In addition, California voters approved both Proposition 5 in 1998 and Proposition 1A in 2000 partly on the assurance of tribal leaders that casinos would be built on tribal lands only. The federal statute restricts Indian casinos to tribal lands with few exceptions. In some cases, tribes (and their well-heeled, non-Indian business partners) are shopping for choice casino sites across state lines, or near major cities and freeways. This practice consists of an Indian tribe attempting to build a casino on land that is not on the tribe’s reservation, and to which the tribe has tenuous or no ancestral ties.

The proposed Barstow casinos are an example of reservation shopping. (“Better think about replacing that fan belt,” says a gas station attendant in my imagination. The other, the Big Lagoon Rancheria, lives near the coastal redwoods of Humboldt County, 700 miles to the north. One tribe, the Los Coyotes Band of Mission Indians, hails from San Diego County, 150 miles to the south. Two tribes proposing side-by-side casinos in Barstow are not local. The cause of the stress is the questionable practice known as reservation shopping. If we were looking for a spot where the federal statute is wearing thin, one place we could find it would be Barstow, a city in San Bernardino County best known for being a pit stop on the way to Las Vegas. One law currently being stretched out of recognition is the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. (You know the sound: Snap! Whaff, whaff, whaff….) Like the fan belts in cars, they are made be stretched until they snap. I believe, rather, that laws are elastic. I don’t agree with the saying that laws are made to be broken.

Barstow casino news 2017