By Julie Bykowicz | Bloomberg
As President Barack Obama began his first term in January 2009, an Arizona Indian tribe saw a long-awaited opportunity to jumpstart a plan to build a 225,000-square-foot casino not far from the Cardinals’ football stadium.
Five years earlier, through a special company, the Tohono O’odham Nation purchased land outside Phoenix, 160 miles north of the tribe’s Sells city headquarters on its Tucson-area reservation. Now, having waited out a freeze on casino construction on property distant from a tribe’s reservation by President George W. Bush’s administration, it submitted the project to Obama’s U.S. Department of the Interior — eight days after Inauguration Day.
President Barack Obama told tribal leaders at his first summit, in November 2009, “Over the last few years, I’ve had a chance to speak with Native American leaders across the country about the challenges you face, and those conversations have been deeply important to me. I get it. I’m on your side. I understand what it means to be an outsider.”
Tohono found this White House friendlier. The tribe won initial federal approval and then overcame lawsuits filed by state and local officials and competing tribes. There’s one last obstacle: A U.S. House bill that would scuttle the project. A vote on the bill could come as early as today.
