ZHOROV: With no compact in place and business booming, the tribe should have more money to use as it deems necessary. So the Arapaho tribe is not making that payment.
Most tribal state compacts have a provision where the tribe is paying the state some percentage of their revenues every year. One of the things that’s different about that is that there is no funding or no payment going from the tribe to the state. Andrew Baldwin represented the tribe in court:ĪNDREW BALDWIN: The Northern Arapaho tribe is the only tribe to be operating Class III gaming without a tribal state compact. It took ten years, but when they won, they won big. The Northern Arapaho tribe thought different and fought the state in court for the right to build a casino with the full gamut of gaming. The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act – which established a regulatory structure for Native American gaming – was enacted in 1988 but a decade after that Wyoming law makers still thought that gambling had no place in the state. IRINA ZHOROV: The Wind River Casino has been open for almost a decade but it’s still a novelty to walk into whirring slot machines, dimmed lights, card tables, all on the edge of Riverton on a piece of prairie. Wyoming Public Radio’s Irina Zhorov reports that eight years into the venture, the casino is making money but some wonder where it’s going. The Northern Arapaho Tribe opened the doors to its full-scale casino in 2005.
