Cahuilla Nation Activism and the Tribal Casino Movement by Theodor P Gordon

Author:Theodor P Gordon [Gordon, Theodor P]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Ethnic Studies, American, Native American Studies, History, United States, State & Local, West (AK; CA; CO; HI; ID; MT; NV; UT; WY), Games & Activities, Gambling
ISBN: 9781943859825
Google: yGyVDwAAQBAJ
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Publisher: University of Nevada Press
Published: 2018-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Dudley’s (1908) first and most striking analogy, that “the history of the North American Indian is much the same as that of the wild animals,” continues the animal analogy that native people do not qualify as people at all and therefore, according to this logic, their demise is not as much a tragedy as it is a stepping-stone in the march toward progress. Her peculiar metaphor that the rancheros would “lasso them, drag them to the ranchos and compel them to work,” further expands this analogy, suggesting that, like cattle, the natives could be rounded up without much resistance. Contradicting even her own accounts of raids against the missions, and the subsequent Garra uprising, Dudley declared that unlike natives elsewhere across North America, the California Indians “have quietly submitted to the inevitable from the beginning,” presuming a passivity that lies in stark contrast to the then-well-known confrontations between settlers and natives in California. For Dudley, like the legions of tourists who flocked to the area after reading Ramona, the Spanish missions represent an idyllic, quaint, and naive past in which the “purest” motives were no match for the assumed inferiority of California Indians. Repeating the narrative of O. P. Fitzgerald and other fatalists, the principles of social Darwinism presumed the fate of California’s Indians was sealed because, according to this theory, they never stood a chance of coexisting with Europeans. The best the Mission Indians could hope for, according to Dudley, was that the isolation of their reservations, such as San Manuel’s, would allow “to at least sleep in undisturbed peace” as they approach their imminent demise. However, she did leave the door open for some alternative future, “but—quien sabe?,” who knows? Dudley, like most of her contemporaries, could not fathom that the Cahuilla and Serrano, along with their fellow California native nations, were far from passive. Ironically, at the same time that she speculated on the demise of California’s native nations, the Cahuilla and their allies (both native and nonnative) were at the early stages of mounting their activism for self-determination. These efforts led to the Cahuilla Uprising of 1907–12, the organization and successes of MIF, and ultimately to the transformation of the Serrano and Cahuilla nations into the epicenter of a multi-billion-dollar Indian casino movement.

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