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216 Chapter 18 The Casino Deal By the late 1990s, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, based on a 644,000-acre reservation in Central Oregon, had been struggling for years to revive its economic base. Tribal leaders first turned their eyes toward Hood River County as the site for a new casino in 1998. The tribe’s remote Kah-Nee-Ta High Desert Resort and Casino had opened in 1995 at a site 10 miles from the nearest major highway. Three years later it was producing just $1 million in revenue annually. The tribe needed a new revenue source to make up for the downturn in profits from its timber and hydroelectric operations. Without that boost, the tribal government faced cuts in social, education, and health care services. At the time, about 4,000 enrolled tribal members lived on the reservation. Unemployment stood at 60 percent. Tribal leaders faced the prospect that more and more young people, unable to find jobs, would leave the reservation. The Warm Springs had an asset in the gorge that offered a brighter future: Forty acres on a high cliff, facing the Washington shore, held in trust for the tribes by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs since the 1920s. Nearby, just east of the thriving tourist and recreational town of Hood River, a restored section of the Historic Columbia River Highway had recently been dedicated as a state park and national trail. Thus two worthy goals—helping Oregon’s largest Native American tribe chart a course to economic prosperity while protecting scenic views in the gorge as required under the 1986 National Scenic Area Act—came to clash in a long-running saga that tested the wills of two Oregon governors and challenged the federal government. The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and their Central Oregon reservation were both creations of the 1855 treaty the U.S. Government signed with the Warm Springs, Wasco, and Paiute tribes. These were people with deep roots in the Columbia Basin, where for millennia their people and THE CASINO DEAL 217 their culture had been sustained by the great Columbia River salmon runs. In the 1855 treaty, tribal chiefs had ceded 10 million acres of their traditional territory to the U.S. government. But they had retained the right to fish, hunt and gather roots and berries in the ceded areas—their usual and customary places. Warm Springs tribal leaders argued that they needed no one’s permission to develop their 40 acres as a casino under the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. But their plan to site their casino on the steep ground met with stiff opposition from both the city of Hood River and Hood River County. A group of gorge residents mobilized to stop the casino. Not only would it be visible from both sides of the river; it was adjacent to the recently completed Mark O. Hatfield State Park and a stretch of the Historic Columbia River Highway that had been restored and converted to a hiking and cycling trail with funding authorized by the National Scenic Area Act. Hood River County argued that a casino on the site would damage its culture and identity. A survey returned by nearly 6,500 county residents in late 1998 revealed that nearly three-quarters opposed the site. Tribal leaders were unmoved. “We are making this decision for our well-being and survival, that’s the bottom line,” Rudy Clements, the tribes’ casino liaison, said in announcing the decision to build on the Hood River site. Though the trust land was within the National Scenic Area, like all tribal lands it was exempt from regulations restricting development under the Scenic Area Act. Opponents looked for a legal or administrative hook to challenge the project. A local group, No Casino, argued that the project might be subject to federal environmental review and that the tribe would have to receive a permit from the Oregon Department of Transportation to build a highway access ramp to the site. The Forest Service Scenic Area Office noted that access to the 40-acre trust property would require development of non-tribal lands within the National Scenic Area and that those lands—unlike the trust lands—would be subject to county and Gorge Commission review. Tribal leaders took strong exception to these arguments. “We have a legitimate and lawful right to use our tribal land and we are going to defend it,” declared Joe Moses, a member of the Warm Springs Tribal...

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