That trigger prohibits the state from allowing any non-tribal entities to operate slot machines or other casino-style gaming outside Indian reservations. If that agreement is breached, Arizona's cut of gaming revenues drops to less than 1 percent, and tribes can freely expand casinos and gaming without bounds.
Former Governor Jane Hull was among the supporters of Proposition 202. At the time, she wrote that it would ensure "that no new casinos will be built in the Phoenix metropolitan area," that it "keeps gaming on Indian reservations, and that it "does not allow [gaming] to move into our neighborhoods."
photos by Monica Alonzo
Lorraine Marquez Eiler stands over the remnants of a grill in what was the old Gila Bend Indian Reservation. Repeated flooding forced tribal members from their land and carried away crosses from their cemetery.
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Janet Napolitano, state attorney general at the time, wrote that the measure would prevent "the introduction of casino gaming, and slot machines, into our neighborhoods."
Hull and Napolitano's statements of support attached to the ballot measure are the basis for Gila River's, as well as Glendale's, arguments for keeping casinos out of neighborhoods. It's the thrust of www.keepingthepromiseaz.com, a joint Web site that Gila River and Glendale support as a means of swaying public opinion against West Valley Resort.
The site stops short of informing visitors that the voter-approved gaming compact has clear exceptions.
Though it limits Indian gaming to existing reservations, it allows casinos on new reservations as long as they fit the guidelines in the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.
That set of federal gaming rules allows casinos on reservation land created after October 17, 1988, if they are part of "a settlement of a land claim."
And that is exactly what the Tohono O'odham Nation adamantly says it has: an act of Congress that settles a claim for nearly 10,000 acres of land the tribe was forced to relinquish.
Though the Gila River Community is on board with the morality-based Prop 202 argument, tribal leaders have also publicly contested the project over claims that the West Valley is home to the ancestral lands of the Gila River Community, not the Tohono O'odham.
But Tohono O'odham Chairman Norris begs to differ. He notes that archeologists have determined that the Gila River and the Tohono O'odham tribes are both descendants of the Hohokam, who settled in Arizona about 300 A.D. — giving the Tohono O'odham just as much claim to the West Valley as the Gila River Community.
"There is no question in my mind . . . where we come from, who we are," Norris says. "Don't suggest the Tohono O'odham have no ties to that area!"
Norris was upset when he learned that a sister tribe — with intertwined families, cultures, and traditions — had joined forces with mainstream politicians to scuttle plans for the casino. "It's about money and control," Norris says. "[The Gila River people] should call it what it is."
For Albert Manuel, the Tohono O'odham San Lucy District chairman, the bottom line is: "[The Gilas] just opened a new casino. It's competition. That's all I have to say."
In October, the Gila River tribe opened its Wild Horse Pass Hotel and Casino, just minutes from Sky Harbor International Airport and about 40 miles from the Tohono O'odham's proposed West Valley Resort.
On Wild Horse Pass' opening day, Gila Lieutenant Governor Joseph Manuel (no known relation to Albert) declared it the premier casino in Arizona, bragging, "We're at the top, and we're going to stay there!"
Unless something bigger and better comes along.
If the federal gaming authorities allow the Tohono O'odham to build West Valley Resort, it will be the state's largest and glitziest casino. It would also create stiff competition for Gila River's Vee Quiva Casino, a gaming center with no amenities other than a deli, about 25 miles south of the Tohono O'odham's West Valley land.
William Rhodes, governor of the Gila River Indian Community, never mentions competition or ancestral rights when knocking the Tohono O'odham project in a statement on the tribe's Web site.
Like Glendale officials, he complains about the initial secrecy of the project and mentions that the West Valley property is 150 miles from the Tohono O'odham's main tribal land. And like Glendale and Brewer, he complains that the new casino would undermine Prop 202 by being too close to neighborhoods, churches, and schools.
Rhodes does not bring up his fellow tribe's suffering or that the federal land-replacement act, which made the O'odham deal possible, was designed to compensate for it.
The Gila River Community's governor, in espousing the keep-casinos-away-from-neighborhoods argument, has stranger bedfellows than even Glendale Mayor Scruggs and Brewer.
The fire-and-brimstone argument has been used by Republican Congressman Trent Franks of Peoria in opposing the West Valley Resort, and in the 1990s, with Governor Fife Symington's refusing to negotiate gaming compacts with Native Americans.
Saying that violence, drugs, and organized crime went hand in hand with casinos, Symington said, "It's the kind of thing which really can transform your society and lead to all kinds of social ills."
But despite Symington's prediction that Indian gaming would turn Arizona into another Nevada, that hasn't happened. And at least according to a recent survey commissioned by the Tohono O'odham Nation, most people in the West Valley support the new casino. The poll got a 67 percent positive response.
In all their rhetoric, says an expert on Native American law, critics forget why tribes were given the right to have casinos in the first place.
