Murphy – Cherokee County commissioners voted to send Gov. Roy Cooper a letter opposing the construction of a casino in Cleveland County that will be run by the Catawba Indian Nation.
The letter asks Cooper to join a federal lawsuit filed in the District of Columbia by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, who aim to stop the casino project. “The Catawba Kings Mountain casino project is not only a threat to the economic health and well-being of the tribe, but also to North Carolina’s community and charter schools, and the economy, in general,” the letter states.
The EBCI filed a civil lawsuit in July against the U.S. Department of the Interior alleging that developer Wallace Cheves “leveraged his political connections to pressure the department” to put 16.57 acres of land into trust for the South Carolina-based Catawba Indian Nation to open a gaming operation in North Carolina.
Federal Election Commission records show Cheves has made political contributions to several lawmakers – including Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), each of whom sponsored the bill that allowed the Department of the Interior to make a decision on whether to put land into a trust for the Catawbas.
Cheves “prevailed upon the Catawba Indian Nation of South Carolina to lend its name to the scheme and has deployed his influence to reverse the Department of the Interior’s long-held position that such trust acquisitions are unlawful,” the lawsuit says.
“Cheves’ scheme will undermine the success that the EBCI has spent decades building, diverting largely into the hands of a non-Indian developer the gaming revenues that the EBCI earns today – and on which the EBCI and its members depend to fund hospitals, schools, Cherokee language initiatives, domestic-violence prevention, family income supplements and firefighting in the Great Smoky Mountains, among many other governmental programs.”
The letter sent to Cooper claims the Catawba’s casino would be a loss of revenue to North Carolina at the state and local levels. North Carolina law established an Indian Gaming Education Revenue Fund that allocates money to “local school administrative units, charter schools and regional schools on the basis of allotted average daily membership.” The EBCI claims the Catawba’s casino will not be required to contribute to the fund.
“The U.S. Department of the Interior took no thought as to what this means for our state and local school systems when approving the taking of land from North Carolinians to support a South Carolina tribe; a tribe that has no gaming history, and with no current measures in place to support North Carolina education,” the letter to Cooper states.
“It is our belief that the Catawba tribe, as a South Carolina-based business, will not be required to support North Carolina communities and schools, and that the economic benefits reaped from this project will benefit only the Catawba and their home state of South Carolina. … It is clear that the DOI’s decision was political, favoring the Catawba and those politicians who pushed for the taking of North Carolina land.”
The Catawba Indian Nation plans to construct a casino and mixed-use entertainment complex totaling about 195,000 square feet. The facility will also include a 940-seat restaurant, a small retail space for the sale of native artwork and crafts, and 2,130 parking spaces to accommodate both patrons and employees.
They expect the project will create about 5,000 construction jobs and 4,000 permanent jobs in the Kings Mountain area. Catawbas broke ground on the project in July.
According to the DOI, the site is about 33 miles west of Charlotte and 34 miles northwest of Rock Hill, S.C., location of the Catawba’s headquarters. The site is also about 33 miles from Catawba’s existing reservation and 19 miles from its historic reservation.
“The site is within the [Catawba Indian] Nation’s congressionally established service area,” the DOI noted in its ruling on the matter. The Catawbas echoed those statements when arguing that they have a legal right to build a casino in Kings Mountain.
“It is sad that the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is trying to enforce a state border on another tribe when, like us, they were here long before state borders existed,” the Catawba Indian Nation said in a previous statement. “Our history in the Charlotte area and across the piedmont of both North and South Carolina is well documented.
“We have a legal right to use of these lands in our 1993 Land Claim Settlement Agreement, which was passed and codified by Congress on Oct. 27, 1993. The area granted to us to provide services to our people and purchase lands in our original bill is the entire state of South Carolina and six counties in North Carolina, including Mecklenburg and Cleveland.”