The question has been lurking for years: Do Juaneno Indians want to build a casino on land leased by a Roman Catholic high school in San Juan Capistrano?
They would have to negotiate difficult bureaucratic hoops to develop a casino -- assuming they want to get into the gambling business.
But the casino possibility is being raised by boosters of Junipero Serra High School to call into question Juaneno Indians' opposition to the school's expansion plans.
Members of the tribe are fighting the $75-million plans to build athletic fields and a performing arts complex on their ancestors' graves. The 29-acre site, the Indians say, is better suited for a cultural center.
Juanenos and other critics of the school's development have mounted a pair of referendum petition drives to reverse the city's approval of the school project.
In response, Serra supporters are wrapping up a campaign to get referendum backers to change their minds by completing signature-withdrawal cards. As part of that campaign, JSerra boosters sent voters two mailers, one headlined "Schools Not Casinos."
The Juanenos have long been dogged by suggestions that they want to build a casino in south Orange County.
Juaneno member Rebecca Robles, president of a group that launched the referendum against Serra, said she is surprised that school boosters played the casino card. Since the Juaneno Band of Mission Indians are not a federally recognized tribe and don't have a reservation, Robles said they couldn't build a casino even if they wanted to.
But Cheryl Schmit, director of a Sacramento-based gambling watchdog group, said the Juanenos may be better poised now than ever to build a casino.
The Juanenos, she said, are one of several tribes that could benefit from a proposal in Congress requiring the Department of the Interior to review within a year a number of the most long-standing petitions for recognition. The Juanenos first petitioned the Bureau of Indian Affairs for federal recognition in 1982; a splinter group led by Sonia Johnston applied in 1996.
"It's not far-fetched at all to imagine one of these full-service, Las Vegas-style casinos in that urban area," said Schmit, of the Stand Up for California group.
Damien Shilo, chairman of the tribal faction that first petitioned for federal recognition, said the referendum drive suffered after Serra raised the casino issue.
