In California, Indian tribes united over the drive to legalize Indian gaming in 2000, but have never been totally unified over gaming since.
A particularly divisive issue if that of off-reservation casinos, which critics call “reservation shopping.” The North Fork band of Mono Indians, whose reservation is small, rocky and unsuitable for development, seeks land off the reservation to be put into trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The Chukchansi Indians, who operate a successful casino 30 miles away, oppose this process, and use the pejorative “reservation shopping” term. The tribe and its financial backers, Brigade Capital Management, and others, recently spent $2 million to put the North Fork tribe’s gaming compact with the state on the November ballot. This makes one of the rare times that tribes have fought tribes on the ballot.
The BIA and the legislature and governor have already approved of the project, but the voters may have the last say (may have, because one never knows what the courts will do).
The Golden State has 109 tribes and 60 casinos, more of each than in any state in the union. Battles between have tribes wanting to stifle have not tribes are growing in the state and the nation.
One reason appears to be that gaming profits are no longer growing nationwide, meaning that more tribes must compete for a pie that isn’t any bigger.
Usually when tribes with remote reservations try to “reservation shop” they do their shopping near urban areas, which provokes tribes that are not close to urban areas to strike back.
The Bush administration didn’t favor applications that were more than “commuting” distance from a tribe’s original homeland. Under the Obama administration the rules have opened up with five off-reservation casinos approved since 2011.
One of the most well known cases is that of the Tohono O’odham Nation, which wants to build a casino in Glendale, near Phoenix, Arizona something that is opposed by the state government, city government, and almost all of the other gaming tribes in the state.
In Wisconsin the 9,000-member Menominee tribe has been given the federal go-ahead to build in Kenosha, 150 miles from its reservation, but quite near to Milwaukee. Governor Scott Walker is being urged to stop this casino from going forward, a power that governor’s have for off-reservation applications. Among those urging this action is the Forest County Potawatomi, who have a casino in Milwaukee, 150 miles from its own reservation, but opposes the new casino, which it saws will “suck as much money as it can,” from its gaming market.
Chukchansi’s opposition to the North Fork casino in California makes it the strangest of strange bedfellows with Stand Up for California, a watchdog group that usually opposes new casinos. It endorses that group’s assertion that if off-reservation casinos are not stopped that they will soon dot the state, and might very well open in Los Angeles, the huge urban area that doesn’t have any recognized federal tribes.
