Margaret Noori has published a book review essay on the recent collection of writings by Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (edited by Robert Dale Parker), the Ojibwekwe who married Henry Schoolcraft, the Michigan Indian Agent from the 1820s to the 1940s, or so. The review essay was published in the Michigan Quarterly Review.
Michigan Indian
News Coverage of GTB Election Dispute
From the Leelanau News:
An attorney representing the Grand Traverse Band Election Board said the tribe is moving forward to resolve challenges filed by several tribal members including a candidate for the Tribal Chairman’s seat following the tribe’s Regular Election on May 21.
Tribal attorney William Brooks of Manistee said the Election Board met Monday evening in Peshawbestown to set procedures and a timeline for reviewing election challenges filed by Tribal Chairman candidate and sitting Tribal Councilor Derek J. Bailey, as well as three other tribal members, Katrina Smith, Rosemary Fay Antoine and Johnna L. Milks.
Brooks said he believed challenges filed with the Election Board over problems allegedly encountered by some voters at a polling place should be resolved by the board “within the next few weeks.” However, allegations of impropriety against the Election Board and its chairman, tribal elder Sam Evans, will take longer to resolve, he said.
Greektown Restructuring Very Costly
From Crain’s Detroit Business Report:
Restructuring of Greektown Casino L.L.C. finances will cost $13.5 million in professional fees this year and an estimated $20 million by the time the Detroit casino emerges from Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in 2009, a workout consultant told the Michigan Gaming Control Board Thursday.
The board gave approval to Greektown securing a $51.3 million interim loan to pay past due and current bills owed contractors working on the $330 million casino expansion that includes a 400-room hotel.
The loan, which received preliminary approval Wednesday from U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Walter Shapero, is part of a $150 million two-part financing package, the rest of which also needs approval from the court and control board.
Charles Moore, senior managing director of Birmingham-based Conway MacKenzie & Dunleavy, told the board that coupling costs of the bankruptcy filed May 29 with loan interest payments that will run more than $51 million means the casino is projected to lose almost $16 million in 2008, compared with a reported profit of $2 million last year.
Devlin v. Cox Complaint
Here is the complaint in Devlin v. Cox, the case brought by the former Michigan Gaming Control Board employee now working for Detroit casino interests over whether tribal gaming operations should be required to apply for state liquor licenses. [Our previous post.]
The odd thing about this claim is that Devlin suggests in the news that he thinks it is unfair that tribal casinos don’t have to be licensed but the Detroit casinos do. There are some weird things about this claim.
First, why is it unfair? Is there some money value lost by the Detroit casinos over this regulatory “advantage”? No, of course not. Tribal casinos are a hundred miles away, mostly far from the market that Detroit dominates — that is, southeast Michigan. So Devlin’s “unfairness” claim won’t do his new clients any good even if he prevails.
Second, Devlin’s federal Indian law/liquor regulation argument ignores the modern history of tribal-state relations. Yes, there are ambiguities in this area of the law. And so the tribal and state negotiators did the smart thing in 1993 and later — avoid litigation by creating a “law of the deal” that finds a way around the muddied legal waters. It was part of the horse-trading that went on in that negotiation. It’s the epitome of fairness.
Finally, if fairness were any measure, Devlin must be forgetting that the Michigan governor who cut the deal in 1993 promised the seven compacting tribes that they would have market exclusivity in the entire State, only to renege on that promise as soon as it was made by gunning for state-licensed casinos in Detroit.
Devlin’s idea of fairness is a joke.
Suit on Tribal Casinos and State Liquor Licenses
From the Chicago Tribune:
A Michigan Gaming Control Board employee says Indian casinos should be forced to get liquor licenses.
Patrick Devlin said he filed a lawsuit this week to try and force Attorney General Mike Cox to require tribal casinos to comply with liquor control laws. Devlin said that not requiring tribes to spend the time and money needed to get licenses gives them a competitive advantage over Detroit casinos required to have licenses.
He said he also is concerned about liability issues.
A Cox spokesman said the lawsuit will be reviewed once it’s received.
Devlin said he is suing as an individual, not on behalf of the gaming board.
Tribes are considered sovereign nations and aren’t covered by some state laws. Devlin said liquor sales should be an exception.
And from the Detroit News:
Rusty Hills, a spokesman for Cox, said: “Compacts (on Indian casinos) are negotiated between tribes and the governor’s office. If Mr. Devlin has a beef he needs to bring it to the attention of the governor. As a lawyer and former member of the attorney general’s office he ought to know better.”
Excellent point….
Greektown Holdings Bankruptcy Materials
Here is the Sault Tribe’s news release on these materials.
mgcb-exhibit-1-greektown-violation
mgcb-exhibit-2-order-approving-debt-transaction
LSJ on Nelson Westrin
From the Lansing State Journal:
GRAND LEDGE – The man who wrote the regulations governing legalized gambling at three Detroit casinos and signed the licenses authorizing their operation has died.
Nelson Westrin, 61, of Grand Ledge, died Wednesday of an infection he suffered during a battle with prostate cancer. He was survived by his wife, Carole; three children; sister Mary Jo; and several nephews, nieces and grandchildren.
Westrin was a lifelong public servant, rising from a criminal trial attorney in the Ingham County Prosecutor’s Office to a long career in the state Attorney General’s Office, where he eventually advised the governor’s office on tribal gaming issues. In 1993, then-Gov. John Engler named him the state racing commissioner, then, in 1996, appointed him to head the newly created Michigan Gaming Control Board.
Race Discrimination Complaint at Watersmeet
News coverage here:
The Watersmeet Township School District is facing a discrimination complaint from one of their faculty members.
The complainant, a Native American teacher, was recently pink-slipped. She claims it was because of her race and retaliation for complaining about a racially-hostile school environment; but officials say it all comes down to money, and they no longer have the budget to fund the position.
Michigan Tuition Waiver News Coverage
The Grand Rapids Press ran a story on the GR representative who introduced the bill to abolish the tuition waiver. I spent a great deal of time talking to the reporter about my point of view on the benefit of the waiver, and recommended she talk to tribal leaders about, but to my disappointment and regret she wrote nothing whatsoever about the benefits of the waiver to Indian people.
Oh well.
What I did say, and I’m sure even a modicum of empirical research would bear out, is that the Michigan Indian Tuition Waiver has been an outstanding engine of economic growth in the entire State. There would be Indian gaming, but I suspect it would have come much later to Michigan Indians without the college-educated Indian professionals to guide the way. And not all the beneficiaries of the tuition waiver went into gaming-related jobs. Many, many more have helped to fill jobs inside and outside of Indian Country.
And to say that Indian casinos make millions is disingenuous. Some do, some definitely don’t. Many tribal members living outside of their communities see little of that benefit. The tuition waiver for many Indians in Michigan is the difference between poverty and hope.
All this is — is free promotion for a junior rep from Grand Rapids with no political power.
GTB Election Challenge News Coverage
From the Leelanau Enterprise:
The Tribal Election process appears to have gone sideways – again.
Officials of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians were slated to certify results of the May 21 Regular Election today and administer oaths to newly elected or re-elected members of the Tribal Council tomorrow.
Both of those events have been postponed, however, while the tribal Election Board sorts through a series of challenges filed by four tribal members, including Tribal Councilor Derek Bailey, who ran for the Tribal Chairman’s seat against incumbent Robert Kewaygoshkum.
Turtle Talk 
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