In northern California and the five-member Sonoma County Board of Supervisors has reportedly voiced its opposition to a plan that would see a 68-acre plot of land in the town of Windsor host a new $600 million tribal casino.
According to a Tuesday report from The Press Democrat newspaper, the Koi Nation of Northern California is hoping that the federal government will grant a land-into-trust request so as to permit it to build and operate the envisioned Shiloh Casino and Resort. The 90-strong band earlier purportedly disclosed that the projected Sonoma County facility will be run in partnership with Oklahoma’s much larger Chickasaw Nation and feature a 200-room hotel alongside a casino offering a selection of approximately 2,500 games.
Agreed antagonism:
However, this scheme reportedly hit a major obstacle earlier this week when the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution against its fruition while simultaneously discounting the Koi Nation of Northern California’s historical ties to the county of some 489,000 people. This motion purportedly represents the strongest local opposition to the envisioned tribal casino project although its ultimate fate remains in the hands of the United States Department of the Interior and this federal authority’s land-into-trust and Indian Gaming Regulatory Act compliance determinations.
Onerous antipathy:
James Gore leads the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors and he reportedly acknowledged that his office had held a ‘respectful’ conversation with the Koi Nation of Northern California after its casino plan was unveiled in September. Nevertheless, the official purportedly moreover noted that he had received letters expressing opposition to the project from five other area tribes including the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians, which are respectively responsible for the Graton Resort and Casino and River Rock Casino properties.
Gore reportedly told a Tuesday meeting of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors…
“I respectfully oppose this development but yet I just want to thank my colleagues for doing this in the right way.”
Ancestry argument:
The Press Democrat reported that the resolution also angered the Koi Nation of Northern California because it described the group as a ‘non-Sonoma County tribe’ owing to a claim that the band’s historical roots lie in neighboring Lake County. In its own defence and the federally-recognized tribe purportedly asserted that it had been forced to move to its current location due to a pattern of enslavement, disease and genocide.
Local links:
Dino Beltran serves as the Vice-Chairman for the Koi Nation of Northern California and he reportedly proclaimed that his tribe was additionally compelled to relocate after its Lake County reservation became ‘uninhabitable’ during the last century owing to the federal government’s refusal to honor a pair of treaties. He purportedly went on to disclose that the majority of his tribe’s members now live in Sonoma County and that opposition to the planned Shiloh Casino and Resort is being fuelled by the fact that it would sit only about 18 miles from the River Rock Casino and a mere 13 miles from the Graton Resort and Casino.