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Jayne: Ilani alters the conversation for Cowlitz Tribe, county

By Greg Jayne, Columbian Opinion Page Editor
Published: June 4, 2017, 6:02am

For Dave Barnett, this is personal.

The gorgeous inlaid map of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe’s ancestral lands. The light fixtures that invoke traditional Native American baskets. The business card that lists his connection to the Ilani Casino Resort near La Center by saying, simply, “Dave Barnett, Founder.”

“It makes me feel like I started it, because I did,” the 56-year-old Seattle resident says, providing a tour of the pristine facility that opened in April. “I wanted that on there because it’s like raising a child — 18 years.”

Barnett is slightly off-target with that analogy. Because the time since he first envisioned a Cowlitz casino in 1999 has been more like 18 years of labor contractions rather than parenthood. There was a quest to have the federal government reaffirm recognition of the tribe. And federal designation of an official reservation in the area. And the purchasing of land, the planning of construction, and a lengthy series of court battles to confirm the tribe’s right to claim reservation status.

So, as Ilani attracts what officials say is nearly 10,000 customers a day, it is instructive to consider the game-changing nature of Indian casinos in the United States.

Native American tribes are sovereign nations, meaning that states have limited ability to regulate or prevent Indian casinos. Since the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, tribes across the country have recognized gambling as a revenue source, and in Washington there are some 32 casinos operated by 23 tribes.

The allure is obvious; gambling is essentially a license to print cash for those who control the games. There is a reason they keep building bigger and bigger casinos in Las Vegas — and it’s not because the house is losing money.

Changing American psyche

This is not necessarily a good thing, and it represents a vast change in the American psyche. The ethos that you get ahead in this world by being smart and working hard has largely been replaced by the idea that you are born with a silver spoon or you hit the lottery — and governments are happy to tap into that psychosis. As Washington Post columnist George Will once wrote, “Gambling has swiftly transformed from social disease into social policy.”

So, there is good reason to lament the development of a $510 million casino in Clark County and to decry the traffic and the growth and the chaos it will bring to the area. But there also is reason to celebrate the transformative power of Native American casinos.

“Tribes have been able to enter into a socio-economic environment where they have brought something to the table,” Donald Ivy, chief of the Coquille Indian Tribe in Oregon, says in an Oregon Public Broadcasting documentary titled “Broken Treaties.”

“This is probably the first time the tribes have had the opportunity to have a place in the marketplace. That gets you invited to the Chamber of Commerce banquet. That gets you involved with the Rotary luncheon. That gets you involved and it gets you invited and it gets you on boards, and all of a sudden you begin to learn the rest of the world. That revenue builds the capacity of the community.”

For populations that were forced off their land and long have been disenfranchised, this is meaningful. As Barnett says, “It puts us on an equal footing with our local government. It gives us an economic engine where we can provide for ourselves and not be reliant on anybody else. We were hopeful for that 160 years ago when we were removed from our land and told we couldn’t be there and were dispersed.”

So, Barnett details how revenue from Ilani will first go to debt service on the structure and then go to tribal members. He talks about the need for health care, for assisting tribal elders, for supporting scholarships for the Cowlitz’s roughly 4,000 members. He talks about a desire to solidify a population scattered by U.S. policy, and the importance of the casino to the future of his tribe.

And you realize that while Ilani is simply a casino to the rest of us, for Barnett this is personal.

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