Indian Reservations

Members of Colombia's largest rebel group live openly on or near several Indian reservations in western Venezuela with at least the tacit approval of President Hugo Chavez, indigenous leaders here charge.

On an uninviting swatch of arid desert, marked by sagebrush and mesquite trees just east of the California border, the winds of war blew together the fates of two beleaguered peoples. In a now familiar tale, 120,000 Japanese Americans were removed from the West Coast and relocated to internment camps after Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent U.S. entry into World War II. But in a little known piece of that history, the U.S.

When James Ramos became chairman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians this spring, he inherited serious problems of violence and drugs on the reservation. Tribal members had been linked to the Mexican Mafia, federal authorities had raided homes and the private security force had been criticized for being too lenient with some members. Rather than deny or ignore what was going on, Ramos cracked down on crime, making it his priority.

Parolees on the Soboba Indian reservation have been ordered to leave or face possible arrest after the state corrections department said Wednesday that the area isn't safe for its officers to enter. "Due to escalating violence, we have asked our parolees to immediately leave the reservation," said Gordon Hinkle, deputy press secretary for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. "Statute allows us to relocate any offender for their safety or the safety of others."

The dirt track we're bumping along doesn't qualify as a road -- even here on the sprawling, remote Navajo reservation. Next to me, behind the wheel of an old pickup, Christian Bigwater downshifts as he maneuvers over and around the rocks in our way. "You're in for a treat," he says as he stops at a point beyond which even he won't risk driving. From here, we hike through scraggly pines and yucca to a promontory from which the treat -- Canyon de Chelly -- reveals itself.

The Southern California lawyer who successfully prosecuted top Enron executives has been hired by the Navajo tribal government to seek a full cleanup of the old uranium mines contaminating the country's largest reservation. John C. Hueston, who gained fame for his questioning of Enron founder Kenneth L. Lay, contacted the tribe in November after reading articles in The Times about the poisoning of the Navajo homeland as the government mined uranium for use in nuclear weapons.

LADIES and gentlemen, boys, girls and bored gamblers: Let me remind you that in just 17 days, barring construction delays, you and I will be able to slide on booties and tread upon the Hualapai Nation's wacky new tourist attraction, the glass-floored Skywalk, which will jut out over a western edge of the Grand Canyon, about 120 miles east of Las Vegas. Of course, if you don't find the Wile E. Coyote perspective or the $74.95 price tag tempting, you may be inclined to turn away.

Like most of their neighbors in the sprawling, ramshackle Oasis Mobile Home Park, the Aguilars have no heat, no hot water. On cold nights, the family of eight stays warm by bundling up in layers of sweaters and sleeps packed together in two tiny rooms. Bathing is a luxury that requires using valuable propane to boil gallons of water. So the farmworker clan spends a lot of time dirty. Jose Aguilar, a wiry 9-year-old, has found a way around the bath problem. He just waits until dinner.

A grim-faced George AuClair Jr. wandered his 25-acre patch of desert looking every inch the broken man. "I'm ashamed of what happened here, but you can't lie about it," said the Torres Martinez tribal member. "You have to own up when you do wrong." Not far away, bulldozers piled up mountains of junk from AuClair's illegal dump, a dump so toxic it has been declared a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency. He now faces millions of dollars in fines. AuClair's site isn't unusual.

Deals to add up to 17,000 slot machines at four Southern California tribal casinos passed the Legislature on Thursday, setting the stage for giant casinos with twice as many slots as the biggest in Las Vegas. Within minutes, union leaders raised the possibility of mounting a repeal campaign. The Assembly passed compacts that Gov.