NIGC Says Fort Sill Apache Tribe Must Cease Gaming – Violation of Indian Gaming Regulatory Act

Philip Hogen, chairman of the National Indian Gaming Commission, sent notice yesterday to the Fort Sill Apache Tribe of Oklahoma to stop all gaming at their Apache Homelands Entertainment Center because they were in violation of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, a law that prohibits gaming on most tribal lands acquired after 1988.

The Apache site was acquired in 2002, but Jeff Houser, chairman of the Fort Sill tribe, disagrees with Hogen arguing that the tribe has grounds to game because it meets one of the exemptions spelled out in the Act…that being that the tribe should be considered "restored," meaning the government-to-government relationship between the federal government and the tribe was at one point broken, but was later re-established.

Hogen contends the Fort Sill tribe has failed to produce documents supporting that claim but Houser notes that members of the tribe are descendants of a group of Apaches who were held as prisoners of war by the U.S. government in the late 1800s and early 1900s making the relationship one of government-to-prisoner instead of government-to-government.

Members of the Fort Sill tribe are descendants of the Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apaches, who once roamed southwestern New Mexico, southeastern Arizona and northern Mexico. Tribal members were relocated as prisoners of war to Florida and later to a military base in Oklahoma in the late 1800s.

Houser also refers to a 2007 lawsuit settlement between the Fort Sill tribe and a second Oklahoma tribe where the federal government signed off on the document which acknowledges the tribe as restored.

Houser said the tribe will likely respond to the notice by taking legal action.