Guilt By Association
By David Yeagley
5-15-2002
Mr. William Dawson, of Chivington, Colorado, is spitting mad. His good name has been associated with the dubious casino industry, because he recently sold them property for a handsome profit. But he doesn’t want to be associated with them or anything illicit. Can he have it both ways?
In my recent article, “When Sacred Places Sell,” I told the story of Sand Creek, the southeastern Colorado site where there was a massacre of 163 Cheyenne Indian women and children in 1864. Dawson was the owner of the property, but he sold it last month to Southwest Entertainment Inc, a casino corporation based in Minneapolis. I expressed concern over the future of the “sacred” site.
Mr. Dawson wrote me and FrontPage, sharply complaining about misinformation in my article, and severely reprimanding me for implicating him in any fraudulent dealing whatsoever. Dawson has no confidence in my sources, such as the Denver Post, the New York Times, the Associated Press, and web sites like www.larouchepub.com or www.ucelandclaim.com. “Show me where newspapers and web sites only print facts,” he writes.
He may have a point there, but the basic facts about his ownership, the party he sold his land to, and the U.S. government interests, haven’t been questioned. He knew his property was considered the center of the Sand Creek site. He simply wanted top dollar for it. The ‘legally appraised’ value was $226 per acre, and the government had offered him $332,000 for 1,465 acres. Elsewhere in the same county, the same kind of pasture land has recently sold for only $50 to $132 per acre. The government offered double the top price.
But that inflated ‘appraised’ value still wasn’t enough. Dawson wanted $1.5 million, and from a different buyer, he got it. The casino ‘cavalry’ came to the rescue. Dawson apparently got well over $1,000 per acre.
If it’s a National Historic Site, given to the Indians, this might mean that Southwest Entertainment could write off $1.5 million as a tax deduction. Still, that’s nickels and dimes to the casino industry. But it was a goodly sum for Dawson. And imagine the profits Colorado will make off tourism. It’s a “win-win” situation, like Dawson said. Just don’t consider any seamy socio/economic side effects created by casinos. (The UCE can tell you all about those.)
Dawson decries the idea that the site itself could ever host a casino. He says its “very rural property in a county [Kiowa] with a total population of less than 1800 persons, and eight miles off the closest hard surfaced road.”
Well, Cripple Creek, Colorado is only 20 miles west, in Teller County, in the same kind of “rural” area. Cripple Creek is the home of Uncle Sam’s Casino, where Dawson reportedly signed the deal with Jim Druck, president of the Minneapolis casino corporation. Cripple Creek is now a major resort, with fifteen other casinos. Casinos are said to have created 2,000 new jobs there, not to mention new “hard surfaced roads.”
If the National Historic Site “may eventually cover 12,500 acres,” as reported by Kit Miniclier in the Denver Post (Friday, April 26), I place my bets on the casinos. They’ll probably pop up in and around Sand Creek. It sounds like there’ll be plenty of room.
Calling Sand Creek a National Historic Site will not preserve its sacredness, or protect it from tourism industries. Look what happened to the ‘sacred’ Black Hills of South Dakota. The Sioux site is one of the biggest tourist attractions in the U.S. There’s nothing sacred about Indian property when big money’s involved.
In my article, I simply placed Dawson’s transaction in the context of “Indians, Politics, and Money.” The Sand Creek deal, while it may be legal in itself, has to be seen as part of a larger, dubious enterprise. The U.S. government is helping set up Indian lands for casino operations, because political parties apparently get major kick backs from them. I also reported that since these “sovereign” Indian nations and their casinos are free of government regulations, they can quickly become havens for international money laundering, weapons and drug trafficking, and a host of vices.
Dawson served thirty years in the Colorado Army National guard, and he was also a small claims judge. The last thing he wants is to be associated with vice and crime. I’m sorry that his good name was cast in with these things.
But, he took casino money. The choice was his. Or did they make him an offer he couldn’t refuse?
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