Tribe Rolls Dice With Gaming Hall

Late in the morning on a bright day, it’s dim, nearly dark, inside the Shoshone-Bannock casino.

Cigarette smoke drifts heavily between the low ceiling and the leaf-patterned carpet, and music pumps from unseen speakers.

Isolated, white-haired gamblers sit doggedly among the closely packed rows of video gambling machines, tapping buttons and peering at the glowing bars, bells and cherries.

This no-frills gaming hall is at the center of a court case that could shake tribal casinos across the state.

The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes this year signed a long-sought gaming compact with the state of Idaho - the key document that allows them to have gambling. Idaho’s three northern tribes signed compacts in 1992, and have successful casinos. But the state and the tribes have long differed over the glowing, chirping machines that form the profitable heart of Indian gaming in Idaho.

Under federal law, sovereign Indian tribes can legally conduct any type of gaming that the state also operates, and Idaho runs a lottery. The tribes argue that their machines are the video equivalent of the lottery’s scratch-off tickets, while the state maintains they’re Nevada-style slot machines that merely issue a receipt instead of clinking coins.

While the northern tribes have relied on negotiation with the state rather than litigation, the Shoshone-Bannocks said they wanted an ironclad deal. That’s why they agreed to join the state in waiving their sovereign immunity against lawsuits, to ask a federal judge to rule on whether the machines are legal.

The agreement to go to court was built into the Shoshone-Bannocks’ compact. North Idaho tribes took pains during last year’s legislative session to say they supported a compact for the Sho-Bans - but not the clause that could rule their own games illegal.

“It’s unfortunate that the northern tribes see it as a threat to their gaming,” said Shoshone-Bannock Chairman Lionel Boyer. “Our compact is between the government and the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, no one else.”

To many here, the gaming question is a simple one of exercising tribal sovereignty, and getting legal certainty just makes sense.

“We don’t want to do a big investment and then on the tail end have empty buildings,” said Bill Brower, general manager of gaming for the Sho-Bans.

“If, in the end, the machine is determined to be illegal in the state’s eyes, yes, it will have an impact, and I don’t disagree with that,” Brower said. “But we needed it cleared up, not only for us but for the state.”

Said Boyer, “I don’t think the tribe is afraid that it’ll lose.”

Tribal members are eager to see gaming profits, and many wonder why they’re so far behind other tribes.

“They need to have a good building for it,” said Audrey Ponzo, as she patted dough flat for fry-bread at her Indian Tacos stand. “This one here is really small compared to other places.”

“It looks like a potato cellar,” said Lisa Honena, a 24-year-old clerk at the tribal clothing and crafts store. “We need a better facility than that. I’m thinking classy casino with the nice waterfalls, glass doors, carpets.”

At the same time, some members are uncomfortable with the idea of attracting outsiders onto the land they try to maintain as their own.

Robert “Red” Perry, a Bannock elder and amateur tribal historian, said, “They still have the idea, `We don’t want nobody crossing the reservation on our land.”’ That’s partly why he’s taken on the task of showing tourists around the historic sites and trails on the reservation, and working with authors and historians.

Go alone, he warned, and you’ll be stopped and arrested for trespassing.

Gaming is just a small piece of Boyer’s vision. His goal is for money spent on the reservation to change hands three or four times before leaving. That would require a wider variety of businesses on the reservation, which now has just a few.

Ideally, residents of the Fort Hall Reservation no longer would need to go into Blackfoot or Pocatello, he said - all of the stores and services they’d need would be right there on the reservation.

Ponzo attracts locals and tourists to her Indian Tacos stand, where the toppings are mounded on puffy, slightly sweet fry bread.

“They keep telling us we’re the entrepreneurs,” she said shyly.

But when the sun goes down, the casino is the big draw.

“We just sort of hope we succeed in the gaming arena, because it’s going to be a big crunch should gaming be discontinued, a big impact,” Brower said. “Somehow, somewhere, we would have to find another couple million dollars laying around.”

Gaming profits go into the general fund of the tribal government, which uses them for government services.

The tribe opened the bingo hall in 1991, and has added 350 to 375 video gambling machines, between the casino and a small gaming room at the tribal gas station across the reservation.

Brower, who is Boyer’s brother, retired in Las Vegas after a 20-year Air Force career and lived there for several years. He knows the spare gaming facility isn’t like the grand casinos in Vegas, and wants to upgrade the inside so it’s less smoky and more comfortable. But with the court case in the works, he’s not planning any giant expansion yet.

“Some want to do it now,” he said. “I’m not that big a gambler.”

See main story under headline: Idaho’s largest tribe asserts itself