Casino Takes Tribe Up New Road -- Upper Skagits Are Betting Site Near I-5 Will Bring Economic Renewal

BURLINGTON, Skagit County - The 16 acres along Interstate 5 were purchased with hope, not a plan. Now there are both.

The Upper Skagit Tribe bought the land, halfway between Seattle and Vancouver, at a time when it didn't even have a reservation to call home.

Its ancestors had long fished the cold Cascade rivers and hunted in the rich fields and forests of what became Skagit County. But an 1855 treaty had dispersed the band, leaving members mostly on their own for the next 119 years, until the Upper Skagits became a federally recognized tribe in 1974.

Three years later the tribe bought the land beside the freeway, and three years after that a piece of land east of Sedro-Woolley that became the tribe's reservation.

The freeway site was logged once, then left untouched. A small lot was cleared for fireworks' stands, but it sits empty most months, littered with spent firecrackers and bottle rockets.

For years tribal leaders pondered how to put their land to use. Now, like a growing number of tribes, they have chosen to build a casino. It will mean money; more importantly, leaders hope it will mean self-sufficiency and a future for a tribe that nearly did not have a present.

Soon the land will be cleared and sewer lines will be buried. Parking lots will replace expanses of dirt, plants and trees. A few of the site's old cedars will remain standing, a natural touch for the rustic, new complex that will bear the name of the Upper Skagits' business partner, Harrah's Casinos.

"It's like the land's just been sitting and waiting for the casino," said Floyd Williams, tribal chairman.

Waiting, at least, since 1988, the year Congress passed a law that is changing the face of gambling and tribal economics across the country. When the casino opens next summer, the Upper Skagits will join six other Washington tribes already operating casinos. More are being planned.

The financial incentives are clear. In 1992, all forms of legal gambling in Washington state, excluding tribal gaming, took in $1.3 billion. The Tulalip Tribes opened a casino near Marysville, just north of Everett, in 1992. In its first year, profits hit $10 million.

The Upper Skagits, meanwhile, face unemployment that still runs 20 percent to 30 percent, and an annual family income from seasonal jobs that averages $7,000. Yet Williams and other tribal leaders say the decision to develop their prized lot was not a casual one.

On a crisp autumn day, the 71-year-old Williams digs his hands deep into his pockets and squints against the sun, recalling proposed developments that never happened. A breeze blows through the white hair that frames his weathered face. The same breeze carries the sound of cars speeding along Interstate 5, on the other side of a stand of new growth.

For 17 years, the tribe considered all kinds of commerce, Williams says. A truck stop. A convenience store. Even a mall. They thought of capitalizing on the land's status as tribal property with businesses such as a smoke shop, a liquor store, or a bingo hall. But nothing seemed worthwhile, Williams said, until they looked into building a casino, considered the successes of other tribes and considered how much the Upper Skagits needed.

SMALL ECONOMIC BASE

Roughly 180 of the 600 members of the tribe live on the main piece of reservation property, 75 acres set against a clear-cut hillside on the north edge of the Skagit Valley. There, federal and state dollars underwrite virtually all health, education and social-service programs.

A few cottage industries and tribal enterprises, mostly based on traditional fishing and wood-working trades, provide a handful of jobs. Other traditional sources of work - logging and fishing - have been in decline for years.

The leaders charting the future of the Upper Skagit Tribe seek something more durable.

"What tribes are doing is trying to set up a revenue base, an economy for 30 years out," said Doreen Maloney, Upper Skagit acting general manager and a tribal council member since 1976.

The hope, Floyd Williams said, is that the casino will create enough prosperity to attract more members back to the reservation, and ensure healthy generations down the road.

"We want them to come back," Williams said. "Maybe I won't benefit from it, but my children and grandchildren will benefit from what I'm doing. It's important they have a home."

ANCESTORS WERE RIVER PEOPLE

The ancestors of today's tribal members called themselves "People of the river," according to June McCormick Collins, an anthropologist who studied the Upper Skagit Tribe in the 1940s.

They lived in small villages along the Skagit River and its tributaries. Fishing and hunting anchored their diet and their economy. Some community members specialized as woodworkers, weavers or warriors. The people crafted sturdy, winter homes from cedar that grew in the surrounding forests.

In 1855, this lifestyle officially changed. The Upper Skagits forfeited access to their native land by signing the Treaty of Point Elliott, a treaty that saw many Puget Sound tribes cede land to the United States in exchange for reservation allotments, cash and fishing rights.

The Upper Skagits' ancestors, who did not receive their own reservation under the treaty, were initially taken to the Tulalip Tribes and Lummi reservations. Eventually, many ran away, returning to traditional land farther upriver in the Skagit Valley.

Williams recalls his childhood days near the town of Concrete, where he lived with his mother and father. Traditional culture still flourished. Williams' parents spoke their native language, and fish still ran strong in the rivers.

"Those days you depended more on resources. The teaching was more or less survival," Williams said.

As he grew older, Williams, like many Upper Skagits of the time, turned to logging and commercial fishing for a living. Throughout this period, tribal members continued to meet, often at a Shaker Church in Concrete.

But membership dwindled, as people spread through Western Washington and beyond, in search of jobs and housing. Federal recognition and buying land became the first steps toward survival.

"It helped because it provided something to keep going," Williams said. "What money we did get we put right back into the reservation."

Today, Williams, at a slow gait, can quickly tour the reservations' resources. A single gravel parking lot services most of the buildings - a cluster of trailers for health and social services, a wood-working shop, a tribal center.

Inside the tribal-center building, a handful of elders gathers daily for a community lunch. Down the hall, 15 or so preschoolers crowd into the library for class. Next year, they'll head into Sedro-Woolley for school. It's the closest town for shopping, entertainment, or supplies.

Through the woods from the tribal center, on a series of cul-de-sacs, 50 two-story houses with porches and yards form a tight neighborhood.

All of this has been built with federal dollars over the past 10 years.

"They're prudent in the way they manage. They make something of it," said Bill Black, Bureau of Indian Affairs superintendent for the Puget Sound region.

But it is difficult to stretch the tribe's $1.5 millionannual budget to cover everything.

"At one time we had the whole valley as a resource," Williams said. "We were very fortunate at that time. Now it's tough, when you don't have anything to work with. It takes money to make money."

Nevada-based Harrah's and the Upper Skagits expect the $22 million casino and its supporting businesses - including a restaurant and hotel across the highway - to eventually provide from 600 to 800 jobs, ranging from parking valets to blackjack dealers to dishwashers.

Tribal members and other Native Americans will get hiring preference for jobs they estimate will pay, on average, $24,000 a year. Even if the Upper Skagits wiped out unemployment by hiring everyone in the tribal labor force, about 214 people, there would be jobs aplenty for local folks.

Those jobs, county officials say, would be welcomed by the more than 4,700 out-of-work people in Skagit County, where unemployment runs close to 11 percent.

MORE PARTNERSHIPS PLANNED

The agreement with Harrah's is one of two in which tribes have chosen an established gambling business as a partner. More such arrangements could follow.

The Muckleshoot Tribe has teamed with a New Jersey company, Capital Gaming International, to open a casino near Auburn in spring. The Tulalip Tribes, already planning a second casino near Marysville, are negotiating with a subsidiary of the Trump organization about a larger, destination-resort development.

For the Upper Skagits, Harrah's will develop and manage the casino and train workers.

The tribe is to get 70 percent of net profits and complete ownership of the casino in five to seven years, if it chooses.

This summer, the Upper Skagits announced the Harrah's alliance at a news conference around a fire pit in front of the reservation headquarters.

Before news cameras and reporters, tribal leaders shook hands with Harrah's executives. Harrah's presented the tribe with authentic gambling memorabilia from the company's past. The tribe gave Harrah's a traditional tribal drum, with the company's logo on the drum skin.

Afterward, everyone shared a salmon lunch and reveled in their expectations for the partnership.

But tribal leaders also know the casino - for all the riches it may bring - is only part of the tribe's future.

Doreen Maloney, the acting general manager, notes that tribal council members recently decided the tribe's name will take second billing, - and may not appear at all - on the casino marquee that will beckon motorists from I-5.

"It demeans who we are," Maloney said. "We are not a casino. We were an Indian tribe before Harrah's. We will be after."

----------------------------- CASINO GAMBLING IN WASHINGTON -----------------------------

The federal Indian Gaming Act of 1988 requires states to negotiate compacts permitting Indian tribes to conduct gambling in accordance with state laws.

TRIBES OPERATING CASINOS WITH STATE COMPACTS:

Tulalip Tribes, Marysville.

Nooksack Tribe, Deming, Whatcom County.

Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, LaConner, Skagit County.

Tribes operating casinos without compacts and legally challenging the state's authority to regulate them. These casinos have slot machines, which are illegal in Washington:

Spokane Tribe, near Fort Spokane.

Colville Tribe, near Entiat.

Operating a card room under a "grandfathering" provision in the 1988 act rather than a compact:

Lummi Tribe, Bellingham.

Tribes that have negotiated compacts with the state but not yet begun business:

Chehalis Confederated Tribes, Oakville.

Lower Elwha Klallam, Port Angeles.

Upper Skagit Tribe, Sedro-Woolley.

Muckleshoot Tribe, Auburn.

Jamestown S'Klallam, Sequim.

Squaxin Island Tribe, Shelton.

Tribes currently negotiating with the state:

Nisqually Tribe, Olympia.

Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe, Kingston.

Puyallup Tribe, Fife.

Quileute Tribe, La Push.

Shoalwater Bay Tribe, Tokeland.

Skokomish Tribe, Shelton.

Suquamish Tribe, Poulsbo.

Yakama Indian Nation, Toppenish.