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Even in California, where tribes don't hesitate to make claims to land that was never theirs, the West Sacramento casino proposal is in a class by itself. Not only is a citizens' group in West Sacramento fighting it, but eight other tribes in Northern California are also opposed. In a joint letter written in April of this year, the tribes said that if Upper Lake were allowed to "move its land base to any area it wanted, [it] would make a mockery of our own California Indian history and demographics and damage the credibility and legitimacy of tribes across the state."
IN YOUR FACE. For sheer audacity, it's hard to beat the shared vision of a Florida developer and an Oklahoma Indian tribe to build a casino in Kansas. The developer is Alan Ginsburg, who heads North American Sports Management (Noram), which has already cut casino development deals with tribes in five states. The tribe is the 3,900-member Wyandotte tribe of Oklahoma, which has a reservation in the state's northeast corner. Oklahoma prohibits Las Vegas--style casinos, and that is why the Wyandottes want a satellite reservation in Kansas, which does permit big-time gaming.
Because the tribe's ancestors lived in Kansas in the 19th century, it had little trouble persuading the BIA to place in trust an abandoned Masonic temple next to an Indian cemetery in downtown Kansas City, Kans., just across the street from city hall. That makes the old lodge and the small parcel around it eligible for Indian gaming.
Not that the Wyandottes and Ginsburg wanted to build a casino there. But they certainly got the authorities' attention. What they really wanted was a large tract somewhere in the metropolitan area. When negotiations stalled, the tribe moved temporary buildings onto the downtown property and threatened to open a minicasino. They also filed a lawsuit against 1,300 property owners in a nearby industrial district, charging that they are occupying land improperly taken from the tribe 200 years ago.
The Wyandottes' not-so-subtle pressure apparently worked. Local officials agreed to let the tribe build a casino and hotel on a 52-acre parcel on Wyandotte County's western edge. U.S. Representative Dennis Moore, the area's Democratic Congressman, has introduced legislation to bless the deal in Congress, thus bypassing the BIA. If approved, the tribe would then have three reservations--in two states.
NO TRIBE, NO PROBLEM. The casino envisioned by the Lytton Band of Pomo Indians is poised to become one of the most profitable in the country. Not bad for a clan of Indians that not long ago had neither a tribe nor a reservation.
In the early '50s the Lyttons consisted of two extended families, the Steeles and the Myerses, who were the sole occupants of a 50-acre reservation for homeless Indians north of Healdsburg, Calif. The families sometimes feuded, but they ultimately shared a common dream: they wanted to be landowners, not tenants on a reservation. In 1952 John and Dolores Myers wrote the BIA asking "to secure a patent fee or a deed to this property." The Steeles sent a similar letter: they, too, wanted the reservation land deeded to them personally.