So far, casino plan winning few supporters
Posted on Saturday, April 28, 2007
MUSKOGEE, Okla. — The Indian tribe hoping to establish a casino in Fort Smith must persuade federal officials to set aside overwhelmingly negative public comments, including opposition from other tribes, if its request is to succeed.
A review of the documents amassed by the eastern Oklahoma office of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs shows that the agency received almost 500 letters and more than 2, 000 petition signatures in opposition to a land-trust application by the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians.
The tribe responded by saying many of the opponents’ arguments should be disregarded as they “use myths and racist epithets against Native Americans” to make their claims.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs’ eastern Oklahoma office director, Jeanette Hanna, has said she’ll weigh public comments along with other information when she makes a recommendation this summer to the secretary of the Department of the Interior.
It could take years for a final decision to follow, she said.
Fort Smith developer Bennie Westphal and the Oklahomabased tribe want to build a $ 131 million casino and hotel on 10 acres on the city’s downtown riverfront. The tribe petitioned to place the site into trust under federal Indian gambling laws, a necessary step to get permission to build and operate a casino.
The tribe contends the casino site is next to its former reservation land in Arkansas, which was part of an 1817 treaty between the United States and the Cherokee. The U. S. Department of the Interior recognizes the Keetoowah tribe as one of three categories of Cherokee ancestry, but the Cherokee Nation disputes that the Keetoowah can lay claim to the land in question.
In addition, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma has informed Indian Affairs that it sees the Keetoowah application as an encroachment into its own territory. Approving the application would create “a whole host of new wrongs” against the Choctaw and would be unprecedented to allow “jumping across state lines” to establish such an operation, Chief Gregory E. Pyle stated in his letter.
The Choctaw operate a casino across the state line in Oklahoma that would compete with the Keetoowah casino, if approved.
Keetoowah Chief George Wickliffe said in a response that the Keetoowah casino should offer no threat to the Choctaw casino, which has an advantage in clientele, marketing power and business history.
Of the documents the agency disclosed on Friday, only one letter aside from the Keetoowah’s own application appeared to take a stance in favor of the proposal. It was from Sebastian County Assessor Becky Yandell, who told the agency that a planned resort development, hotel and casino “would give Fort Smith the shot in the arm needed for further economic development.”
The rest of the letters that take a position on the proposal were opposed, many saying a casino would hurt the Fort Smith community.
“It would also bring the type of people who would only add to any problems Fort Smith may have,” said Gene Barnett Jr. of Fort Smith.
Westphal said in an interview Friday that proponents of the casino mailed a stack of support letters to the Bureau of Indian Affairs on Thursday. Officials in Oklahoma had not received them by Friday. Some of the correspondence in opposition to the proposal is in form letters, but many Fort Smith residents wrote in their own words, sometimes handwritten, to voice their opposition. “When the bulldozers arrive to plow the gentle earth, this body of one will have to be forcibly removed by local authorities,” said Constance Poindexter Durkin of Fort Smith. Included in the binders of letters received is one expressing strongly worded opposition from former Gov. Mike Huckabee.
The federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 states that the Interior secretary would determine whether a tribe in the Keetoowah’s situation would be allowed to establish a gambling operation “but only if the governor of the state in which the gaming activity is to be conducted concurs in the secretary’s determination.”
However, federal officials have said that the governor’s approval is not necessary and that the department looks at many factors.
Wickliffe said in his letter that in recent years, approvals of offreservation gambling have been made over the objections of governors.
Gov. Mike Beebe said last week that he opposes the casino proposal and would likely offer a formal comment to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. But he hasn’t done so yet, said Matt DeCample, his spokesman.
Wickliffe pointed out in his response that Fort Smith sells itself on its “wild and woolly” past.
“Fort Smith has embraced its historic reputation as an entertainment destination by designating Miss Laura’s, the only brothel listed on the National Register of Historic [Places as ] its welcome center for tourists,” Wickliffe said. That would be just a couple of blocks from the casino, he said.
He wrote that tribes such as the Keetoowah Band, “particularly those left landless by brutal federal action decades ago,” should have the right to consider placing land in trust.
An example of what he described as a “racist epithet” was a letter that described biblical principles against gambling and included a reference to the term “infidel.” Wickliffe said that leaves the implication that the Keetoowah “are infidels if their application is approved by the [Bureau of Indian Affairs ] and a casino is opened in Fort Smith.”
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