Land buy may open door to tribal casino

The Colville Tribes’ $10.8 million purchase of 184 acres of

Franklin County farmland could set the stage for a future casino just northeast

of King City in Pasco.

Though opening a

casino would take “many years” since the land off Highway 395 would first need

to be transferred into federal trust status through the Bureau of Indian

Affairs or the U.S. Department of the Interior, said Rodney Cawston, chairman

of the business council for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville

Reservation.

“That can take some

time,” he said. “And then afterwards we apply for the permit for the casino,

and that can take some time as well.”

The tribes own and

operate three other casinos: 12 Tribes Resort Casino in Omak, Mill Bay Casino

in Manson and Coulee Dam Casino in Coulee Dam.

Though a casino

project is years away, the Colvilles want the land just north of the new

AutoZone distribution center to begin generating money.

In the interim,

there’s been talk of putting a gas station or convenience store, or maybe even

a hotel on the property. It also could be left as farmland for the time being.

“One way or another,

we’d like to try to do something to begin generating some revenue,” Cawston

said.

The May 16 land buy

took the city of Pasco by surprise.

“The

city learned of the purchase through the media. That said, we are excited at

the prospect of this investment by the Confederated Tribes of the Colville

Reservation and look forward to a long and collaborative relationship,” said

Dave Zabell, Pasco’s city manager.

Franklin

County Commissioner Bob Koch felt it was too early to comment but pointed out

that Franklin County could potentially lose the tax base for the land if it was

moved into a federal trust.

Cawston said the

tribes intend to work with Tri-City leaders, including city and county

governments, as they make plans for the land.

Tribal committees are

being reorganized this month, and Cawston said he expects this to be one of the

first issues they’ll take up.

“We want any tribal

economic development project to benefit the entire area, creating good-paying,

new jobs, increasing tourism and providing a catalyst for a number of new

businesses,” Cawston said.

The land is important

to the Colville Tribes because it’s where their ancestors once lived.

“There’s just such

close personal

ties to those areas,” Cawston said. “That’s where (our) ancestors lived and

where a lot of (our) ancestors were buried and where we gathered. We wanted to

build a stronger relationship to protect those lands and encourage our tribal

membership to go back to those lands.”

Cawston said the

tribes have always talked about buying back some of their former homelands but

got serious about it in the last two to three years.

“We began actively

discussing this as a council and for a lot of different purposes,” Cawston

said. “We still try to maintain our relationships with federal and state

agencies for when anything occurs within our traditional homelands. If there

are sacred sites or archeological sites that have been disturbed or could

potentially be disturbed, we hope they would take our comments and

considerations of those lands because once they’re taken out of state or

federal ownership, the tribes no longer have access to those lands.”

The tribe bought the

undeveloped farmland from private owners because of its cultural significance.

The Tri-City area is

the traditional homeland of the Palus, one of the 12 tribes in the Colville

confederation.

The property is

expected to be used for economic development that benefits the Colville members

who face challenges in Okanagon and Ferry counties, where some of the tribes

were relocated in 1885.

“Both of those counties probably have some of the highest

unemployment rates and are some of the most economically challenged rural areas

in Washington. So that’s forced a lot of our tribal membership to look for

employment elsewhere,” Cawston said.

He said he encourages tribal members to get experience

elsewhere and bring back what they’ve learned to benefit others.

Several hundred of the 9,365 enrolled Colville tribal

members live in the Tri-City area.

“When you look at that recent history,

it wasn’t that long ago, even within my generation. I knew some of the Palus

elder people across the reservation who still lived in those areas and were

moved to Colville,” Cawston said. “They never really felt that was their

homeland. From those earliest of times, our people wanted to return back to

those lands but were never successful in being able to do so.”

The Colville reservation includes

1.4 million acres of land, consisting of tribally-owned lands held in federal

trust status for the Colvilles; land owned by individual Colville tribal

members, most of which is also held in federal trust status; and land owned by

other tribal or nontribal entities.