Friday, July 8, 2005 | 9:21 a.m.
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Oklahoma-based American Indian tribes are leaning on 200-year-old treaties to regain land in Ohio for more modern motives: Money.
The Eastern Shawnee tribe sued the state last week, demanding title to 146 square miles of western Ohio along with back taxes and other money the state has made since acquiring it. The suit also seeks hunting rights on another 11,315 square miles.
In announcing the suit, members of the tribe spoke about traditional songs lamenting their removal from Ohio in 1831 and promising a return. The Eastern Shawnee readily acknowledge, however, that they'll settle for a piece of land worth building a casino on.
"The land is very sacred," Chief Charles Enyart said. "We're also business people."
Observers say land claims such as those by the Eastern Shawnee and the swelling revenue of Indian gaming are results of Congress' decision 17 years ago to condone and start regulating the tribal gambling, coupled with increased pressure on tribes to be self-sufficient.
Gradually shrinking federal budget allotments are pushing tribes that might have resisted gaming for cultural or other reasons to rethink it, experts and tribe members said. The Bureau of Indian Affairs doesn't track overall federal funding of tribes because the money comes through different agencies.
But there's no mistaking the notion that tribes will have to generate more money, tribal members said.
"That's forcing them to look at casinos and other economic opportunities that, quite frankly, never would've been considered 10 years ago," said Larry Divine, who serves on the history and culture committees for the Wyandotte nation of Oklahoma.
With their remote locations and lack of a substantial tax base, though, many Indian nations have little alternative, said Rob Porter, a Syracuse University law professor and expert in Indian land claims.
"Some of these very small tribes with no resources of their own, they're put in a position of, 'Why wouldn't you?"' Porter said. "I mean, I don't think anybody can be faulted for trying to improve their economic condition."
It's not just gambling. Also last week, the Ottawa tribe of Oklahoma sued for rights to part of an Ohio-owned island in Lake Erie in a bid to start a small commercial fishing operation.
"We feel that this is an opportunity for us to re-establish our roots and to establish economic development in that area," said Larry Angelo, an Ottawa tribal historian and descendant of chief Pontiac.
And the Navajo nation has significant energy-production companies in the Southwest.
But gambling is the richest, most realistic option for most tribes. The National Indian Gaming Commission will release figures later this month in line with industry estimates of $19 billion in revenue from last year, up from $100 million a year in 1988, said Shawn Pensoneau, a commission spokesman.
Last month in New York, the Shinnecock tribe filed a claim to 3,600 acres on Long Island as part of its bid to open a casino near the Hamptons. That filing came days before a federal appeals court overturned a $248 million award to the Cayuga tribe of New York as compensation for land taken in treaties.
Attempts to put resort-style casinos in the Catskills and near Denver and Oakland, Calif., drew the ire of Republican John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. At a hearing last week, McCain criticized the spread of Nevada-style operations run by tribes outside their reservations.
Indian gaming began to grow from its bingo-parlor origins thanks to the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, said Mason Morriset, a Seattle lawyer who specializes in Indian land claims and represents the Eastern Shawnee in their Ohio case. The act instilled rigid oversight controls, namely by creating the gaming commission, but it also opened the door for large-scale projects in certain circumstances.
It just took time for tribes to take advantage of it, Morriset said.
"It took a while for people to sort of realize what was possible," he said.
Much of the gaming wealth goes to the few tribes with the biggest operations, namely those close to large cities. Still, the mega-success of resorts like the Mashantucket Pequot's Foxwoods Resort Casino and the Mohegan tribe's Mohegan Sun, both of which opened in Connecticut in the 1990s, showed smaller tribes the potential, Morriset said.
Now, he said, "They see places where there is no gaming, where they have a market, and they have a legitimate claim and they want to try it."
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