Attorney general seeks to rejoin case to fight casinos
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Happily bounced last week from a case in which an Indian tribe is seeking tribal-land status so it can build casinos in Ohio, the state wants back in since the tribe has switched tactics, Attorney General Jim Petro said Friday.
Petro filed a motion Friday seeking to intervene in the lawsuit the Oklahoma-based Eastern Shawnee tribe filed against the state and 60 other government entities and individuals last year.
The tribe asked that the state be dismissed as a defendant and U.S. District Judge James Carr in Toledo agreed last week. At the time, Petro hailed the dismissal as a victory for Ohio and said it showed the tribe had decided its case was week.
However, Petro said Friday that had since learned the tribe was changing its tactics. Instead of trying to win state approval to build casinos, it first was negotiating with several communities on agreements that the land where it wants to build is ancestral tribal land, he said.
That way, it can take the agreements - if approved by Carr - to the U.S. Department of the Interior to make such a designation. The Shawnee would still need the state's OK to build casinos, but the designation would allow them to build if the state ever approved casino gambling.
The tribe, forced from Ohio in the 1830s, argues that faulty treaties and land deals legitimize its land claims.
Eastern Shawnee spokesman Terry Casey said the tribe would continue its discussions with about half a dozen communities around the state. |
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