Yet another Carcieri-based complaint. This is one of many reasons why there won’t be a Carcieri fix.
5 thoughts on “Cachil Dehe Band of Wintun Indians of the Colusa Indian Community v. Salazar Complaint”
Comments are closed.
- Reblog
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Turtle Talk 
This is a NEPA challenge and APA challenge to the “not detrimental” prong of the 2-part test. While the applicant tribe is referred to as an “entity purporting to be [the Tribe]”, I don’t see any Carcieri-rekated basis to this complaint at all.
So it is, but does not inter-tribal conflict like this one here demonstrate the potential (if not likelihood) of incredible silent opposition to a Carcieri fix? I think it does.
We represent Colusa in this lawsuit, which does not assert a Carcieri-based challenge the Secretary’s authority to take land into trust for Enterprise. If people are concerned that obtaining a Carcieri fix may be made more difficult by DOI’s permitting a tribe that has pre-IGRA trust land to leapfrog over other rural tribes (in this case, at least two others) that already face brutal competition from newer and larger tribal mega-casinos much closer to urban areas, then I suggest that those concerns be expressed to the AS-IA, the leapfrogging tribe and its gaming developer, rather to the tribe that has no choice but to sue if it is to have any chance of surviving lethal, wholly unforeseeable competition from a tribe to which DOI would give a fundamentally unfair competitive advantage. The Cachil Dehe Band of Wintun Indians (Colusa) operates a modest-sized casino and small hotel on its rural trust lands. The population in the immediate vicinity of Colusa’s reservation would not support a casino, but Colusa works hard to attract a large percentage of its patrons from the very area of Yuba County in which DOI proposes to permit the Enterprise Rancheria, and about 30% of Colusa’s workforce lives in that same area. Enterprise already has two parcels of pre-IGRA trust land in Butte County, and legally could develop a casino on either of those parcels., but such a casino could not support more than 1,700 slot machines. Ostensibly because Colusa is located more than 25 miles from the Yuba County site, Colusa was not consulted at all for the two-part determination, even though the impacts of a Yuba County casino on Colusa should have been obvious even to the most casual observer, not to mention the BIA. When California’s tribes sponsored Propositions 5 and 1A, California’s voters were told that there was no truth to opponents’ claims that tribal casinos would be popping up in urban areas where tribal lands did not already exist. The proposed acquisition lends support to the perception that tribes are nothing more than casinos trying to take advantage of tribal sovereignty. Colusa would welcome the support of other tribes.