WPM: Northern Arapaho Tribe still going strong with gaming

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.

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. 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. It took ten years, but when they won, they won big. Andrew Baldwin represented the tribe in court:

ANDREW BALDWIN: The Northern Arapaho tribe is the only tribe to be operating Class III gaming without a tribal state compact. 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. Most tribal state compacts have a provision where the tribe is paying the state some percentage of their revenues every year. So the Arapaho tribe is not making that payment.