"Nick Pierre can still taste it. Growing up as a Kalispel Indian — a tiny tribe with a tiny reservation in the impoverished northeast corner of Washington — he didn’t even have drinkable water on the rez. Out of the tap came water orange with manganese and arsenic.

“Twenty years ago, we were the joke,” Pierre says. “We were the poor, and everybody joked about us.”

In Indian Country, profits generated by enterprises like forestry, mining and — increasingly, in the last 20 years — commercial gambling are disbursed to enrolled members as “per-capita” payments. But the Kalispel had no industry and no wealth to share. People “didn’t believe you could be an Indian and not have a per-cap,” recalls Nick’s brother Ray. High school friends joked that he should check his Indian membership card.

The Kalispel are no longer the butt of jokes. The small tribe took a risk in the 1990s and seized a development opportunity on the West Plains that other area tribes had turned down. It wasn’t gaming at first, but within a few years, the opportunity became Northern Quest Resort and Casino, and the Kalispel now have a vibrant tribal economy. Their per-capita payments are the envy of other tribes.

The Pierre brothers, both members of the tribal council, are reflecting on the tribe’s past around a huge table in the stylishly rough-hewn offices of Desautel-Hege Communications, a Spokane public relations firm located in one of the city’s classic brick buildings.

The Kalispel have hired a public relations firm to help shape a challenging message: How do they, without appearing churlish, come out against a sister tribe’s plan to lift itself out of poverty the same way the Kalispel did — through off-reservation gambling on the West Plains?"

Get the Story:
Changing Fortunes (The Pacific Northwest Inlander 5/5)

Also Today:
Lots of action in battle for Spokane area gamblers (AP 5/4)

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