Interior Department caught between tribes in casino battles

WASHINGTON – Nearly a decade ago, members of a northern California Native American tribe, the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians, made a big bet when they bought 160 untouched acres north of San Francisco to erect a $700 million casino resort it had no approval to build.

Today, it is one of three tribal casino projects mired in controversy and awaiting a go-ahead from the Interior Department. The projects, which the tribes say are allowed under an exception in federal law, have set off a fierce debate about tribal sovereignty and have turned tribes opposed to the projects against an administration that has championed Native American interests.

“The Department of the Interior has worked through a secretive, backdoor, fast-track process,” said Anthony Roberts, chair of another California tribe, the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, which opposes the Scotts Valley casino. “Unfortunately, Yocha Dehe’s been left out.”

Several opposing tribes have sued to halt progress on two of the three proposed casinos. In one suit, a judge recently granted a temporary injunction that paused any plans for one of the casinos before a hearing next month. It is unclear whether the battle will be resolved before the end of the Biden administration and what the Trump administration might do about it.

Scotts Valley and the two other tribes seeking casinos – Koi Nation in Sonoma County, California, and the Coquille Indian Tribe in southwestern Oregon – lost their land in the 1950s and 1960s when the U.S. government terminated the federal recognition of many Native American tribes. In more recent decades, the government reversed course and recognized the three tribes, but their federal land was never restored.

Federal law allows tribes to build casinos on tribal land acquired before 1988 and makes an exception for disadvantaged tribes, including Scotts Valley and the other two, that no longer have their federal land. The law, however, requires tribes to show modern and historical connections to the sites they propose to build on.

Kathryn R.L. Rand and Steven Light, law professors at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in the Indian nations gaming and governance program, said it is clear the tribes are disadvantaged. Less clear are their connections to the land.

Neighboring tribes in California and Oregon accuse the three tribes of the equivalent of “reservation shopping” – choosing land in highly populated areas where casinos would be more profitable. Each tribe has selected land more than 50 miles away from its current base. The Scotts Valley casino would be built in Vallejo, in Solano County, nearly 100 miles from its base.

Yocha Dehe argues that the Scotts Valley land is squarely in its territory and that the plans would destroy archaeological finds, including prehistoric artifacts and most likely some remains of its tribal ancestors, for an eight-story structure complete with restaurants, bars and 3,500 slot machines.

“Our ultimate goal is to protect those precious resources within our homelands,” Roberts said. “Once they’re gone, they’re gone forever.”

Yocha Dehe and other tribes fighting against the projects have launched fierce lobbying campaigns in an effort to reach the administration. State and local officials also say their concerns about big, new gambling sites in their communities have gone unrecognized by the federal government.

The Scotts Valley tribe and officials at the Interior Department and the Bureau of Indian Affairs declined to comment publicly. But the Bureau of Indian Affairs, in summaries this year for all three projects, said the purpose of the casinos was “to facilitate tribal self-sufficiency, self-determination and economic development.”

“The tribe relies on federal funding to support tribal government functions and the needs of its members,” the bureau’s environmental assessment said of Scotts Valley. “However, federal funding is insufficient to meet tribal member needs.”

Rand and Light said that although the Biden administration had taken steps to make it easier and faster for land to be restored to tribes, gambling was still their economic engine. “It would be impossible to overstate how significant gaming has been for hundreds of tribes across the U.S., including 75-plus tribes in California,” Light said.

“The Biden administration may also be motivated by the idea that some of these tribes have been treated unfairly and waited too long for these decisions to be made,” Rand said.

The Koi Nation, like Scotts Valley, has been accused by a neighboring tribe, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, of usurping its ancestral land. Greg Sarris, chair of Graton Rancheria, said it was a slippery slope to permit tribes to claim lucrative land for gambling when they cannot prove strong historical ties.

“It’s not fair that some tribes, their aboriginal territory is closer to urban areas,” Sarris said. “It’s the luck of the draw. But you start playing that game and saying, ‘Well, this one should be closer’ – that’s a can of worms you cannot put the lid on. Where does this end?”

Dino Beltran, vice chair for the Koi Nation, countered that Graton Rancheria, which has a casino about 15 miles from the site where the Koi Nation seeks to build, was simply trying to protect its bottom line from a competitor.

“We’ve had our presence in Sonoma County for 3,000 years,” Beltran said, adding that Koi Nation’s casino proposal has the support of more than 80 other tribes.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and local officials have their own concerns about competition with other tribes as well as the impact on surrounding communities. Newsom’s office has sent letters to the Biden administration opposing the casinos in California and the casino in Oregon, which would be located less than 50 miles from the California border. In a follow-up letter this month, his office said that the Interior Department had demonstrated “serious deficiencies in its decision-making process,” including a “puzzling refusal” to sufficiently consult with other tribes.

Officials in Solano County said they did not know how they would handle the demands of Scotts Valley’s 24/7 casino in Vallejo, which would have a capacity for several thousand people. The city has a shortage of police officers, trouble maintaining roads and a large unhoused population, said Erin Hannigan, a county supervisor.

“They can’t manage,” Hannigan said of the city. “And then throw something in like a casino that could increase crime, could increase the disparities between those who have and those who have not.”

In Oregon, Gov. Tina Kotek asked for an extension to the timeline for decision-making on the casino for the Coquille Indian Tribe.

Kotek previously said she was opposed to the project. But the fight in Oregon is partly motivated by the fact that the Coquille tribe’s proposed casino would cut into the state’s billions of dollars in gambling revenue.

It is understandable that Oregon “would want to protect the status quo just like our other casino opponents,” Judy Farm, a spokesperson for the Coquille Indian Tribe, said in an email. Of those other opponents, she said tribes with casinos were only fighting to preserve their “distinct competitive advantage.”

The Biden administration is facing a ticking clock.

If both lawsuits move forward, the legal battles are likely to stretch beyond Inauguration Day, preventing the Biden administration from making a decision on the casinos.

Ideally, there would be continuity across administrations, Light said. But under the Trump administration, he said, “all bets are off.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.