More Slot Machines for Tribes, and $1 Billion for California

SACRAMENTO, June 21 - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger struck a bargain on Monday with five California Indian tribes that will provide the state with a quick cash infusion of $1 billion while permitting a sizable expansion of tribal gambling operations in the state.

The deal is a sharp reversal for the governor, who in his campaign last fall demonized the tribes as a "special interest" that did not pay a fair share of its billions of dollars in gambling revenue to the state.

The five tribes that signed new compacts with the state own something less than 20 percent of the slot machines now in operation at 50 Indian casinos around California. Mr. Schwarzenegger said he hoped the dozens of other casino-operating tribes would reach similar agreements with the state.

Deal Is Near on Casinos in California

LOS ANGELES, June 16 - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is about to conclude a deal with California Indian tribes that will bring a major expansion of gambling on tribal lands while providing the state a bigger share of their casino revenues.

The agreement would essentially undo compacts between the state and the tribes negotiated five years ago by former Gov. Gray Davis, under which the tribes pay virtually nothing to the state from their estimated $5 billion in annual gambling revenues.

State officials said Wednesday that they hoped to announce an agreement next Monday with five tribes that would bring the state an immediate infusion of $1 billion in badly needed cash and annual payments of several hundred million dollars for the next 25 years.

When the Bush Energy Policy Confronts Ancient Art

PRICE, Utah - Blaine Miller, a quiet, slow-talking 57-year-old archaeologist, has made a career of studying the haunting scenes of net-wielding hunters and sinuous horned snakes on the smooth rock faces of Nine Mile Canyon near here. His colleagues consider him a leading expert on the 400- to 1,500-year-old images etched and daubed on the canyon walls. But Mr. Miller's bosses at the Bureau of Land Management barred him from evaluating recent proposals for natural gas exploration around the canyon after a gas company executive complained about his work.

Mr. Miller said he had sought more stringent protections for the rock art than the government eventually required. His bosses said he had the appearance of a conflict of interest.

The quiet drama that has played out in the last year because of Mr. Miller's removal from the development review reflects not just the polarization typical of battles between industry and preservationists, but also the pressures on the regulators controlling federal land.

Catskills Casino Advances in Deal Between Tribe and State

A $500 million Las Vegas-style casino in the Catskills moved significantly closer to reality yesterday when the Pataki administration signed an agreement with the Cayuga Indian Nation, settling the tribe's 200-year-old claim to 64,000 acres in upstate New York in exchange for casino revenues.

If it is built, the casino in Monticello in Sullivan County will be the closest one to New York City, only 90 miles away, and will dwarf the four Indian gambling halls already operating in the state. With analysts estimating that it could pull in $1 billion a year in revenues, the casino would likely pose significant competition to the Atlantic City gambling resort and the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut.

Developer Unearths Burial Ground and Stirs Up Anger Among Indians

LOS ANGELES, May 28 - With the precision of a watchmaker, an archaeologist clasped a small paintbrush and gently swept the brown, sandy dirt off the spine of a Native American woman buried some 200 years ago.

From the condition of the bones, the archaeologist, Penny Minturn, deduced that the woman was 30 to 40 years old when she died, had suffered from arthritis and had recently given birth, and that her diet had probably consisted of shellfish, native plants, nuts and berries.