The Coquille Indian Tribe has tried for over a decade to reconstitute land that currently houses a bowling alley into a tribal casino but those efforts have failed until recently. Now four other Native American tribes are opposing the project as they say it will adversely impact their neighboring casinos.
Let’s go through the main concerns and analyze their potential impact on top-rated sportsbooks.
Opposition Unites
Oregon’s Coquille Tribe has had its eyes on building a new casino on land that would be put into a federal trust for tribal development. But those plans have rankled two fellow Oregon tribes and two tribes from neighboring California. The project has been repeatedly turned down by the Department of the Interior but a new regime under the Biden administration has already given preliminary approvals, and final approvals are on the horizon.
The major issue is that the land is over 150 miles away from the Coquille reservation and many in Indian Country believe it could set a dangerous precedent for other tribes to expand their gaming operations directly in competition with local tribal casinos already established.
Now that final approvals loom, chairs of the Karuk Tribe, the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, Elk Valley Rancheria and the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation sent Haaland have banded together to fight the Coquille’s casino plans and have sent a letter to U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
The letter contends that the Coquille’s casino project, dubbed The Cedars at Bear Creek, would not only be in breach of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act but would cause “irreparable harm” to regional tribes.
People Are Talking
Stephen Dow Beckham, an expert on Native American history and the Pamplin Chair of History at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, has publicly spoken on the topic and said the proposal was “wrongheaded.”
“Never have I seen a case of more blatant, glaring reservation shopping than the proposal of the Coquille Tribe to reach 168 miles from North Bend, Oregon into the treaty cession area of the Rogue River tribes to try to justify a second casino and entertainment venue,” Beckham remarked at the time.
“The Coquille Tribe was not an aboriginal tribe in the Rogue River Valley. It lived over on the coast of Oregon. This project will have deleterious impacts on neighboring tribes,” he continued. “The impacts of the Coquille casino will undermine the delivery of services to the Karuk, the Klamath, the Tolowa, the Smith River, and the Cow Creek peoples; all so that another tribe from North Bend, Oregon can have a second casino and hotel.”
Russell Attebery, the chair of the Karuk Tribe in California; Jeff Grubbe, the former chair of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians in California; and Marshall Pierite, the chair of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana, co-wrote an op-ed piece that called on President Biden to reject the proposed casino and “stop this policy that will cause casino gaming to cascade nationally without any bounds, hurting historically marginalized Indigenous peoples the hardest.”
One tribe in particular that could be seriously impacted is the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, owners and operators of the Cow Creek’s Seven Feathers Casino, located just 70 miles from Coquille’s proposed Cedars at Bear Creek project. Carla Keene, chair of the Cow Creek Tribe said a casino 70 miles away could decrease its casino revenues by 25% or more.
“It is a slippery slope,” Keene said. “I would hope that Secretary Haaland would see the necessity to say ‘no.’ This is not a good idea for the tribes, and this is going to cause harm. The Bureau of Indian Affairs is responsible for all tribes across the United States, not just one, and this is affecting more than just Cow Creek and it is only benefiting one tribe.”
