Indians Claim land Out of State to Avoid Oklahoma Laws

• Originally published in the Denver Post August 16, 2004

Copyright 2004 The Denver Post

Indians' leveraged efforts for casinos reach beyond Colo. At least four tribes are seeking to escape tight Oklahoma laws by claiming land elsewhere in an effort to cash in on gambling.

By Mike Soraghan Denver Post Washington Bureau

Washington - In the mid-1800s, the U.S. government marched thousands of Indians out of their homes and into the Oklahoma Territory, packing them into a dusty land that white settlers didn't want at the time.

Now, many tribes are trying to go back to their homelands - and bring Las Vegas-style gambling with them.

At least four Oklahoma tribes are asserting claims to land in other states where they want to build casinos. Among them is the unified Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes, which are working with developers to build a casino on the outskirts of Denver.

The pattern is the same. The tribe asserts a claim to hundreds or even millions of acres in another state, usually land already developed and occupied by businesses and homeowners.

But the tribes say they'll give up most of the land they're claiming if they can build a casino instead.

The trend toward out-of-state casinos is driven by Oklahoma's strict gambling laws and competition, say tribal law and gambling experts in Oklahoma and the affected states. Oklahoma law doesn't allow tribes to have Las Vegas-style gambling. Instead, they may offer a form of high-

stakes electronic bingo, not as profitable as slots. Casino gambling is permitted in most of the other states, which means tribes could do it, too.

It's also driven by competition. The former Indian territory has 39 tribes in the state; at least 23 offer gambling. They're competing for the gambling dollars of 3.5 million residents. The out-of-state proposals are close to major metropolitan areas.

"It's simply pursuing new opportunities. If you're in Oklahoma, your opportunities are limited," said Robert Odawi Porter, law professor at Syracuse University College of Law. "Anyone who can make a connection to their native land is a good businessman."

In New York, Oklahoma's Seneca-Cayuga Tribe has worked with developer Thomas C. Wilmot on opening a casino in Sennett or Rochester.

In Pennsylvania, the Delaware Nation of Oklahoma filed a lawsuit in January claiming 315 acres near Allentown were wrongly taken from the tribe more than 200 years ago. The tribe is seeking replacement land to build a casino.

In Ohio, the Eastern Shawnee Tribe is preparing a land claim of at least 4 million acres, and seeking to build five to seven resort casino sites.

The Cheyenne-Arapaho are working with Longmont venture capitalist Steve Hillard on a proposal called the Homecoming Project. It involves permission to build a $150 million casino near Denver International Airport in exchange for giving up a 27 million-acre land claim.

"There's no single unified group working behind these tribes," said Kirke Kickingbird, an Oklahoma lawyer and a member of the Kiowa tribe who used to run the Native American Legal Resource Center at the Oklahoma City University School of Law. "There's usually an investor who sees an opportunity."

The out-of-state claims are part of a surge in tribal casino proposals across the country. New York has plans for other Indian casinos in the Catskills, and in Rhode Island voters will decide on a casino to be jointly run by Harrah's Entertainment and Indians.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed a deal that will bring expanded Indian casinos in return for $1 billion in annual revenue. Many of the tribes want to build their casinos off their reservations and near urban areas.

The governors of Colorado, Ohio and Pennsylvania are fighting the casino proposals. The Department of the Interior has never approved a casino for a tribe from another state.

But, says Terry Casey, spokesman for the developers of the Ohio proposal, "there's nothing in the law to prohibit it."

At a congressional hearing last month, Aurene Martin, Interior's deputy assistant secretary for Indian affairs, said off-

reservation and out-of-state Indian casinos were receiving "considerable attention" in the department. Martin said the department has decided to deal with them individually rather than develop a blanket policy.

For Oklahoma, it goes back to 1830, when President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. Indians from the Eastern United States were moved to the Indian territory, both willingly and unwillingly.

"Oklahoma was the dumping ground for all these Indian nations," Porter said.

Hillard said the Cheyenne and Arapaho were driven out of Colorado after the 1859 discovery of gold. Their removal to Oklahoma, he said, was part of a genocide perpetrated by the United States, culminated by the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre.

While not disputing the other tribes' claims, he said the government's treatment of the Cheyenne has been recognized as particularly heinous by the Interior Department and Congress.

Today, more than one-fifth of all American Indians in Oklahoma live in poverty. Casino gambling is a common but controversial remedy.

"A small number of Indian tribes have found economic success through gaming, but gaming has done little to change the crippling economic conditions found on most reservations," states a position paper from the National Congress of American Indians.

Rep. Bob Beauprez, R-Colo., whose district includes the site where the casino would be built, said casinos have failed as economic development.

"It smacks to me of being fairly self-serving for a few," Beauprez said. "My guess is there is a whole bunch of people who would benefit who are not Native Americans."

But Hillard says critics of Indian casinos are comparing a couple of decades of gambling to more than a century of official mistreatment of Native Americans.

``The proposition that Indians should stay poor but noble,'' Hillard said, ``only comes from those who haven't experienced poverty.''