Congresswoman alleges collusion in off-reservation casino scheme

Excerpted from testimony provided 3.14.08 by Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D - MI13th) at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on H.R. 2176:

On October 10, 2002, in testimony before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, The Chairman of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe, Bernard Boushor, said “ the Bay Mills case was a scam from the start.” In testimony and information provided to the House Natural Resources Committee in February of this year, Saginaw Chippewa Chief Fred Cantu cited Chairman Boushor’s testimony, stating that the original lawsuit on the land claim was a collusive lawsuit. I have provided Chairman Boushor’s statement to be included as part of today’s testimony.

I would strongly encourage the Committee to carefully read these documents on how this land claim actually began. The proponents of this legislation have repeatedly stated that these bills are simply to address the aggrieved landowners in Charlotte Beach. But according to the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe “the Charlotte Beach claim did not originate with Bay Mills. It was a product of a Detroit area attorney who developed it specifically as a vehicle to obtain an IGRA casino…the goal was never to recover the Charlotte Beach lands.”

How was this originally a collusive lawsuit? The Bay Mills Tribe sued Mr. James Hadley on October 18, 1996 who entered into a settlement in which he gave land to the Bay Mills Tribe 300 miles from their reservation to build a casino in Auburn Hills, Michigan. That plan was rejected by the Department of Interior. The point is that Mr. Hadley was not an aggrieved landowner, he was an active participant in what the Sault Tribe described as “a collusive lawsuit” and “a scam.”