State Must Ensure Tribe’S Status Quo

Sun., March 19, 2000

By Chris Peck chrisp@spokesman.com

Yesterday, the Coeur d’Alene Indians celebrated the economic and cultural rebirth on the reservation with a powwow and dinner.

The comeback of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe represents one of the great success stories in the long, venerable and often tragic history of America’s native population.

Seven years ago, the Coeur d’Alenes opened a gambling operation on their reservation.

Since then, the 1,700 enrolled members of the tribe have improved their schools, built a health care complex, funded tribal cultural programs for the elderly, and created more than 400 jobs for tribal and nontribal workers.

All of this has been made possible from the profits earned from the tribal electronic video pull-tab machines.

Whatever the pros and cons of gambling, there can be little argument over the seven years of evidence that gaming revenues have helped the Coeur d’Alenes break the cycle of poverty and despair that defines so many reservations.

Against this reality, the Idaho state Legislature and the Idaho attorney general must be cautious in the weeks ahead as they fiddle with the agreements the state has struck with Idaho tribes on the issue of gaming.

This week, the Idaho Legislature likely will approve a new compact that allows an expansion of tribal gaming on the southern Idaho reservation of the Shoshone-Bannock tribe.

The state’s agreement with the Sho-Bans is not much different from what the Coeur d’Alenes, Nez Perce and Kootenai tribes enjoy - with one major exception.

The Shoshone-Bannock compact comes with an automatic court challenge of electronic gaming machines to determine whether these machines are legal under Idaho’s Constitution.

This court challenge concerns the Coeur d’Alenes.

Their tribal bingo casino hall contains hundreds of electronic video lottery machines.

If these machines were suddenly declared illegal the economic renaissance on the Coeur d’Alene Reservation likely would crash.

The state of Idaho shouldn’t hasten that result.

Instead, the state should actively support the Coeur d’Alenes in their effort to clarify the legality of their electronic video pull-tab machines.

Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne needs to act quickly and decisively to negotiate new, clear language into the Coeur d’Alene gaming compact that allows the status quo to continue with electronic video pull-tabs.

If those negotiations fail, Idaho voters should be ready to consider an initiative to maintain the status quo. To do anything less would be to once again sell Idaho’s native people back down a river of despair.

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