Hitting the jackpot and raising the stakes

TACOMA — Inside this dimly lit cocoon of video gambling machines, hypnotic loops of taped music and flashing lights, a river of cash is born.

The Emerald Queen Casino on the Tacoma Tideflats has gold-plated the Puyallup Tribe, which once had neither the land base nor the capital to make a future for itself.

Not anymore.

This cash cow pumps out an estimated $7 million a month in net profits for the tribe, enough, tribal council members have just decided, to give every man, woman and child in the 2,713-member tribe $2,000 a month in casino profits.

Now the tribe is upping its gambling ante, with a $200 million casino, hotel and entertainment complex right next to Interstate 5 that will make the nearby Tacoma Dome look like a dirt-streaked button mushroom by comparison.

With an opening planned for September 2004, the new casino will eventually replace the Emerald Queen — and generate an estimated $150 million to $200 million a year in net profits.

Quite a comeback for a tribe that refused to be annihilated as its lands were sold out from under it, its culture and language outlawed, its children packed off to boarding schools and its fishermen jailed.

Tough, independent and defiant, Puyallup tribal members were jailed in the fish wars of the 1960s as they fought for the right to catch salmon at their aboriginal fishing grounds. They occupied a state-owned hospital in 1980 to gain quarters for their tribal government, meeting until then around kitchen tables.

"It has been quite a struggle, with a lot of help from a lot of people, a lot of prayer, and people trying to hold this tribe together as best they can," says tribal elder Judy Wright, the Puyallup's official historian.

With the construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad terminus at Commencement Bay in 1873, the land rush was ignited. The tribe's lands were sold out from under it by acts of Congress and swindled away from tribal members, Wright said.

By 1909, the tribe's losses were nearly complete. Even the tribe's name for its mountain, Takkobad, for Mount Rainier, was appropriated as the name of the growing city of Tacoma.

But over time, the tribe fought back, going to court to regain some of its lands.

"They are tenacious, and proud of their history," said Tacoma City Manager Ray Corpuz, who also was a leading negotiator in a landmark land-claim settlement act that awarded $162 million to the tribe in 1989 — an agreement the tribe refused to sign until a $20,000 payment to every Puyallup then living was secured.

And the tribe isn't afraid to step on toes.

"They are very strong on doing what they think is best for the Puyallup tribe. Very clear about that, and very aggressive about that," Corpuz said.

The tribe has been generous with its casino cash, salting it around local governments and charitable groups to help pay for everything from renovating a neighborhood public pool to the July 4 fireworks display on the Ruston waterfront.

Relations aren't always rosy: Corpuz groans at a Puyallup-owned smoke-shop trailer that has bedeviled a tidy residential Northeast Tacoma neighborhood for more than five years, bringing traffic 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Monster billboards along I-5, including a blinding bright video billboard in Fife, also have raised the ire of state and local officials — and generated income for tribal members.

The $2,000 per-capita casino-proceed distribution raised eyebrows. But while some wag fingers and warn about creating another welfare state or an indolent generation etherized by unearned wealth, some see opportunity and even a kind of reparation for a tribe that bears the wounds of a bitter history.

Of their original holdings of more than a million acres, only an 18,000-acre reservation remains. Of that, only 900 acres are actually tribally owned, the rest a checkerboard of nontribal in-holdings. The Puyallups are a minority in their own nation.

I-5 roars through the heart of the state's most urban reservation, with the odd smoke shop or fireworks stand providing brief visual clues that this is still Indian Country.

Nothing was sacred as whites pushed the tribe aside, not even the salmon, Wright recalls.

On Oct. 13, 1965, at Franks Landing on the Nisqually River, six Puyallups were the first Indians arrested and jailed for illegal fishing. The conflict ultimately led to the landmark 1974 Boldt decision that declared a tribal right to half the fish in their usual and accustomed fishing areas.

"We have come so far," Wright says.

Indeed: Demolition of block after blighted block of boarded up houses in East Tacoma is already under way to make room for the new casino development. The historic hospital, today the scruffy home of the tribe's administrative offices, will be torn down this summer. The nurses' quarters will come down as soon as this week.

In their place will rise a hotel and resort complex that will include a manmade lake and waterfalls, a 250-room hotel; health club with indoor, outdoor pool and steam and cedar saunas and massage rooms; shopping; five restaurants, including a seafood house walled in by an aquarium; a nightclub, dance floor, and 20,000 square foot multipurpose arena for touring acts.

A 94,500-square-foot casino will replace the Emerald Queen, employing about 3,500 people.

The casino will also include a tribal history gallery — fitting for a tribe whose future is tied so closely to casino cash.

The tribal administration offices will be relocated on 20 acres of Fife farmland near the Puyallup River recently purchased by the tribe. An elders center, youth center and tribal museum are also planned for the site. One day, Puyallup artifacts now housed at state and local museums may be repatriated to the tribe's own cultural center, some tribal leaders hope.

Tribal culture has become an afterthought for some Puyallups.

"Growing up, I didn't have a lot to do with the reservation," said Robert Yerbury, 32, a shift manager at the Emerald Queen.

Half Puyallup, he grew up with his nontribal father in Tacoma, off the reservation; he didn't attend tribal schools or identify with his tribe. "I didn't know a whole lot about it, the spiritual stuff. I just never felt curious about it.

"Our reservation is so spotty, it's right in the city of Tacoma. You go to Lummi, you know you are on the reservation. But no one would expect me to be Indian at all. Whatever anyone thinks is fine with me."

Yerbury enrolled his 13-year-old son in the tribe, and says, "I would like him to be more exposed to this stuff than I was."

Yerbury plans to invest half of his first monthly per-capita check and spend the rest. As for all tribal kids, his son's check will be held in trust until he is 18, except for $300 a month paid to parents for living expenses.

Yerbury has bills to pay for a trip he just took to Hawaii and for an upcoming week in Los Angeles, including a visit to a tattoo convention where he may add to the collection of vivid body art that blooms under the sleeves of his discrete gray business suit.

Yerbury already has a good job and a house and a new car; for him the money is just something extra. For others, it is a big break.

Lucia Earl-Mitchell lets out a sigh of relief when asked her reaction to the windfall. She and her husband plan to build up their savings and buy their first house with the money — and it feels good to pay her bills in full as soon as they arrive, she said.

The first thing she did with the checks that arrived last week — one for her, and another for her son — was buy new bicycles. But old habits clearly die hard: "They were on sale at Wal-Mart," she quickly explains.

Raised by a Mexican mother, Earl-Mitchell, office manager for the tribal newspaper, said she didn't embrace her father's Puyallup culture until she became a teenager.

"I felt more complete, to tell you the truth. I learned to pick from both sides, for what I believed in."

She is proud of her tribe: "We have come a long way. People used to see us as the poor drunks on the reservation, say they never met an Indian who wasn't a drunk. Now we are upholding things for our kids to believe in."

Some tribal members worry the money will run out or be a curse.

"Some that have the money are excited about it, but a lot of others are worried about the other tribal members, people that have had problems in the past, will they take the money and better themselves or not?" Earl-Mitchell said.

"I think it will be good."

The first thing most people will do, she predicts: "Get rid of their rez cars." And her? "I've never had new furniture. It was always Goodwill, or Dad's. That will be fun."

Frank Wright, manager of the Emerald Queen Casino, sees a world of opportunity opened by gambling gold.

"The tribe takes a lot of pride that we have been able to do this all on our own and be successful," Wright said.

While many tribes hire outside managers to run their casino operations — in return for as much as 40 percent of the profits — the Puyallup's operation has been their own from the start. Every dollar stays home, not only on the reservation but in the community, which has benefited from millions of dollars of charitable donations, Wright said.

As chairman of the tribe in the 1980s, Wright helped negotiate the landmark land-settlement claim that launched a new chapter in the tribe's history.

The settlement included title to valuable commercial property on the tideflats — home of the Emerald Queen.

The settlement also made other plans for economic development possible, including a commercial marina and deep-water seaport, Wright said.

Internal dissension

The casino money hasn't erased some of the ill will within the tribe.

A group of tribal members has formed a nonprofit corporation called Members for Equal Opportunity in Responsible Government to challenge the council about recent decisions, including payment of $19,000 in tribal funds for personal back taxes of one council member, said Charles Hostnik, a Tacoma attorney representing the group.

He notes the decision to balloon the per-capita payment nearly sevenfold came just before the tribal elections, in which two council members are up for election, saying, "I don't know if that is a coincidence or not; I tend to be suspicious by nature."

Casino manager Wright said critics of the per-capita disbursements are just jealous.

"People forget what was taken from our people," he said. "We went from a struggling group to now everything is happening in forward steps. I wish I was growing up now, there are so many opportunities."

When he was a kid, work meant stoop labor in the fields, construction, or the railroad. Today, every tribal kid can afford to go to college.

"My son knew he was going to law school and business school," Wright said.

"He was able to set those goals and achieve them, because now we have the means. This is the dream, and it is only the beginning."

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com.