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It's a situation ripe for manipulation. In the last two years of the Clinton Administration, despite a recommendation by BAR staff to deny recognition to six tribal groups, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Kevin Gover, a former Clinton fund raiser appointed to the post by the President, recognized four of the tribes before he left office on Jan. 3, 2001. His successor, Michael Anderson, another Clinton appointee, then pressured the BAR staff to change its recommendation on the two other tribes. In an atmosphere so tense that a staff member later described it to the Interior Department's Inspector General as "pure hell," BAR was pushed to complete the documentation recognizing the tribes by Jan. 19, the Administration's last day in office. Three days later, on the first working day of the Bush Administration, the BAR staff discovered that Anderson had failed to sign all the documents necessary to recognize one tribe, the Duwamish of Washington State. Alerted to the omission, Anderson drove to the BIA, where an employee took the papers out to his car to be signed. The staff member, according to the Interior Department's report, then backdated the documents to Jan. 19. Anderson says politics played no role in his decision. "These tribes were well qualified to be recognized," he says. Incoming Bush BIA appointees put a hold on Anderson's two 11th-hour approvals. Neither has been recognized so far.
It didn't take the Bush Administration long to pick up where the Clintonites had left off. Last June, Bush appointees in the BIA recognized the Eastern Pequot, an amalgamation of two Connecticut tribes with casino plans that had received preliminary approval under Clinton. In the past four years, spanning both Administrations, the tribe and its investors paid $525,000 to Ronald Kaufman--a well-connected Republican lobbyist, White House political director for the first President Bush and a brother-in-law of current White House chief of staff Andrew Card--to press their case. The BIA's recognition came amid widespread opposition by Connecticut politicians and community groups and questions about the tribe's authenticity.
Sometimes having a sympathetic Administration in power isn't even necessary. When their agenda bogs down, well-connected tribes can go to friends in Congress, skirting the BIA and the regulatory process altogether. Congress recognized the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians of Indiana and Michigan in 1994. With help from a financial backer, Lyle Berman's Lakes Entertainment Inc., the tribe is on the verge of building a casino about 70 miles east of Chicago, in New Buffalo, Mich. Meanwhile, in the Senate, Virginia Republicans George Allen and John Warner have introduced a package deal for six Virginia tribes--despite the opposition of the BIA, which says the bill would permit the tribes to bypass regular channels and allow them "to avoid the scrutiny to which other groups have been subjected."
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