During the winter, when snowbirds fill local hotels, it is hard to find a spot in the Paradise Casino parking lot on some nights, and the casino generates an estimated US$45 million a year in net revenue for the Quechans.
Jackson is not always against new development. The Quechans are considering building a second casino on the California side of the border, and he has faced protests of his own from tribal elders who argue the US$200 million project also happens to be on sacred ground.
In June, the Quechan police force arrested tribe members protesting at the site of the new casino. Yuma officials like Prochaska call that hypocrisy, but Jackson says it is not up to them to decide what is sacred to Indians.
The son and grandson of tribal leaders, Jackson, 60, said that in the past, "the government gave us funds just to survive and they didn't hear a word from our people." Now, he said, local leaders like Rosevear have to come to him. "They come, smile, and shake my hand but they don't like it. Too bad. That is how the process is now."
Glamis Gold, the Canadian mining company that sought to build the California mine, learned that the hard way several years ago. After investing US$15 million, the company watched Jackson tie up the project with regulators. It was finally killed when Gray Davis, then the governor, issued an emergency order.
Charles Jeannes, an executive at Glamis at the time, said the company tried to negotiate with Jackson. "We'd told them we'd discuss any number of kinds of compensation," said Jeannes, now executive vice president of Goldcorp, which acquired Glamis in 2006. "But we never got specific because they made it clear they wouldn't accept the mine."
Jackson has a slightly different recollection. "They came and offered money, trucks and other things," he said. "I told them I'm not going to take one penny, and to get out of my office."
In Quechan lore, dreams are sacred - a literal path to knowledge and power. So perhaps it is fitting that the refinery has been a business dream in Arizona for two decades, a long-talked-about project that, if completed, would be the first new refinery constructed in the US in more than 30 years.
It is also a vision that could prove hugely profitable. Refining margins in the Southwest are among the healthiest in the country, while gasoline demand in Arizona, Nevada and California has been growing at twice the national average. And until Jackson and the Quechans challenged their plans, the 567-hectare site seemed like the rare spot in America where a refinery might actually be welcomed.
The last fruit orchard on the site died out decades ago, after the federal government acquired the land and bought up the water rights. The nearest homes are miles away. Now the silence is broken only by the sound of passing freight trains and the occasional rumble from the Army's Yuma Proving Ground.
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