I can hardly watch any political shenanigans these days without molting. My feathers just start falling off, and then I fly into a crazy tizzy and have to leave the room.
It’s hard being me. I know.
But rhetoric kills me. No—not literally. Figuratively, I die a little inside when I hear people speak passionately about issues in a way that isn’t constructive at all. Let’s take Donald Trump’s ideas about Muslim Americans, refugees, and immigrants (yes, his statements are all crazy talk, and I never thought I’d ever say this in a million years, but Ted Cruz is actually starting to look like a better and better candidate—I know his statements are questionable, too) and compare them with the way certain people in the Santa Ynez Valley speak about the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians.
An awful way to start what’s supposed to be a constructive conversation is with public comments at a meeting that bash the very entity the county is actually trying to come to an agreement with. I know: Free speech, dumb speech, racist speech is allowed and legal! I get it. I work at a newspaper. I’m not trying to start an argument about the First Amendment. Speak on, my brothers and sisters!
But I also totally get a November letter that Chumash Tribal Chair Vincent Armenta sent to the county begrudging those very same comments/commenters that I heard address the Board of Supervisors Ad Hoc Subcommittee Regarding Santa Ynez Valley Band of Chumash Indians Matters once again at its Dec. 10 meeting.
“The county has allowed this process to devolve into yet another forum for the deeply misguided anti-tribal individuals to personally attack me, Vice Chairman Kahn, and the motives and goodwill of the tribe,” Armenta wrote in the letter.
Although, it’s not really the county’s fault that people like
Doug Herthel, president of POLO (the Preservation of Los Olivos), exist in the world. It’s that squeaky wheel that gets the attention. That organization has loudly opposed everything the Chumash have ever done, generally with litigation. Did I mention loudly? Herthel told supervisors Doreen Farr and Peter Adam to “Slow down; look at what’s going on; do not negotiate our sovereignty. … Be very, very careful. There is no enforceable agreements.”
He’s basically telling the board to stop talking to the tribe because they can’t be trusted.
As I said, it’s not a good way to start a discussion.
And if that’s the way every ad hoc committee meeting on this topic starts—so far, there have been four meetings—I commend Armenta and Kahn for sitting there and quietly listening.
I had to stop watching. And I know, supervisors Adam and Farr listen to that type of thing at every meeting they have, so I commend them, too.
That issue of trust goes both ways, Mr. Herthel. Give and ye shall receive. The Chumash have been asking for dialogue with the county for years, and now it’s finally happening. What was termed as “creeping expansion” by another public speaker refers to the tribe’s growth on the current reservation and land in the valley the tribe’s bought and is actively trying to place into trust. The same speaker said valley residents don’t want to be surprised anymore.
But I think that’s what the point of these meetings is. To get some clarification between the tribe and the county; to negotiate in good faith and in the public. And, as with anything that breaks a standoff, things are going to be tense—and there were some terse back and forths at the Dec. 10 meeting, such as the conversation between Adam and Armenta about the terms sheet for the Camp 4 property. The terms sheet outlines what the county’s concerns are for the parcel.
The county submitted it to the tribe about a week before the meeting, and the tribe’s business committee is in the middle of a one-month break, so the item hasn’t been discussed yet.
“I can give you my personal comments, but they’re not going to hold any weight,” Armenta said. “I don’t make these decisions on my own.”
“Now, we’re here and we’re not going to do anything,” Adam lamented.
But Armenta assured the county that the item would be discussed before the next ad hoc committee meeting on Jan. 14 and that the tribe will definitely be responding to it.
And I disagree with several disappointed individuals’ responses to the meeting: that it accomplished nothing.
Armenta asked if the county would be interested in discussing the tribe’s overall land acquisition and development plans, referring to a tribal consolidation plan submitted two years ago (it was withdrawn).
“If you want to add that as an item, I think that’s great,” Adam responded. “It would lead to a greater idea of what we’re really dealing with, and I think that the public would be really interested.”
Since the tribe submitted its fee-to-trust application on Camp 4 in 2013, it has acquired other properties in the valley and built up the casino. Residents are murmuring, making conjectures about what the tribe’s plans are, Adam said. Discussion would hopefully alleviate some of that, let’s call it, rhetoric.
“Some of those parcels we don’t know what we’re going to do with,” Kahn said. Plans do change. That’s how life works.
Kahn said if official talks between the county and the tribe had started four years ago, when Camp 4 was purchased and development plans started, “we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation today.”
Basically, it sounds like the push is in the right direction. Open, productive dialogue is better than a standoff. And if people like Adam are any indication of what having a civil conversation can generate, it’s a little bit of understanding. At one point, Adam opposed talks with the Chumash. Now, it sounds like he’s shoved over to the other side.
“You need to help us understand what you need, and we’ll do what we can to try to accommodate it,” Adam said. Even if it’s not a concrete proposal, but a “supposal,” Adam said it would at least give the county some idea of what could be planned.
“It’s great that we have a dialogue. That’s why I wanted to have a dialogue. It didn’t exist before; now it exists,” Armenta said.
“Amen,” Adam said.
The Canary is all about conversation. Send her your thoughts at canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 17-24, 2015.