Three Affiliated purchase controversial Las Vegas property

RAPID CITY—One of the abiding realities of Indian Country is that some tribes benefit better from casino and gambling operations than others. All the Oklahoma tribes, and tribes like Shakopee and Nebraska Winnebago have casinos in close proximity to large population centers, and their revenues are in the billions. Tribes that do not, like Rosebud, Pine Ridge and Fort Berthold, have paltry revenues by comparison.

Attempting to cancel the disadvantage of bad geography, the Three Affiliated Tribes up at Fort Berthold have recently purchased $115 million worth of property in Las Vegas, Nevada. These purchases have met with some criticism.

Todd Hall, a prominent Fort Berthold rancher, wrote in an op-ed for the Native issues website Buffalo Fire: “With all the latest news coverage of this deal, the (Mark) Fox Administration has made our Tribe famous by this head-scratching, bewildering purchase; and not in a good way. Apparently, we are now known as the biggest ‘marks’ in Las Vegas. A mark, according to one Urban Dictionary, is another term for sucker.”

On the surface, the motivation behind these purchases is simple: establish tribally owned and controlled gambling operations where they are not only legal, but highly profitable. On the other hand, tribes have long been targets for large scale swindlers, looking to cash in on naïve tribes too trusting with large sums of money. Former Hunter Biden partner Devon Archer was recently sentenced to a year in prison for trying to bilk the Oglala Sioux Tribe out of $60 million, or about half of what Three Affiliated has invested in Las Vegas.

Every tribe is tasked with doing due diligence, researching any folks who come to the reservation with big money making proposals. But tribal councils are particularly susceptible to swindlers because they are entrusted with large sums in an atmosphere of minimal transparency and minimal accountability, and they lack the business acumen to recognize bad investments from golden opportunities. They also tend to tolerate no person for long who does have that acumen, particularly lawyers, lawyers who tell them what they do not want to hear, even though that very save-the-day advice is what they are paying lawyers to supply. Pine Ridge could have definitely used such a lawyer when it came to the swindler Devon Archer.

Does the Fox Administration know what it is doing over in Las Vegas? That is the big question, because if it does, and these investments generate appreciable revenue, there may be an influx of tribal investment from the parts of Indian Country where casinos are too isolated from metro dollars to turn big profits. According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, the Three Affiliated have spent $93 million on a 13.3 acre site where the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history occurred in 2017. That year, 64-year-old Stephan Paddock, for no reason ever determined, opened fire from his 32^nd floor suite, killing 60 people and wounding 413.

Folks back in North Dakota are understandably upset the tribe would purchase a property tainted with so much macabre trauma. Chairman Fox has commented only by saying the purchases did not affect the tribe’s ability to take care of the folks back home. Altogether the tribe now has 23 acres of prime Las Vegas real estate located right where casino revenues could be readily had if the operation is managed correctly. Hall and his Business Development Committee have been tight lipped about their plans for this land, however. The Las Vegas Review Journal could find no mention of these plans in minutes from any public meeting.

Protest on the reservation seems to fall on deaf ears, and this is not surprising given the past economic scandals at Fort Berthold which have totaled over a billion dollars. Despite this, the Fort Berthold membership continue to elect councilmen and chairman who continue the legacy of low transparency and reckless investment.

If no stories are available in print or online favorable to the purchase of these Las Vegas properties, it is because the Chairman and the Council on Fort Berthold have nothing to say. Not only are they giving the press nothing that might alleviate tribal membership concern, but they are also releasing no edifying press releases themselves. The conceptual history, the purchase history, the plans for all these investments should be available in at least a generalized form, if not in specific number-crunched detail.

“I’m not against business,” Hall told the Las Vegas press. “But to buy land with no plan doesn’t make sense to me.”

But the deeper problem appears to not be a lack of tribal planning, but that these plans are not available to tribal membership, even prominent tribal members like Hall. Should these investments go awry, it will be hard to hold any people involved accountable, given the tribal membership has no real idea what any plans are. When people don’t know details, it is easy for investment dollars, or any subsequent investment profit, to be accessed inappropriately, because corruption thrives where there is no transparency or fear of accountability.

(Contact James Giago Davies at skindiesel@msn.com)

The post Three Affiliated purchase controversial Las Vegas property first appeared on Native Sun News Today.

Visit Original Source