Cash cow for the tribal elders.
Via WACH:
Come 150 years after suffering the loss of its homeland at the hands of the U.S. government, the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska is celebrating a triumph with the opening of a casino intended to secure a stream of revenue for the long-struggling tribe.
The only thing standing in its way? An effort by governments in Iowa and Nebraska that seeks to strip it of the casino.
The $10 million Prairie Flower Casino opened in November with 200 slot-style machines after the National Indian Gaming Commission approved the tribe’s casino license a year earlier, some 10 years after the tribe began its effort to open the casino. It’s far from a novelty in the area: Three much larger casinos are just a few miles away, also in western Iowa. Yet the casino’s location is central to the opposition to it, including lawsuits from the city of Council Bluffs, Iowa, and the states of Iowa and Nebraska.
Unlike most other tribal casinos, the Prairie Flower wasn’t built on a reservation. The Ponca Tribe — forced in the 1870s by the U.S. government to leave its homeland along the Missouri River in Nebraska River — has no reservation. The U.S. government terminated the tribe in the 1960s and took its remaining land as part of a policy that sought to abolish reservations and assimilate Native Americans into mainstream American society. The tribe regained its federal recognition in 1990, and most of its 4,500 members are spread over 15 counties in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota.