Tribe constructs casino honoring racist author

CHITTENANGO, N.Y. — The American Indian tribe leading the movement to change the name of the Washington Redskins plans to open a $20 million casino that pays homage to the work of L. Frank Baum, who was born in this village outside Syracuse and later wrote “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”

Just one problem with the Oneida Indian Nation’s Yellow Brick Road Casino: A decade before Baum wrote one of this country’s most celebrated children’s tales, he campaigned for an American Indian genocide.

“The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians,” he wrote in late 1890 for the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer in South Dakota. “Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; it’s better that they should die than live the miserable wretches that they are.”

Two weeks later, Baum, the newspaper’s publisher, reiterated his point in an editorial written after the slaughter of as many as 300 Sioux at Wounded Knee. He demanded that the U.S. government “wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.”

So why would the Oneida — a small tribe that has condemned the Redskins for a name they consider patently racist — embrace the legacy of a writer whose own descendants have apologized for his racism?

That apology is the reason, said Oneida leader Ray Halbritter, calling the tribe’s future casino the product of reconciliation.

“I think that’s a wonderful message — that we’re able to overcome by repentance and by forgiveness,” Halbritter said. “It’s looking forward rather than backward.”

But some American Indians have voiced astonishment over the tribute to Baum. Ernestine Chasing Hawk, a descendant of the Wounded Knee victims, called the Oneida’s decision a betrayal.

“How can they be so ignorant of history and traitors to their own race?” she asked in an essay published in the Native American Times. “Would the Jews build a casino to honor Adolph Hitler?”

Halbritter insisted that the homage does not represent a “whitewashing of Baum’s writings,” but noted that his popular stories have noble themes and, obviously, immense commercial appeal.