Question of the Day - 29 June 2022

Happy to.

It's a long and interesting story and in his commentary for CDC Gaming Reports, Ken Adams, one of the most astute, insightful, and veteran observers of the industry, draws parallels to what happened in Arizona in 1992 and what's going on today in Oklahoma. It's worth the five minutes to read it if you're at all interested in the politics of Native American gambling. 

Meanwhile, in a nutshell, what happened between the Fort McDowell Yavapai and the feds in Arizona was as follows. 

The impoverished Fort McDowell Yavapai tribe opened a bingo parlor in 1984 and three years later, the Supreme Court ruled, in California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, that gambling on tribal lands could not be regulated by states. In 1988, Arizona Senator John McCain and two other senators drafted the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which stipulated that tribal gaming be allowed in states that already sanctioned some sort of gambling, such as a lottery, card rooms, horse racing, or casinos. Such states are mandated by the Act to negotiate compacts with tribes that lay out the regulatory positions (Classes I, II, and III gaming).

The trouble in Arizona started when the Fort McDowell bingo parlor added slot machines in 1992.

Arizona Governor Fife Symington, afraid that his state would become another Nevada, rejected the tribes' demands to negotiate compacts. Four tribes sued in court; others, like Fort McDowell, just went ahead and exercised what they determined was their sovereign right to offer gambling devices on their reservations. 

Symington sicced a U.S. Attorney on the Yavapai; she relayed the message that the slot machines would be seized if they weren't removed. 

On May 12, 1992 (the 30th anniversary just passed), FBI agents swooped down on the Fort McDowell Yavapai Casino (now known as We-Ko-Pa, in Fort McDowell, a bit northeast of Scottsdale), pointed guns at casino employees, and started to seize slot machines; they moved 349 devices in all out of the joint, though while they were doing so, employees frantically emptied most of them of coins.

Meanwhile, an urgent call went out to the tribe, whose members trickled in and parked in front of the moving vans, blocking them in. More and more Yavapai (then known as the Mohave-Apache, with 400 members) showed up, surrounding the parking lot and casino and preventing the Fibbies from going or coming. Then the Yavapai sand and gravel company sent in some heavy construction equipment, resulting in a good old-fashioned standoff. 

Symington, reportedly, was surprised by the raid. He caught a helicopter to the reservation and saw Mayflower moving vans blocked by bulldozers, barricades, and protestors. Moved by the demonstration and disgusted by the FBI's apparent symbolic gesture of driving onto the reservation with trailers festooned with the Mayflower name (or so he claimed), Symington called for a 10-day cooling off period, during which time the tribe held powwows on the property that attracted all 21 Arizona tribes, plus some from as far away as Washington state and New York, all rallying in favor of resistance, sovereignty, and dignity. 

Toward the end of the cooling-off period, it looked like violence might flare, but on May 22, Symington agreed to meet the tribes and negotiate a compact that is now considered a turning point in tribal sovereignty and gaming. 

In the end, the feds did get in their slap: The 349 slot and video poker machines were moved off the reservation, never to be seen again.

But today, upwards of 530 tribal casinos are operated by 247 tribes in 29 states, with an estimated $35 billion in revenue, and the Yavapai own and operate several casinos in central Arizona, along with two golf courses, a hotel and RV park, and an entertainment venue.