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http://www.azcentral.com/news/0222verdeindian.shtml

Tribes gain clout with gambling dollars
Pat Shannahan/The Arizona Republic

Camp Verde Yavapai-Apache Tribal Chairman Vince Randall has
overseen the Indian community's rise from poverty toarea
prominence.

----------------
 

By Mark Shaffer
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 22, 2000

CAMP VERDE - A decade ago, the Camp Verde Yavapai-Apache Indian Community
was mired in the Third World.

Its members drifted from one agriculture and service-industry job to the
next, never doing much more than getting by.

Then came gaming - and the shining new Cliff Castle casino.

Then came the wealth to buy back the tribe's traditional land.

Then came political power.

So much power that when this neighboring town demanded a permit for the
tribe's sand-and-gravel operation inside town limits, the tribe essentially
shrugged it off.

The tribe's economic transformation is one small chapter in a political and
cultural drama being played out all over the country.

Gaming profits rolled into tribal coffers throughout much of the 1990s. At
first, the tribes tended to address problems at home like poor housing,
infrastructure and social services.

Then they started making their influence felt elsewhere.

Just in Arizona:
 

The Fort McDowell Mohave-Apache Indian Community seriously courted the Los
Angeles Dodgers for a new spring training base on its reservation.

The Pascua Yaqui Tribe bought a good chunk of downtown Guadalupe in hopes of
opening another casino.

The Quechan Indian Tribe sits at the table of Yuma's most powerful marketing
group.

The Gila River Indian Community is a major sponsor of Valley professional
sports teams.
Nationally, Indian tribes backed by casino profits have been building outlet
malls in California, plants to make audio parts for cars in Mississippi and
ice-skating rinks in Minnesota.

Which was exactly why the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which allows
individual tribes to negotiate gaming compacts with states, was passed, said
Sheila Morago of the National Indian Gaming Association in Washington.

"It's done a wonderful job of bringing tribes economic empowerment," Morago
said. It's not an even distribution, she said, noting that tribes with the
20 largest casinos rake in 50 percent of all Indian gaming revenues.

None is in Arizona, she said, "but there are a number of (Arizona) tribes
doing well, nonetheless."

Like in Camp Verde.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the tiny tribe had barely a square mile of
land, with houses and trailers in various states of disrepair. Now, 80
percent of the homes have been remodeled and the tribe is the largest
employer in the Verde Valley.

Chairman Vince Randall shakes his head when he thinks about the humiliations
of the past: Tribal members begging for low-end jobs in Camp Verde; people
living on handouts from social-service agencies; men following the vegetable
harvests around the West.

Now, the tribe has bought nearly 3 square miles of the land it controlled
before the arrival of the Europeans. Among those purchases was the
Cloverleaf ranch, which put the tribe at loggerheads with the Town of Camp
Verde as the ranch is within town limits.

"We're buying back the land that the White man stole," Randall said, "and
we're trying to develop those lands economically so we can get more of our
people back on the reservation."

The tribe started negotiations with the town early last year for a permit to
extract sand and gravel from the ranch. But tribal officials took offense
after the town refused to issue a permit despite approving all but the
remediation measures the tribe had proposed.

"The council decided that the tribe's application for a use permit was
lacking completeness," said Nancy Buckel, a Camp Verde town planner.

So Randall said the tribe went ahead with its mining plans. It also hired a
high-priced attorney to back its claim that it doesn't need a permit because
it's extracting the resource for personal use.

Thus far, the town of Camp Verde has blinked. Randall said he understands
why.

"Times have changed around here," he said with a smile. "We've even got more
college graduates on our Tribal Council than they do on their Town Council."
 

* * *
Reach the reporter at Mark.Shaffer@ArizonaRepublic.com or (602) 444-8057.
 

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