spokane tribe two rivers casino fishing derby

The Coeur d’Alene Tribe reported a $3.1 million profit from its casino last year and dished out $300 Christmas bonuses to every tribal member. Three North Idaho tribes have gone ahead with slotlike video pull-tabs while wrangling over their legality continues. Slots now produce about two-thirds of all casino profits and are surfacing in places they were never seen before. And the gadget leading the craze is the slot machine. Indian gaming is the fastest growing sector of the nation’s $40 billion gambling industry. “Let’s just say,” Kieffer says, grinning, “we weren’t worried about the check bouncing.” The Spokanes just spent $3.2 million on a new marina at the resort. Tribal councilman John Kieffer won’t discuss the gaming revenues, but notes the tribe is paying for the Two Rivers Resort and Casino without bank loans or outside investors. Instead, the Spokanes are using their windfall to create a destination resort at the confluence of the Columbia and Spokane rivers near Fort Spokane. What is clear is that the Spokanes had enough money last year to dump $833,000 into an unsuccessful state initiative that would have made slots legal on reservations.īut the local tribes are spending nothing on this year’s tribal gambling measure, Initiative 671, which would limit them to just 25 percent as many slot machines as they already have. The federal government has minimal oversight and calls its records confidential.

The tribes refuse to disclose their profits, and the state isn’t allowed to see the books.

Some suspect the take is at least twice that much. Industry experts speculate slot machines on the two reservations swallow about $100,000 a day, or more than $36 million a year. Meanwhile, the casinos expand without scrutiny or restraint, and the two neighboring tribes rake in money as fast as they can while the party lasts. The Las Vegas-style gambling thrives in a temporary legal limbo that makes it impossible for the state to stop it, and hard for the federal government to object.Īll the state can do is try to intercept the devices before they get to the reservations, then try to figure out who to prosecute in a shadowy web of companies involved in “the gray market” of used slot machines. Slots are illegal in Washington, but the noisy, one-armed bandits guzzle money around the clock at make-shift casinos on land belonging to the Spokane and Colville tribes. The illegal gambling devices arrive in the dark, concealed in trucks bound for Indian lands in Eastern Washington.Īlmost 2,000 slot machines have been smuggled to two reservations near Spokane during the past three years.

Spokane tribe two rivers casino fishing derby