. *
Synder was in Albuquerque when Chairman Armenta called from his car. He was
driving over to the meeting. “I said, ‘Don’t. It’s a lynch mob in there,’” she says. “He
drove around, and couldn’t find a parking space. And while he was driving, someone
came out and threw a water bottle at his truck.”
Funky Town
The problems between the tribe and other Santa Ynez citizens go back a long time
before Fess decided to do something with that farm. Nearly everybody agrees about
that, too. But locals who insist they want the tribe to succeed are quick to point out
that their problems with Chumash leaders didn’t start until after the casino went up
and they began to feel the negative environmental impacts, such as traffic and law
enforcement issues.
It’s the environment, they say. Nothing more. “We gave them info on exterior
lighting for the casino,” says town environmentalist Carol Herrera of Women’s
Environmental Watch (WeWatch). WeWatch has a program to protect the dark sky
by advising local businesses and ranchers about how to shine their lights. She says
the casino set very good exterior lighting.
“But it’s difficult to keep everything the way it is. The intrusion is already here. This
community wants slow growth and is concerned with preserving the pristine nature
of this valley,” Herrera says.
“Before the casino was built, from the first time we said we wanted to build it, we
had problems,” recalls Snyder. She points to the casino’s truncated liquor license as
just one indication of the community’s bias.
There are some 62 wineries (many with wine-tasting rooms) and 729 liquor licenses
in Santa Ynez, none as restrictive as the Chumash license. At the casino, customers
must order food with their alcohol, and all bar service is terminated at 11 p.m. It
took the Chumash a year-and-a-half to even get that much.
“We had so many protests, including from David Crosby,” Snyder recalls. “Now this
is the same David Crosby that is now applying for a new liver. Maybe because he
can’t drink, he doesn’t want anyone else to drink. David Crosby has said that we’re a
bunch of thugs and that we have prostitution and drugs.” (Crosby’s publicist did not
respond to CityBeat’s request for an interview.)
Addressing the Chumash’s claims that there are racists among the members of the
Concerned Citizens, C.J. Jackson answers honestly there’s no real way to tell. “There
are 23,000 people that call this valley home. I can’t speak for all, just my leadership,
and there is no racial component. Does that mean there isn’t a wacko in the
woodwork? We have tried consistently not to allow that to pervade into our dialogue,
and I believe we’ve done a good job of it. That doesn’t mean that somebody hasn’t
written them a nasty letter.”
It’s not their agenda, Jackson says, insisting the group plans to stick with their
environmental impact, land-use message. “I’m heartsick if it [racism] is taking place,
and we would prefer that it would be outed and dealt with.”
In March 2004, Chumash leaders called for the resignation of Santa Barbara County
Supervisor Gail Marshall for “racial slurs” she made in the book New Capitalists: Law,
Politics, and Identity Surrounding Casino Gaming on Native American Land, by UCSB
Professor Eve Darian-Smith.
Marshall’s quotes appeared all over Native American websites and are repeated here:
“… these are not real sophisticated people, and I want to say that as nicely as I can
… prior to my involvement as an activist in the community, I wasn’t very
sophisticated on community impacts, and what things meant, what the long-term
reaction was, but I’m much more educated and I do understand. But they are not
only uneducated to the actions and reactions to the actions, but they don’t want to
be educated. You know, they’ve all got brand new trucks and lots of money; they
don’t have to be. They’re thumbing their nose at everybody.”
“They have, you know, taken up a really beautiful legacy of basketry and [tomol]
building, and really interesting lifestyles and sort of erased it with one fell swoop. I’m
not sure how it’s going to affect their generations to come, but I have a feeling it’s
going to be very negative. Because when you get $300,000 a year for sitting on the
couch watching a Lakers game, not working, you model that lifestyle to the next
generations. I’m not sure what it’s going to be like. They’ll have the money but I
wonder what else.”
Obviously, remarks such as these belong to a different time in America, to an ugly
long-ago place where public officials didn’t care who they offended along the way. So
when Chairman Armenta compared Marshall’s quotes to those of former Alabama
segregationist George Wallace, it resounded with many, especially in the press. In
“Flawed Apology Shows Marshall Doesn’t Get It,” from the Santa Maria Times, Steve
Corbett writes that even Marshall’s subsequent apology to the tribe “dripped with
conceit.”
“It hurts the elders to see this, because they say nothing has changed. We’ve heard
people here say we’re owned by the Saudis,” Snyder says. “And then someone said
he wished the Indians would behave more like the Mexicans. This kind of stuff goes
on all the time. They say we have beautiful cars and we’ve made too much money.
Now, I never hear anyone say that about Bill Gates.”
Stephen King once wrote that small towns are like mean high schools. The valley got
mean. By April, stop signs all over town were plastered with stickers that said “Fess.”
Residents recall seeing Parker get booed on the street or in places like the Longhorn.
It became difficult for Parker and the Chumash to go out anywhere, Snyder says.
“The Chief has a listed phone number. He got hate mail and calls. His wife didn’t
even go to the hairdresser for a while. The remarks were just too hurtful.”
People staged Fess Parker wine dumping ceremonies, and many local stores stopped
selling his wines completely.
“The little Santa Ynez country store informed Fess that they weren’t selling his
wines,” Ely laughs. “They fail to understand that Fess doesn’t depend on wine sales
in the valley. So that’s futile. But they are demonstrating their alliance with people
who are against the tribes and Fess.”
At local landmark hangout, Mattie’s Tavern, where the Lamborghinis are parked next
to the pickup trucks, the boycott of Fess Parker wines has been in effect since April.
Mattie’s has been around since 1886, but owner Matt Nichols bought it with his
brother two-and-a-half years ago. Nichols says he isn’t against the casino, just the
development, and though he hasn’t witnessed Parker being booed in town he’s
certainly heard about it. “It’s never happened here,” Nichols says, admitting that
Parker hasn’t been around in a while.
June was worse. In June, songwriter Bernie Taupin took out a full-page ad in the
Santa Barbara News-Press, screaming: “Concerning Fess Parker’s Obscene Dream of
Environmental Assault.”
When Ely read it, he was appalled. “I just don’t get it, the tone of the viciousness.
Why? This stuff is pathetic.”
This angry ad is signed by Taupin, David and Jan Crosby, Bo Derek, Doc and Emily
Severinson, the usual bunch. Its key point is that the combination of Mr. Parker and
Tribal Chairman Armenta is “a match made in development hell, a treaty designed to
line their pockets and damn the land.” More interesting is that Taupin is describing a
place he says has already been destroyed; “the vista that once was,” he says, before
Highway 154 became a “clogged crawl of thirsty gamblers.” They even pull out the
Indians to do their talking, quoting Crazy Horse as saying: “One does not sell the
earth the people walk upon.” Well, somebody once sold it to Taupin and all the other
rich celebrities. You can’t help thinking, if it’s already turned to crap up there, what is
Taupin trying to save?
This Land Is My Land
Understanding that they might have a long, very public federal fight ahead, the
Concerned Citizens has raised $300,000, hired a law firm in Washington, a lobbyist,
and retained PR firm Sugerman Communication Group in L.A. “On the sovereignty,
the tribe and Parker have indicated that they will be pursing this through the federal
process,” says spokesperson Massie Ritsch. “That same process presents the
community with an opportunity to be heard by the federal government.”
Ritsch is an avid spokesperson for the beauty of the Santa Ynez Valley, and says his
group is concerned that any large-scale development would trouble a community
that has nothing to say about it. “They’re buying up these parcels in small bits. In
California it’s called ‘piecemealing’ and you just can’t legally do it.”
But the hiring of Steve Sugerman’s crew just further raises the tribe’s hackles. “The
same PR firm that’s representing them is representing the developer in Playa Vista,”
Armenta says. The Playa Vista development in Marina del Rey has been built over
objections to environmental concerns and the relocation of a large GabrielenoTongva burial ground.
“Now, in my mind, you’re environmentalists?” asks Armenta. “On one hand the firm
is spouting anti-development rhetoric in Santa Ynez. On the other, they are
developing over burial grounds and basically telling Native Americans to get over it.”
To Ritsch, the key difference between the two projects is that Playa Vista had City
Council approval before the project was allowed to proceed, and had gone through a
state planning process that took years. Federal procedures may skirt some of that
process, and some of that public input, in Santa Ynez. But it seems clear from the
emotional rhetoric already flying that no amount of community involvement would
allow development in Santa Ynez.
“I won’t minimize that the tribes have made contributions to the community, which I
applaud,” explains Jackson. “What they haven’t done is deal with traffic and other
environmental concerns, like law enforcement. We don’t feel this tribe has
participated to mitigate the burden they have put on the community.”
Missing from that reasoning, of course, is that gaming tribes provide for their own
people by creating jobs, building hospitals and schools. And when you consider that
they actually are their own nation, gaming tribes are actually at the bottom in terms
of receiving foreign aid. Statistics provided by the Santa Ynez band of Chumash
Indians list the following contributions to their community:
Employ nearly 1,500 area residents
$24.4 million annual payroll paid in 2003
$2.4 million in payroll taxes paid in 2003
$3 million in benefits paid in 2003
$24 million paid to casino suppliers in 2003 (75 percent of which are local vendors)
$6 million contributed to community since casino opened; contributed heavily to
public safety agencies, including the Santa Barbara County Fire Department, the
Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s department, and other county law enforcement
agencies
$2 million for road improvements and infrastructure on Highway 246
$4.1 million in Special Distribution Fund
$3.4 million in Revenue Sharing Trust Fund
According to Snyder, one of the key goals in negotiating with Parker was to seek a
cushion for the future, in the event that Indian gaming compacts with the state are
not renewed in 2010.
When asked what she would have the tribes do, instead of running that casino,
WeWatch’s Herrera said, “They could invest in small businesses and could be a big
part of this community if they did that. People would love it. Also, land is really
valuable around here.”
Buying land, Snyder laughs, is exactly what the Native Americans are trying to do.
“What they really want is for us to sell blankets on the side of the road.”
Meanwhile, the Santa Ynez Valley Concerned Citizens are taking donations on their
website at syvconcernedcitizens.com.
Snyder isn’t planning on any big nights off the property anytime soon. Parker has
stopped giving interviews.
Ely continues to give them, and pulls no punches. “Twenty years ago, the Valley had
the tribe contained in a nice corral where they couldn’t escape. That was where they
wanted them to stay.”
No one is more aware of this than Chairman Armenta. But he goes out everywhere,
even to Mattie’s Tavern where he orders Fess Parker wines. “Of course, they don’t
serve it,” he laughs. ”But I’ve lived here since I was 15, on one of the first housing
projects. My father grew up in Santa Ynez. I’m not letting anybody keep me out of
this town.”