Primer: Indian gaming, the law and sovereignty

Monday, February 6, 2006  

Dorreen Yellow Bird, a Native reporter for The Grand Forks Herald, interviewed B.J. Jones, the director of the Tribal Judicial Institute at the University of North Dakota School of Law, about Indian gaming, law and sovereignty issues.

The questions were posed light of a proposal by the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa to open an off-reservation casino in Grand Forks. The tribe is seeking local and state approval for the facility. Jones says the tribe should also consult with other tribes about the proposal.

Yellow Bird: If a casino were built on tribal trust land near Grand Forks, what would that mean to the community?

Jones: The land itself would be taken off of the tax rolls of the county, but I don't think that's significant.

I am a little torn on the issue because I think its important that when a tribe exercises its sovereign rights and Turtle Mountain certainly would be within its rights to do this that the tribe recognize that there are other sovereign tribes that could be impacted. Turtle Mountain should confer with those other tribes. But that certainly isn't a prerequisite.

Yellow Bird: What is tribal sovereignty?

Jones: The best definition I've heard is the right of a people to decide their own destiny, the laws that govern them, how their children should be educated and how to drive their economy and the right not to be imposed upon by another government.

Tribes have sovereignty in that sense. It is somewhat limited by the rights of the federal government to limit their exercise of certain conditions the right to decide their own destiny, enact their own laws and be governed by them. In that sense, all the tribes in North Dakota are sovereign nations. They have all those rights.

Get the Story:
Indian law primer (The Grand Forks Herald 2/5)