The dispute between the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and the Ho-Chunk Nation in Shawano County, Wisconsin now focuses on a date—October 1988. Properties acquired by tribes before that date can be used for gambling, but land acquired after that date require special permission to be used for gambling. The Stockbridge recently gave the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel documents indicating the land where Ho-Chunk operates a casino in Wittenberg was reacquired after that critical date. Ho-Chunk wants to begin a major expansion of that casino in December, but the Stockbridge claim that would cause its smaller casino near Wittenberg to lose $22 million a year, tribal officials said.
The documents the Stockbridge gave the newspaper indicate the Native American Church gave the 10-acre parcel to Ho-Chunk in 1969, with the requirement that housing be built on it within five years. Ho-Chunk lost the parcel in 1974, because the tribe did not build any housing there. But Ho-Chunk got the land back in 1989—past the federal deadline—so it can’t operate a casino there, the Stockbridge contend. However, Ho-Chunk officials said the tribe has continuously owned the land since 1969. Tribal spokesman Collin Price said the federal government declared the property to be reservation land in 1986 and the housing provision was dropped in the 1988 deed.
The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs agreed that the Ho-Chunk owned the land since 1969, and told the state as much when Ho-Chunk opened the casino in 2008. In February, Wisconsin Administration Secretary Scott Neitzel wrote a letter to the Stockbridge stating, “Unless or until the appropriate agencies of the federal government reverse the existing determination, the state of Wisconsin finds that the land is eligible for gaming.”
But Stockbridge General Counsel Dennis Puzz claims the BIA did not look at the issue in depth in 2008, because the state worked with the bureau’s Ashland office, not its Washington, D.C. headquarters. Puzz said the Ashland office, in a brief two-paragraph letter, did not thoroughly consider the history of the deed.
The Stockbridge recently notified the state it may not make its nearly $1 million payment to the state by June 30. The tribe also filed paperwork indicating it may sue the state and the Ho-Chunk in federal court in Madison.
Furthermore, the Stockbridge said the Ho-Chunk casino expansion will be too large and make too much money to be considered an “ancillary facility.” But Ho-Chunk argue the expansion meets the ancillary designation because a hotel and restaurant and other businesses will operate on the same land parcel.
