Tribe's doing what its Los Coyotes Neighbors describe as impossible

The Santa Ysabel Tribe is located in northeastern San Diego County just 10 miles from the Los Coyotes Reservation but the leaders of the two tribe are attacking their futures from opposite corners of the ring.

Seasoned journalist Chet Barfield regularly reports on San Diego's 18 Indian tribes for the San Diego Union Tribune covering Indian Country and Indian gaming in the County with the highest concentration of Indian casinos in the United States. Several years ago he wrote several stories on the hostilities that existed between waring factions on the Los Coyotes Reservation. A year ago he wrote:

Far-flung members of North County tribe are returning, with their hearts on the reservation and their eyes off it

By Chet Barfield
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

..."We're headed in a new direction," tribal Chairman Johnny Hernandez said. "We want to make this a reservation our people are proud of and make the land itself proud of the people who are on it."

Pride has long been scarce on this 15,500-acre reservation 65 miles northeast of San Diego. Its forested mountains abound with beauty, but its people are among the poorest and most oppressed in the region.

Over generations, families fled the reservation, mostly for economic survival. Today more than two-thirds of the tribe's 770 members are scattered throughout California and other states.

But lately, more and more are coming to tribal meetings, from Orange County, Los Angeles or farther. Some are even moving back to the reservation, as Ponchetti did in 1984 and Hernandez did in 2000.

What's bringing them back? The push for a casino? Opportunities for free land? Family connections? A voice in tribal decisions?

According to dozens of members, all those factors play a part and fuel frictions between old and new thinking, between factions on and off the reservation.

For many, however, the pull comes from something deeper.

"A lot of them wanted to come back to their roots to find out who the hell they were," said Ponchetti, 67, whose father was a prominent tribal leader in the 1950s. "They were Indian, but they didn't know what that meant." ... (Full
Story)

Based on this story, one has to wonder if Governor Schwarzenegger, Dan Kolkey, Marian Ilitch, Michael Malik, Barstow Mayor Lawrence Dale, and legislators like Roy Ashburn and Bill Maze have ever been to northeastern San Diego County. More startling is that the Governor's staff didn't appear to be verifying anything they were told by Marian Ilitch's team pushing the proposal for dual casinos in Barstow, Calif. Everything we've heard to date is contradicted by this story of a Tribe that's turning lemons into lemonade.


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