Eastern Door Volume 7 Number 49

Volume 7 Number 49

January 15, 1999

Akwesasne Mohawk Casino Looking For Staff
By: Greg Horn

Soon the dealing of cards, the spinning roulette wheels and the roll of dice will be heard in the new casino in Akwesasne. No set date has been set for the official opening but it will be sometime March, just two months away.

The Akwesasne Mohawk Casino is currently in the process of recruiting personnel for their Grand Opening. There is a total of over 1,000 jobs available, 50 percent of which will be Native. The Casino will have an estimated annual payroll of $30 million US.

The Casino is currently under construction and is located on Route 37 just west of the bridges over the Racquette River in Hogansburg. When the Casino is completed it will cover 76,000 square feet at a cost of $30 million US. The Casino will be run by the Akwesasne Tribal Council and a management company called the Massena Management LLC. Massena Management LLC is made up of the various investors, all non-locals, who have fronted the money for the construction of this Casino.

The Massena Management LLC and the Akwesasne Tribal Council have an agreement by which once the investors are paid back their original investment from the Tribal Council, they will step out of the picture. By this time, there should be enough Native people trained for the various jobs that the Casino will be virtually 100 per cent Native run.

The Casino will have 50,000 square feet of gaming space, which translates into 90 table games. The table games include Blackjack, Roulette, Craps and three kinds of Poker: Pai Gow, Caribbean Stud and Let It Ride. The management expect an influx of Canadian gamblers once they open. One reason is they offer Craps, which is illegal in Canada.

Since Slot Machines are illegal in New York State, the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino will have 1200 Video Lottery Terminals (VLT). These VLT’s will be something like the ones run by Lotto Quebec.

The Casino will also have a Buffet which will seat 180 people, a snack bar, gift shop and an Entertainment Lounge.

The management of the Casino would like to open the Casino with approximately 600 dealers and they currently have 450 to 500. Kenny Medders is the man who is responsible for training the Craps dealers. Originally from Alabama, Medders has worked in many casinos across the United States. He has worked at various casinos in Nevada and was instrumental in the implementation of a casino in Mississippi. He has also worked for Grand Casinos as a trainer for their dice games.

Medders has nothing but praise for the people he is currently training for the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino, "They are as receptive as any group that I have ever trained."

He feels that several of his students have the skill and ability to open the Casino as supervisors and will recommend that be done. He also goes on about how dedicated these people are, to go through three hours of training a day for four weeks, while at the same time holding down another job and, for some, having to take care of their families. When the Casino opens in March, all the hard work that these people have gone through will pay off.

Through his experience working at other casinos, Medders believes that the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino will have a tremendously positive impact on the local economy.

Both Medders and Allison Calkinis of New Mexico, who works out of the Marketing Department of the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino, feel that people should not look at working at the Casino as just another job but rather as a career. This is because there is plenty of room for advancement in this line of work. Many people who start work at a casino as a dealer and quickly learn the trade can easily move up to the various management jobs within a casino.

All jobs with the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino have many benefits including unemployment insurance, workman’s compensation, medical, paid time off, overtime and holiday premium pay. For a list of available jobs contact the Akwesasne Casino Training Center at (518) 358-3230.

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Witnesses to a robbery
By: Kenneth Deer

Like a scene out of Crime Stoppers, two Kahnawakero:non had an up close encounter with a real armed robbery. Tommy Diabo and Isabelle Newashish were at the check-out counter at the IGA in Lasalle Wednesday evening when it was held up by a lone gunman.

"I was just punching my PIN number in the Interac machine when I looked up and saw a masked man with a gun in his hand," said Diabo. The thief held a .45 caliber handgun in his right hand pointing up to the ceiling.

"He told the cashiers to empty the cash which the first one did. She emptied the cash tray into a bag. The cashier I was next to was so nervous and scared, she couldn’t open her register. I had to tell to open the cash and get the guy out of here."

She finally opened the cash and emptied the tray. The thief was very calm during the whole incident. He ran out the door and around the back.

"We got a real good look at the guy even though he was wearing a beige nylon stocking over his face. You could see he had a mustache," said Diabo.

Diabo, who was about eight feet away, described him as about 5’-7" tall, wearing a brown suede jacket with a basketball net artwork on the back, jeans and sneakers. He spoke good English.

"He was very calm and never pointed the gun at anybody. I got look at the gun and I’m sure it was real," said Diabo.

After the robber left, several people started crying and reacting to the robbery. There were about 16 people in the immediate area of the cash. Other people in the store didn’t notice that anything took place. One other couple from Kahnawake were shopping in the store at the time but never noticed the robbery.

The hold up took about five minutes which felt like a long time. The police got there about 15 minutes later. Diabo wrote a report to the police on a brown paper bag.

An hour later, Newashish was still shaken by the incident as she and Diabo reported this story to The Eastern Door.

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Kanehsatake Mohawk Police Chief indicted
By: Greg Horn

Barry Commando, 37, the Chief of the Kanehsatake Mohawk Police (KMP) has been suspended and now faces nine charges of theft and fraud against the Mohawk Council of Kanehsatake.

Commando was hired to build a police force for the community and has been the Chief of Police since the inception of the Kanehsatake Mohawk Police in May 1997.

Between September 16, 1997 and August 21, 1998, Commando allegedly embezzled between $5,000 and $10,000 from the Mohawk Council of Kanehsatake for his personal gain, according to the indictment brought against him.

Commando had requested cash advances for travel that he never took, submitted false gas receipts and rented a car that was allegedly for business purposes. This rented car, which was a 1998 Nissan Maxima, was in fact used by Commando and his wife for personal purposes.

Kanehsatake Grand Chief James Gabriel as well as the Mohawk Council of Kanehsatake became suspicious of Commando this past summer.

In order for impartiality Gabriel asked the Montreal Urban Community (MUC) Police to conduct the investigation, rather than the Surete du Quebec (SQ). This is because since the inauguration of the KMP, they have worked closely with the SQ on various cases.

Following several months of investigation by the Internal Affairs Division of the MUC Police, an investigator met with a deputy public prosecutor in St. Jerome. To remain impartial the deputy referred the investigator to a colleague at the Palais de Justice de Montreal. Shortly before Christmas a Judge authorized the indictment.

In mid-October of 1998, Barry Commando was suspended with pay from his duties with the KMP. On Friday, January 8, 1999, the Mohawk Council of Kanehsatake passed a resolution permanently removing Commando from his position as Police Chief. For the time being Terry Isaac is the Acting Chief of the Kanehsatake Mohawk Police.

Commando was scheduled to appear in St. Jerome court on January 13 to face these charges; he did not appear and was represented by his lawyer, François Garneau. The next court appearance for Barry Commando will be March 25.

To clarify a point, when this was first announced late last week, some people thought that it was Peacekeeper Chief Warren Lahache who was suspended. This, of course, is not true and Lahache has been fielding questions and calls from concerned community members.

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What you always wanted to know… or not
Some of the great mysteries of life are, "How did they build the Great Pyramids of Egypt?" "What happened to the lost tribe of Israel?" and, "How many kidney beans are there in a single loaf of cornbread?"

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