A tiny tribe is getting pushback for betting big on a $600M casino in California’s wine country

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — For decades a small, landless tribe in Northern California has been on a mission to get land, open a casino and tap into the gaming market enjoyed by so many other tribes that earn millions of dollars annually.

The Koi Nation’s chances of owning a Las Vegas-style casino seemed impossible until a federal court ruling in 2019 cleared the way for the tiny tribe to find a financial partner to buy land and place it into a trust to make it eligible for a casino.

Now the tribe of 96 members has teamed up with the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, which owns the biggest casino in the world, and is waiting for U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to decide whether the 68-acre (27-hectare) parcel the tribe bought for $12.3 million in Sonoma County in 2021 is put into trust.

Placing the land into trust would allow the Koi to move closer to building a $600 million casino and resort on prime real estate in the heart of Northern California’s wine country.

The decision comes as the U.S. government tries to atone for its history of dispossessing Indigenous people of their land, in part through a federal legal process that goes beyond reinstating ancestral lands and allows a tribe to put land under trust if it can prove “a significant historical connection to the land.”

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