RINCON CHAIRMAN LOOKS TO FUTURE AFTER BARRIER TO RESERVATION EXPANSION LIFTED
Bo Mazzetti is the tribal chairman for the Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians, an Indigenous community whose reservation is located in North County.
He is also a founding member of the Southern California Tribal Chairman’s Association, a nonprofit created in 1972 to support tribal members and descendants of the 24 federally recognized tribes in the region.
As the year comes to a close, Mazzetti shared his thoughts on how the county Board of Supervisors’ decision to remove its blanket barrier to fee-totrust applications earlier this year is impacting the Rincon tribe.
Through the Bureau of Indian Affairs fee-to-trust process, federally recognized tribes across the country are able to purchase land near their reservations and then transfer that into sovereign control that they can develop for housing, businesses and tribal services like medical centers.
San Diego County’s opposition to tribal expansion began in the mid-1990s, but since November 2000, the board had a policy to oppose all fee-to-trust applications submitted by local tribes.
The original measure was in response to a surge in “casino construction, accompanied by what they considered inadequate mitigation of off-site impacts,” according to an article in The San Diego Union-Tribune the following year.
Without approval from the Board of Supervisors, it can be overwhelmingly expensive and time-consuming for tribes to add land to their reservations, Mazzetti said back in May. County opposition in the past made a process that could take as little as two years instead take more than a decade.
Q:
After the county’s
decision earlier this year to lift the blanket ban on fee-to-trust applications, how has it impacted Rincon?