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Article: 1101 of sgi.talk.ratical
From: (dave 'who can do? ratmandu!' ratcliffe)
Subject: Kevin Costner in, Who Would Do Such a Thing? to his Lakota friends
Summary: Costner bros' into building massive resort-casino in sacred Black Hills
Keywords: Deadwood/Black Hills, S.D., Dunbar resort, 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty
Date: 26 Jun 1995 22:25:56 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Lines: 333
Kevin Costner Was in Another Celebrity Memoir. TV and movie star Peggy Trentini also modeled for the pages of 'Playboy' and Frederick’s of Hollywood lingerie. The Swedish bikini model hooked up with Costner when he was recently separated from his wife in the 1990s and called him fun and sexy, but not falling-in-love material.
| May 2001 - See Also: | The Costner Brothers andthe Black Hills, published by KOLA (the Lakota word for friend),a grassroots human rights organization founded in September 1987 near RedScaffold, on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, South Dakota. |
|
- The quintet of robbers enters the Riviera Casino from Fremont St. The Riviera is about a mile from Fremont St.
- Directed by Jim Wilson. With Kevin Costner, Andra Millian, Eve Lilith, Mike Reynolds. Two young gamblers are on a non-stop roll, but soon the casino wants to even the odds and bring their winning streak to a close.
Kevin Costner In Jail
Kevin Costner: big name, big films like Dances With Wolves andJFK -- but apparently, just 'cuz one acts like a hero,fighting the good fight in dream-town celluloid technicolor dramas,doesn't mean one lives that way in one's own life. The twoarticles below -- from The Circle,News from a Native American perspective... and the LondonIndependent --tellingly indicate where such 'real life' stories like the Costnerbrothers perpetuation of the White Man's trashing of the Lakota'ssacred Black Hills fit in to the hi-rollin' media cavalcade of 'news'and 'all things considered' important to the landed aristocracy.Truly ironical that, along with the subsidies given them by thestate --
'... To help the Costner brothers build their resort the state of South Dakota voted to raise the betting limit at Deadwood casinos from $5 to $100, and has given them $14 million to develop their Dunbar Resort plan.'
-- the very people who helped Kevin get rich by playing the 'red parts' in'Dances With Wolves' are now the ones hypocritically disrespected andignored out of his yen to make more green on their sacred lands with the erection of 'The Dunbar.' How can white people so consistently live out in their own lives the repeated betrayal and disrespect of the peoples of Turtle Island who knew this place as home LONG before europeans ever arrived? Where is any understanding of The Family Of Man in this broken-record story?Let's begin with some excerpts...
Thedispute over the Black Hills land sought by the Costners dates tothe Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. Under that agreement, the UnitedStates recognized the Great Sioux Nation as a sovereign and separateentity. Under the terms of the treaty, the Great Sioux Nation consistsof land west from the Missouri River in South Dakota to the BighornMountain in Wyoming. In exchange for the undisturbed use of thisterritory the Lakota agreed to vacate vast sections of the Great Plains.the following story appeared on page 15 of the April, 1995 edition of
In1864, after an illegal army expedition led by George ArmstrongCuster found gold in the Black Hills, settlers from the east began toswarm into Deadwood's mineral-rich gulch, as well as other areas of thesacred land. In 1877, Congress passed a law which annexed the GreatSioux Reservation and Black Hills, dividing the land into several smallreservations. Many Lakota people feel this was done in reprisal for thedefeat of Custer's Seventh Cavalry in the Battle of Little Big Horn ayear earlier.
In1980 the Supreme Court ordered the federal government tocompensate the Lakota for the land. But the tribes have refused toaccept the money, a sum that now stands at $380 million, insistinginstead, on the return of the Black Hills. To help the Costner brothersbuild their resort the state of South Dakota voted to raise the bettinglimit at Deadwood casinos from $5 to $100, and has given them $14million to develop their Dunbar Resort plan. . . .
Andhow did [Costner] repay the Indians whose culture, language and history he had employed so freely? Did he build a hospital on one of South Dakota's four reservations? Did he set up a college trust fund toeducate underprivileged Indian kids? Did he buy a piece of the BlackHills and give it back to the Sioux, so that they could perform theirreligious ceremonies there?
Well,no actually. Despite the unthinkable wealth generated by'Dances', and the fact that South Dakota's Indians are, according to thelatest US government census, the poorest people in the entire UnitedStates, nobody can recall Costner donating so much as a dollar to anIndian cause. Perhaps he thinks they should be grateful that he isinvesting $100m in the Dunbar resort (where they can apply for minimum-wage jobs, washing dishes and the like). But nobody really knows whathe thinks, because Costner refuses to discuss the matter.
Ofcourse, Kevin Costner can produce deeds of ownership for the land.But so can the Sioux, whose papers date from 1851, when the first FortLaramie Treaty was signed with the US government, acknowledging theIndians' ownership of 60 million acres of the Great Plains, includingthe 7.3 million acres of the Black Hills. In 1868, a second treaty wasdrawn up, reducing the Indian land to 26 million acres, but stillincluding the area now being developed by Costner.
Thereis also the small matter of a 1980's US Supreme Court ruling,which declared the Lakota Sioux the rightful owners of the Black Hills,and denounced the government's appropriation as a 'rank case ofdishonourable dealings ... unparalleled in American jurisprudence.'(The Sioux, however, rejected the Court's award of $105m as'insulting.' You can see their point: the hills have yielded over$250bn of gold alone in the last 100 years.)
Kevin Costner All Movies
The Circle, News from a Native American perspective..., a monthly
Kevin Costner Wikipedia
newspaper published by the Minneapolis American Indian Center,
1530 East Franklin Ave, Minneaoplis, MN, 55404, 612/879-1700,
and is reproduced here with permission of the editor.
'Who Would Do Such a Thing?'
Kevin Costner Plans Resort Complex in the Black Hills
by Jon Lurie
Whowould do such a thing?...this was proof enough that it was apeople without value and without soul, and with no regard for Siouxrights' As Lieutenant John Dunbar in the film 'Dances with Wolves,'Kevin Costner spoke these words in scorn of the invading white man'sdisregard for Indian land, its people, its living things, and itshistory. Through John Dunbar, Costner appeared on screen to be a friendto the Lakota; he carried a sacred pipe, married into the tribe, andfought American soldiers. Today, as Kevin Costner (along with hisbrother and business partner, Dan Costner) prepares to desecrate theNorthern Black Hills with a massive resort-casino, many Lakota peopleare asking, 'Who would do such a thing?'Newsgroups: soc.culture.native,alt.native
TheCostners want to use 600 acres of Black Hills National Forestland on the outskirts of Deadwood for an 18-hole golf course. Theproposed $100 million Dunbar resort, to open in 1997, would include a350-room lodge and an outdoor amphitheater to be built on private land.A vintage railway running the 42 miles from Rapid City to the resortwould also be constructed to bring gamblers in from the nearest majorairport.
Costnerwas adopted by members of the Sicangu Lakota Nation in apublic Hunka (making of a relative) ceremony, as part of the festivitiessurrounding the Washington DC premiere of 'Dances with Wolves.'
Afterreceiving his eagle feather and Indian name, Costner said tothe large crowd, 'This is an honor I do not take lightly...Now, when Ifly over the middle of the country I will never again be able to lookdown without knowing there are people in those empty places...when I wasa boy playing Cowboys and Indians I always wanted to be the Indians.'
Buta Cowboy, says Lakota elder Sydney Keith, is what Costner continues to be. In an interview with the 'London Times,' Keith said he was disappointed with Kevin Costner's actions since making 'Dances withWolves.' 'He used Indians to make a film,' Keith said. 'He madehimself famous and rich. He didn't try to help the people. He isgreedy. Then he is trying to build a resort that would desecrate theland more...We don't want him to build that resort.'
'Afterthe movie I thought he was pretty cool,' says Joe Pullian, a26-year-old Lakota artist who lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation. 'Butnow it seems like he's just another white guy coming here to take whathe can get.'
Thedispute over the Black Hills land sought by the Costners dates tothe Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. Under that agreement, the UnitedStates recognized the Great Sioux Nation as a sovereign and separateentity. Under the terms of the treaty, the Great Sioux Nation consistsof land west from the Missouri River in South Dakota to the BighornMountain in Wyoming. In exchange for the undisturbed use of thisterritory the Lakota agreed to vacate vast sections of the Great Plains.
In1864, after an illegal army expedition led by George ArmstrongCuster found gold in the Black Hills, settlers from the east began toswarm into Deadwood's mineral-rich gulch, as well as other areas of thesacred land. In 1877, Congress passed a law which annexed the GreatSioux Reservation and Black Hills, dividing the land into several smallreservations. Many Lakota people feel this was done in reprisal for thedefeat of Custer's Seventh Cavalry in the Battle of Little Big Horn ayear earlier.
In1980 the Supreme Court ordered the federal government tocompensate the Lakota for the land. But the tribes have refused toaccept the money, a sum that now stands at $380 million, insistinginstead, on the return of the Black Hills. To help the Costner brothersbuild their resort the state of South Dakota voted to raise the bettinglimit at Deadwood casinos from $5 to $100, and has given them $14million to develop their Dunbar Resort plan.
Inaddition to these incentives, South Dakota is attractive tobusiness because it has no income tax, no personal property tax, and nopersonal income tax. (This has led major US corporations, such asCitibank, which transferred its Visa and Mastercard center from NewYork, to move to the state, creating over 2000 jobs). American Indians,7 percent of the state's population, have not benefited from the latestsurge in South Dakota's economy. Unemployment in the state has been aslow as 3 or 4 percent in recent times, while unemployment onreservations, such as Rosebud and Pine Ridge (the poorest place in thenation) has remained at a constant 80%.
Whenthe tribes wanted gambling, the state of South Dakota foughtthem every step of the way,' says Tim Wapato, executive director of theNational Indian Gaming Association in Washington. 'Along come theCostners, who don't even need the money, and they get subsidies. Itseems racist to me.'
In1987, after a fire destroyed half of main street, gambling wasintroduced into Deadwood as a last chance to save the historic town.The casinos opened two years later and the city was quickly restored.Today, a permanent population in Deadwood of 1800 residents hosts over amillion visitors annually. Total wagers, in what has become the LasVegas of the Black Hills, measure over $500 million per year and areincreasing. As the money increases, so do the area's social problems.Crime has risen 60% compared to Deadwood's pre-gambling days.Pollution, noise, and overpopulation also plague the once sleepyvillage.
DanCostner says he and his brother got involved in Deadwood afterthey developed a fondness for the state and its beauty while filming'Dances with Wolves' in the area. They already own the Midnight StarCasino at the center of the mainstreet strip.
'Branson[Missouri] has 11,000 hotel rooms,' Costner said. We've got400. You don't have to be a genius' to see the need. 'To get where wewant to be we need an additional 2000 rooms here.'
DanCostner says there needs to be more in Deadwood for people to do.'Kids get bored. There's not enough in town for the rest of thefamily--there's not enough for the adults, if all they can do is come inand game.'
OglalaSioux Tribe Executive Committee Member Phillip Underbaggagesays he feels betrayed by Kevin Costner. 'I felt like he was a friendwho understood our plight. I thought he understood what we're up against as Indian people. I'd have to be foolish to try and put a casino on top of a church. To us the Black Hills are sacred. They area church to us.
Itis my opinion that, when you look at the treaties, we still haveall rights to the Black Hills. Even the US government has admitted thatthe Black Hills were taken from us through fraud and deceit. A majorityof the people say they can keep the money, just give us the Black Hillsback,' Underbaggage says.
TheCostners have hired Barbara Bush's former press secretary, AnnaPerez, to front the Dunbar's media operations. When asked how KevinCostner justifies adding to the destruction of the Black Hills afterbeing adopted into a Lakota family, Perez hesitates. 'I think,' shesays, 'what he would say is that the Dunbar project is good for everyone, including the Native American community.'
'...thiswas proof enough that it was a people without value andwithout soul, and with no regard for Sioux rights.'
From: SUSAN ODONNELL <SENSO@cardiff.ac.uk>
Subject: Protest against K. Costner's development plans
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 08:24:55 GMT
'A five-star hotel and casino. Well thanks, Kevin'
by Alix Sharkey
The Independent (London), Saturday, 20 May 1995
Today,a 'spiritual gathering' takes place on a tract of land in theBlack Hills of South Dakota. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, will convergeon the site where film star Kevin Costner and his brother Dan arebuilding a 320-room luxury hotel-casino complex. Most of the protesterswill be Lakota Sioux Indians, who claim that Costner is building on landthat belongs to them.
Standingat the centre of a six-state area once known to whitesettlers as 'Indian country,' the Black Hills, or Paha Sapa, are sacredto the Sioux. These were their burial grounds and holy lands, wherethey came on 'vision quests,' and held their annual Sundance rituals.Only 150 years ago they lived a semi-nomadic existence, here on theGreat Plains.
Butonce settlers discovered gold in the hills, the US governmentsystematically persecuted the Indians to the edge of extinction, herdedthem on to reservations that were little more than concentration camps,and did its best to annihilate their language and culture. The BlackHills were sold off to property developers, gold and mineral miningcompanies, and timber firms. Anything left over was declared NationalForest land, and the Indians were denied access for religiousceremonies.
Now,Kevin Costner is hoping to attract thousands of European andJapanese tourists with a five-star monument to kitsch called The Dunbar.The long-suffering Sioux regard this as the last straw, and plan tooccupy the land today in order to make a peaceful protest.
Thebitter irony here, of course, is that Costner built his Hollywoodcareer on the back of Sioux culture. In his 1990 film 'Dances withWolves', Costner portrayed Lt. John Dunbar, an 1860s cavalryman whobecomes enchanted with the Lakota way of live and 'goes native.'Dances with Wolves' made more than $500m worldwide, and Costner, asdirector, producer and star, took about 10 percent of that sum.
Andhow did he repay the Indians whose culture, language and historyhe had employed so freely? Did he build a hospital on one of SouthDakota's four reservations? Did he set up a college trust fund toeducate underprivileged Indian kids? Did he buy a piece of the BlackHills and give it back to the Sioux, so that they could perform theirreligious ceremonies there?
Well,no actually. Despite the unthinkable wealth generated by'Dances', and the fact that South Dakota's Indians are, according to thelatest US government census, the poorest people in the entire UnitedStates, nobody can recall Costner donating so much as a dollar to anIndian cause. Perhaps he thinks they should be grateful that he isinvesting $100m in the Dunbar resort (where they can apply for minimum-wage jobs, washing dishes and the like). But nobody really knows whathe thinks, because Costner refuses to discuss the matter.
Ofcourse, Kevin Costner can produce deeds of ownership for the land.But so can the Sioux, whose papers date from 1851, when the first FortLaramie Treaty was signed with the US government, acknowledging theIndians' ownership of 60 million acres of the Great Plains, includingthe 7.3 million acres of the Black Hills. In 1868, a second treaty wasdrawn up, reducing the Indian land to 26 million acres, but stillincluding the area now being developed by Costner.
Thereis also the small matter of a 1980's US Supreme Court ruling,which declared the Lakota Sioux the rightful owners of the Black Hills,and denounced the government's appropriation as a 'rank case ofdishonourable dealings ... unparalleled in American jurisprudence.' (The Sioux, however, rejected the Court's award of $105m as 'insulting.' You can see their point: the hills have yielded over $250bn of gold alone in the last 100 years.)
'Ibelieve the Dunbar resort is not only illegal, because the BlackHills issue remains unresolved,' says Mitchell Zephier, a Lakota Siouxjeweler, 'but it comes down to whether or not we hold the earth to besacred. And the earth is sacred, you know, it's a gift to all of us.It's not about material gain. It's about sustaining life, and lifeitself is sacred.'
Costner'sPR people say he 'wants to leave a legacy' in the BlackHills. But what kind? He can bequeath yet another symbol of avariceand deceit, a luxury palace for the privileged classes. Or he couldstill rebuild bridges with the Lakota (who even now are unwilling tocondemn him) and put something back into the land from which he hasalready taken so much. Just a fraction of his casino budget couldestablish sustainable subsistence farming on the reservations, forexample.
MaybeKevin Costner sill realizes that this debate goes much deeperthan the argument about his casino. It extends beyond the Black Hills,and has significance for all of us, touching on the very nature of ourrelationship with the earth. It begs the question of whether we areprepared to recognize and maintain the sacred nature of the land, or ifindeed we agree that everything has its price, and anything can bebought and sold.
True, the white man brought great change. But the varied fruits of his civilization, though highly colored and inviting, are sickening and deadening. And if it be the part of civilization to maim, rob, and thwart, then what is progress?
I am going to venture that the man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures,and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into hisbeing the true essence of civilization....
Kevin Costner Casino
Chief Luther Standing Bear, 1933,
From the Land of the Spotted Eagle, p.515
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The Midnight Star shuttered in Deadwood, South Dakota this week. The casino was owned by Kevin Costner.
The Main Street casino became the latest casualty in the struggling Deadwood gaming market. Four Aces, Wild West, Miss Kitty’s Bourbon Street, and Union Palace are among the Deadwood casinos that folded in recent years.
Midnight Star was a small two-story casino. It spread slots and video poker games on the first floor. The second floor offered live blackjack and Three Card Poker. The minimum bet at these tables was $2 on weekdays and $5 on weekends. The maximum bet was $100.
Kevin Costner's Casino
Jakes was a high-end restaurant on the third floor of Midnight Star until it closed in March 2016. The casino offered a sandwich shop until its final days.
Deadwood Gaming Revenues Continue to Decline
Deadwood has seen a slow decline in gaming revenues in recent years. It is down 3.47 percent year-to-date. There have only been two positive months in the past year. There have been four months out of the last 12 that were down double digits, including a decline of 24 percent in December.
The city’s gaming operators hoped that craps and roulette would improve visitation. The games have not performed as expected. In July, craps and roulette accounted for just 0.4 percent of all gaming revenues, according to the South Dakota Gaming Commission. That number often does not break 1 percent in a month.
Operators blame several factors for the decline in Deadwood tourism. The region’s dependence on energy is the most recent negative event. The largest coal mine in the world is located across the state line in Wyoming. The lower demand for coal and the decline in oil prices have hurt the region’s economy.
Midnight Star Kicked Me Out Due to Old Knee Injury
Some locals had bad experiences there that made them feel unwelcome at Midnight Star. I had one of those.
I once lived outside of Deadwood. I frequented many casinos in town. Midnight Star made it very clear that it did not want my action during my only attempt to play there.
The decision had nothing to do with gambling. I went to Midnight Star with a group of friends to play blackjack on a Saturday afternoon. The tables were upstairs, which required going up an old staircase. It was steep with narrow stairs.
I have a knee injury that does not usually give me issues. However, it makes it difficult for me to go up steep stairs and hills.
I struggled a little to get to the top of the stairs at Midnight Star on my way to play blackjack. When I got to the top, a table game supervisor stopped me and told me that I was not welcome to play there. He said that I was too intoxicated. I was completely sober. He was mocking me for a permanent injury, whether he knew it or not.
Instead of making some attempt to see if I was intoxicated and not disabled when I got to the top of the stairs, he just assumed I was drunk and refused to let me explain anything. He got angry when I tried. Some of the friends I was with were drunk, but since they got up the staircase quickly, they were not questioned. They all left Midnight Star with me without playing.
Midnight Star kicked me out for having a bad knee that was aggravated by poor casino design. I never tried to play there again.
After this happened, I discovered that many other locals had poor interactions with employees at this casino. There was a widespread belief that Midnight Star did not like locals. Perhaps the opinion of locals made it difficult for the casino to survive when tourism declined.
Where Does Kevin Costner Live
Confusion Over When the Casino Opened
Kevin Costner released a statement related to the closure of Midnight Star to the Rapid City Journal. In the release, Costner says that the casino opened in 1989 when Deadwood legalized gambling. It actually opened in 1991, as the Rapid City Journal notes. The sign above the entrance also shows that it was established in 1991, as seen in the image to the right.