For centuries, from the time Europeans first set foot on this land, the Muckleshoot Indians have battled to assert their sovereignty over issues such as fishing, hunting and the practice of their religion.
In vain, they protested as Seattle, suburban King County and the agricultural communities of Enumclaw and Auburn sprouted up on much of the 750,000 acres of homeland that initially had been promised to the Indians through treaties.
But in recent years the tide of the struggle has shifted.
The Muckleshoots and many other tribes across the country find themselves under attack for their grandiose plans to build everything from nuclear-waste storage facilities to casinos.
To the Muckleshoots, a half-completed amphitheater towering over dairy farms and horse pastures is an example of their will to grow as a nation by flexing their entrepreneurial muscles.
To their non-Indian neighbors, the amphitheater–designed as a musical venue for acts ranging from the Seattle Symphony to the Spice Girls–is a symbol of the tribe’s disregard for its neighbors and disrespect for local laws.
Neighbors fear the project, which would not be allowed under area zoning laws, will clog traffic and cause accidents on a two-lane road leading to it, attract unruly crowds of up to 20,000 people and forever spoil the rural charm of this west-central Washington hamlet.
With their “nation within a nation” status extended through Supreme Court rulings, federal laws and 100-year-old treaties, the country’s 554 federally recognized tribes have the authority to govern themselves on Indian lands, superseding local, state and county laws.
For some non-Indians, the rights were fine in the old days when the Native Americans were relegated to reservations.
But with Indians getting involved in enterprises that affect people beyond the reservation borders, a debate is raging in Congress and in communities across America on whether sovereignty should be scaled back and tribes subjected to local control.
“If anyone else (besides an Indian tribe) tried to do this, they would have been stopped by the county and state because of zoning laws,” said Brent Warwick, a board member of Citizens for Safety and Environment, the local group in Enumclaw and Auburn that is fighting the amphitheater.
“This facility is the worst example you can come up with as far as being highly invasive to the community,” said Warwick.
Tribal leaders, who have volunteered to temporarily halt the project in wake of the opposition, say they are determined to finish the amphitheater. They view the protest by their neighbors as a racist attempt to trample their rights.
“They’re trying to penalize us for doing what we should be doing–governing ourselves,” said John Halliday, the Muckleshoots’ director of economic development.
The Washington state case is not an isolated one. Conflicts have cropped up across the country between Native Americans and non-Indians over development projects, taxing issues and fishing rights.
In Washington state, beach-side property owners and commercial fisheries have attempted to stop the Skokomishes, Elwha Klallams and other tribes from claiming salmon and shellfish on private property that had once been the Indians’ traditional fishing grounds. The U.S. Supreme Court and a district court, in upholding the tribes’ 1855 treaties, authorized the Indians to take up to 50 percent of the harvestable fish from their former fishing areas.
Under an agreement worked out between the Indians and property owners, the tribes are allowed on the lands five days a year to gather what they need.
New York state officials halted the distribution of cigarettes and gasoline to the Seneca Nation in an attempt to force the tribe to collect state taxes from the sale of the products to non-Indians. But the tribe in April 1997 blocked Interstate Highway 90 in protest, and the state backed off.
In Utah, state officials are trying to halt a proposal by the Skull Valley band of the Goshute tribe to convert 820 acres of its reservation to a storage facility for spent radioactive fuel. Tribal leaders say the proposal would bring much-needed revenue to finance educational, social and health programs.
Noting that the area already is home to four state and federal radioactive waste facilities, tribal chief Leon Bear said, “It’s OK for Utah to put a waste dump outside our reservation. But once we decide we want to put it on our reservation, they say, `You can’t do that.’ What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
The debate over Indian sovereignty is as old as the country; the concept is an ever-evolving one that has shifted dramatically with the political winds.
The parameters were set by the Supreme Court in the early 1820s with a ruling establishing tribes as autonomous entities subject to federal authority, yet free from state control.
By the mid-19th Century, tribes had given up millions of acres as the U.S. expanded. In exchange, the tribes through treaties gained perpetual fishing and hunting rights and homelands.
Yet by the latter part of the century, tribes were victimized by harmful federal policies that sold off much of their land to make way for newly arrived immigrants, giving the Indians little or no compensation.
The civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s helped open doors, and the Nixon administration initiated laws encouraging tribes to strengthen their governments and develop economic enterprises.
In the 1980s, tribes began opening casinos, bolstering depressed economies on their reservations.
Since then, experts say, Congress and the Supreme Court have moved to weaken tribal authority and strengthen state control over tribes.
A key setback, according to some Indians, came in 1988 with the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which gave states the right to have a say on the type of gambling activity that can take place on the reservation.
In addition, the Supreme Court in 1996 struck down a provision in the act that allowed tribes to file lawsuits in federal court against states that refuse to negotiate gaming compacts in good faith.
“Right now we’re in a period where states are gaining greater authority to regulate Indian affairs in Indian country,” said John Hermann, a political science professor and American Indian expert at Trinity University in San Antonio. “The courts have given them a blank check to do that.”
California Gov. Pete Wilson has recently devised a compact that subjects Indian-run casinos to local zoning rules and state employment laws.
Several members of Congress, including Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), have introduced measures aimed at giving local communities more say over projects such as the amphitheater.
Last year, Gorton introduced a controversial bill that would have required tribes to waive their sovereign immunity, their shield against lawsuits. The intent of sovereign immunity is to protect a tribal government from litigation that could cause serious financial losses.
Gorton withdrew the bill amid opposition from Native Americans. But this month, he is planning to introduce five new measures that, among other things, would allow citizens groups to sue a tribe over Indian construction projects that they believe pose an environmental threat.
