Tribes Seek New Lease on Economic Development in ‘Indian Country’

The Prairie Band Casino and Resort off U.S. Highway 75 in northeast Kansas is a sprawling Las Vegas-style casino and hotel with an RV park and golf course that employs 750 and generates $65 million in annual revenue.
Owned by the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, the resort in Mayetta, Kansas, features a 35,000-square-foot gaming floor, 1,100 slots, 300 hotel rooms, seven bars, and restaurants.
In 2000, the tribe submitted a permit to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) seeking to build a retail plaza anchored by a convenience store next door.
More than 20 years later, it’s still waiting for a decision.
Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation Chair Joseph Rupnick told congressional lawmakers on March 1 that boggy regulations hatched from convoluted federal land-use laws administered by a chronically underfunded, undermanned BIA are among the head-banging hurdles hamstringing economic development on many of the 325 Indian reservations within the United States….}