The Character and Effects of the Indian Economy in Washington State

Transcription

Indian Self-Government in WashingtonVolume II
The Character and Effects of the
Indian Economy in Washington State
Jonathan B. Taylor
Cambridge, MA
7.10.06
This study was funded by the member governments of the Washington Indian Gaming
Association and conducted under a contract with the Taylor Policy Group, Inc. The views
expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the
institutions with which he is affiliated.
Copies of the report can be obtained from
www.washingtonindiangaming.org/resources.html
Taylor Policy Group, Inc.
124 Mt. Auburn St., Suite 200N
Cambridge, MA 02138
617.576.5700
Washington Indian Gaming Association
1110 Capitol Way S., Suite 404
Olympia, WA 98501
360.352.3248
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Contents
I. Overview......................................................................................................... 7
Indian Economic Activity
Tribal Government Activity
Tribal Fiscal Impacts
8
9
11
II. Indians in the Washington Economy............................................................ 13
Land and Property Rights
Natural Resources
Personal Income
Individual Indian Businesses
Tribal Enterprises
Tribal Governments and Budgets
Non-Indian Economic Activity
Summary of Indian Economic Participation
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
III. Economic Impacts of Tribal Enterprise on the Washington Economy.......... 22
Taxable Sales on Reservations Casinos and Off-Reservation Taxes Reservation Interdependence with Washington’s Economy
Indian Purchasing and Tax Collections
Indian Gaming and Remote Tribes
23
23
24
25
26
IV. Tribal Investment in Socioeconomic Change: Four Case Studies................. 27
The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe: Pioneering Self-Government
The Kalispel Tribe: Strategies for Long-term Recovery
The Squaxin Island Tribe: Towards Self-Sufficiency
The Tulalip Tribes: Diversification in Action
28
34
38
44
V. References.................................................................................................... 52
VI. Notes..........................................................................................................55
VII. About the Author...................................................................................... 57
indian economy in washington indian economy in washington
indian economy in washington Quinaielt
River




Shoalwater Bay Casino
SHOALWATER BAY
Lucky Eagle Casino
CHEHALIS
Little Creek Casino
SQUAXIN ISLAND




Medicine
Creek


COWLITZ
INDIAN TRIBE
Treaty
Cessions
YAKAMA
Muckleshoot Casino
MUCKLESHOOT
Emerald Queen Casino
PUYALLUP
Emerald Queen Cascades Casino
SNOQUALMIE
Clearwater Casino
SUQUAMISH
Point
Elliott
Tulalip Casino and Bingo
TULALIP
STILLAGUAMISH
Northern Lights Casino
SWINOMISH
SAUK-SUIATTLE
Skagit Valley Casino
UPPER SKAGIT
NOOKSACK
Nooksack River Casino
Red Wind Casino
NISQUALLY







SPOKANE

200
1,000
5,500 to 10,000
2,920 to 5,500
570 to 2,920
0 to
570
by census block group
2,000
Population Density (2000)
symbol proportional to machine count
Camp Stevens
(Umatilla)
Camp Stevens
(Nez Perce)

Lil' Chiefs Casino
Two Rivers Casino
Northern Quest Casino
Coulee Dam
Casino
Double Eagle Casino

Chewelah Casino
KALISPEL
Gaming Devices by Facility (2004)

Mill Bay Casino
COLVILLE
Okanogan Bingo Casino
Camp Stevens
(Yakima)
Legends Casino


Blank areas were not ceded by treaty. Snoqualmie trust lands (56 acres) are indicated per Krishnan, 2006. The Cowlitz and Samish Tribal locations correspond approximately to tribal headquarters
for these tribes, which are federally recognized but do not have trust lands or reservations. (Taylor, 2005, Figure 1; Isely, et al., 22)
Quinault Beach
Casino

Point
No Point
Lucky Dog Casino
SKOKOMISH
QUINAULT
HOH
The Point Casino
PORT GAMBLE S’KLALLAM

LOWER ELWHA KLALLAM
SAMISH
7 Cedars Casino
JAMESTOWN S'KLALLAM
QUILEUTE
Neah
Bay
MAKAH
LUMMI
Silver Reef Casino
Figure 1
Washington Indian Lands and Treaty Cessions
indian economy in washington
I. Overview
I
ndian tribes are creating economic opportunities for their own
people and for other Washingtonians at an unprecedented rate.
Any visitor to Quil Ceda Village on the Tulalip Reservation, the
Puyallup Tribe’s Emerald Queen Casino, or the government offices at Jamestown S’Klallam can see dramatic changes afoot. Indians
are building, buying, selling, hiring, and investing like never before.
Tribes employ thousands of Washingtonians in their casinos,
their non-gaming enterprises, and their governments. They buy
millions of dollars’ worth of goods and services from hundreds of
vendors in communities near them and around the state. Those
purchases and wages, in turn, yield millions in taxes for state and
local governments. What is more, the tribes’ commercial investments underwrite important, tribally driven social, economic,
environmental, and cultural investments that produce significant
and tangible results for Indians and non-Indians alike.
Tulalip Tribes
Indian casinos, widely recognized as critical engines for such
change, categorically differ from other enterprises in Washington:
governments own them. Tribal governments use casino profits
to fund the same categories of public activity that state and federal governments do. Tribal governments educate children, assist
the poor, reduce pollution, build roads, fight fires, and keep the
peace.
Given the low historical bases of
funding for Indian governments, and the
low socioeconomic standing of Indians
to begin with, opportunities for economic improvement and government
success abound. The Washington tribes
have seized such opportunities. They
have demonstrated that Indian gaming
promises improved functioning of the
Washington economy by raising the fortunes of communities both on and near
Indian reservations.
Representing the second and final
phase of a two-year project undertaken
by the Taylor Policy Group (TPG) on be-
Tulalip Casino
indian economy in washington Altogether, in 2004 the
Washington Indian
“economy” took in more
than $3.2 billion in revenues
and employed 30,000
Washingtonians.
half of the Washington Indian Gaming Association, this report
serves as a companion to TPG’s first report, Tribal Self-Government
and Gaming Policy: The Outcomes for Indians and Washington State
(Taylor, 2005). This second volume incorporates, supplements,
and extends prior research about Washington’s Indian Tribes,
their economic activity, and government works. Specifically, it
updates Veronica Tiller and Robert Chase’s 1998 study conducted under the joint auspices of the Indian governments and the
Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs (Tiller & Chase, 1998). Tiller
and Chase surveyed and visited the tribes to document their economic and government activities. They recorded one billion dollars in revenue and 14,375 employees for tribal government and
enterprise (1). In 2002, researchers hired by the First American
Education Project again surveyed the tribes, this time incorporating 2000 census data to expand the picture of economic change in
Washington’s Indian Country (King & Kanzler, 2002).
More recently, TPG’s Phase I report (hereinafter “Volume
I”) explained the public policy frameworks that underlie Indian
self-determination and gaming. Additionally, Volume I examined evidence of socioeconomic change on and off Washington
reservations. Most important for this companion report, Volume
I systematically examined taxable sales and property values in
communities near reservations to determine whether introducing
Indian casinos had any material effects on those important sources of Washington tax revenue. That research found no statistically
discernible harm, consistent with comparable studies conducted
on other jurisdictions. The second volume documents the economic, fiscal, and social effects of tribal government spending.
Indian Economic Activity
I
n 2005 Indian gaming in Washington became a billion-dollar
industry, yet Indians have even broader, more fundamental influences on the economy:
• Altogether, in 2004 the Washington Indian “economy” took
in more than $3.2 billion in revenues and employed 30,000
Washingtonians (Figure 13).
• The total value-added, multiplier effect of tribal government
and enterprise spending within Washington exceeded an estimated $2.2 billion. That sum yielded an estimated $141 million
in state and local taxes in Washington (Figure 19).
• Individual Indians owned 5,731 companies of various sizes with
more than $1 billion in revenues and 11,505 employees in 2002
(Figure 6).
• More than 91,000 Washington Indians earned $1.4 billion in
personal income in 1999—up 26% from 1989. Still, statewide
Indian income remained less than 60% of the all-races average
in Washington, and on reservations it was less than half (Figure
5).
Totem, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe
• Tribal enterprises owned by twenty surveyed tribes earned $1.45
billion in revenues in 2004 and employed 13,146 people (9,155
non-Indians and 3,991 Indians) (Figure 8).
• Other enterprises operated on Indian reservations but neither
owned by Indians nor by tribes received at least $311 million in
revenue and employed at least another 1,400 people (p. 19).
• Sixteen Washington tribal governments report $695 million in
combined revenues for 2004. About one-third of this revenue
consisted of intergovernmental transfers and the remainder derived from fees, sales, taxes, enterprises, and other non-grant
sources (Figure 10). Together these governments employed
4,427 people.
The total value-added,
multiplier effect of tribal
government and enterprise
spending exceeded an
estimated $2.2 billion,
yielding an estimated $141
million in state and local
taxes in Washington.
• Indians harvested and marketed $12.7 million worth of salmon
and $33.9 million of shellfish in 2004, out of a total state harvest of $19.4 million in salmon and $104.7 million in shellfish
(Figures 3 & 4).
This evidence reveals money flowing as freely off of as onto
the reservations. Casino and other tribal enterprises, along with
tribal government payroll and purchasing, provide benefits for
neighboring towns, for regional economies, and by natural extension, for the state as a whole.
Tribal Government Activity
I
ndian socioeconomic recovery and its collateral benefits to
Washington depend critically on broad recognition of the need
and right of Indian tribes, like Indian cultures, to set their own
course. Such definition distinguishes tribes not just from nonIndian companies and organizations, but from each other as well.
In the first regard, tribal governments spend enterprise proceeds
predominantly on or near the reservations unlike private firms
whose profits accrue wherever in the nation or the world their
shareholders reside.
Tribal governments have stated intentions to advance the socioeconomic recovery of their people. They invest in health care,
college tuition, reading proficiency, habitat protection, summer
youth activity, home construction, healthcare, language restoration, drug rehab, tutoring, childcare, cultural revitalization, and
in a variety of other realms affecting tribal quality of life. Together
these investments affect broader socioeconomic outcomes.
Between the 1990 and 2000 censuses, Indians on reservations
in Washington saw poverty decline and incomes rise faster than
Floodplain of the Pend Oreille River, Kalispel Indian Reservation
indian economy in washington Indian socioeconomic
recovery and its collateral
benefits to Washington
depend critically on broad
recognition of the need and
right of Indian tribes, like
Indian cultures, to set their
own course.
other Washingtonians. The gap between Indian and non-Indian
wellbeing remains large, but it is closing.
In the second regard, history, geography, and culture distinguish the tribes substantially from each other. As a means of
conveying the variation of tribal models of self-determination, as
well as common trends, four accounts of recent tribal experience
in Section IV document and differentiate recent socioeconomic
investments by tribes. The stories of the Jamestown S’Klallam,
Kalispel, Squaxin Island, and Tulalip Tribes depict the explicit purposes to which tribes direct their earnings.
Squaxin Island Tribe
Each tribe’s recent history attests to a particular approach to
investment in changing social conditions, in bringing Indian citizens into the labor force, and in raising the productivity of their
societies. Each story reveals the importance to each tribe of flexibly tailoring economic and social strategies to meet its own specific needs, and all the stories demonstrate substantial positive offreservation benefits.
Coho Salmon
The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe purchased essential land to contribute to a multi-government effort to
restore Jimmycomelately Creek near their casino. That
effort and a joint breedstocking program improved
the chances for survival of endangered summer chum
salmon in a way that would have been impossible
without tribal contributions (Figure 27). Jamestown
S’Klallam also created a health clinic in Sequim when
a critical non-Indian clinic was closing. About half of
the primary care in the region was at stake, but no gap
in service occurred for Indian or non-Indian patients
because the Tribe acted quickly and competently.
The Kalispel Tribe supports Read Right programs
to advance literacy in three public schools outside its reservation
and offers an adult Read Right program for employees. The result
of this reading proficiency project has been a gain of eight hundred reading-level grades achieved by five hundred students in
two years of operation. While the Tribe initiated the program to
help Indians, the program serves all students, regardless of heritage.
The Squaxin Island Tribe operates an inpatient treatment center to address substance abuse, domestic violence, and other family and individual mental health problems. The program at the
Northwest Indian Treatment Center exceeds Indian Health Service
guidelines for the quality and duration of care. Independent accreditors consistently rank the Center among the top programs in
the nation. While Native Americans constitute the bulk of the patient population, non-Indians also receive treatment. More broadly, non-Indian taxpayers benefit as patients and their families recover from the problems of poverty and build life-long health and
personal capability.
The Tulalip Tribes reasserted criminal jurisdiction on their
reservation with the support of the State of Washington. Via
participation in the Northwest Indian Court System, the Tribes
established a technically capable and politically independent
10
Tribal Court. Together, these reforms mean that prosecutions can
be handled much more effectively under culturally relevant law
and process. The Tulalip Tribes have also built the first federally
recognized municipality on a reservation, Quil Ceda Village. The
economic boom that resulted from its institutional structure and
planning created not just a shopping destination, but also 1,400
jobs, $26 million in state tax collections, and the first-ever Indian/
non-Indian chamber of commerce.
The opening of Indian
casinos produces no
statistically meaningful
effect on nearby, offreservation taxable sales or
taxable property.
Tribal Fiscal Impacts
A
number of features of tribal enterprise and government activity produce fiscal benefits for state, tribal, and local governments. First, the state taxes many sales on the reservations, as
noted above in the example of Quil Ceda Village. Second, even
where sales cannot be taxed by Washington, tribes may impose
taxes. At the Squaxin Island’s Little Creek Hotel, for example,
the Tribe levies a tax of 10% on room charges, compared with
10.5% in nearby Shelton.
Third, even where state or tribal taxes do not apply—for example, at slot machines—state collections
do not decline when such businesses operate. The
opening of Indian casinos produces no statistically
meaningful effect on nearby, off-reservation taxable
sales or property.
Fourth, despite concerted efforts by the United
States and tribal governments to grow tribal economies, these economies remain relatively dependent;
they cannot meet their enterprises’ and governments’
needs for goods and services. Indeed, the vast majority of inputs purchased by four casinos studied in detail came from off-reservation providers. Similarly, the
majority of jobs created by tribal enterprise in the state are held
by non-Indians, and even Indian employees turn to off-reservation businesses to spend substantial portions of their household
incomes.
Squaxin Island Museum Library and Research Center
Fifth, spending at Indian enterprises results quickly in off-reservation taxable sales. The expenditures made by tribes and their
employees translate into demand which extends through the
state-taxed economy. As noted above, the total value-added, multiplier effect of tribal government and tribal enterprise purchasing
and payroll within Washington exceeds an estimated $2.2 billion.
That sum yields an estimated $141 million in state and local taxes
in Washington, notwithstanding the fact that tribal governments
and tribal enterprises are generally outside Washington tax jurisdiction.
Finally, tribal governments own these “non-taxable” enterprises, not individual Indians or private corporations. Thus, tribal
governments effectively “tax” the profits of these enterprises at
a rate of 100% to fund roads, wastewater treatment, emergency
services, economic development, socioeconomic recovery, education, and other government functions.
indian economy in washington 11
Where Indian governments
reach the potential they
never could attain under
federal transfers, nonIndians in Washington
benefit from positive
spillovers.
L
ike never before, Indian economic activity is growing in
Washington—to the direct benefit of Washingtonians. As
Indian incomes rise and areas of reservation poverty begin to
shrink, Washington gains more productive, educated, healthy
citizens. Where Indian enterprises grow, so also do employment
opportunities for non-Indians. Where Indian governments reach
the potential they never could attain under federal transfers, nonIndians in Washington benefit from positive spillovers in education, health care, natural resource management, and public infrastructure.
Much remains to be done to close the sizeable gap between
Indian and non-Indian quality of life. Yet evidence shows that
Indian tribes capably perform the work of governments for
their own people—and not inconsequentially for the people of
Washington—at a considerable benefit and at no discernible cost
to the economies around them.
Totem, Jamestown S’Klallam
12
II. Indians in the Washington Economy
I
ndians participate in the Washington economy in a variety of
ways. In the broadest terms, tribes have brought (and continue to bring) land and natural resources to the state economy. In
addition, individual Indians (91,299 in Washington in the 2000
census) participate as household consumers, as employees, and,
increasingly importantly, as employers. The tribal governments
under which Indians hold citizenship also run government programs and own enterprises, both of which employ workers and
buy goods and services from Indians and non-Indians. This section supplements readily available federal data with information
gathered from the tribal governments themselves. These governments participated in a survey designed by TPG and administered
by the WIGA explicitly to quantify the size and extent of Indian
participation in Washington’s economy.
Land and Property Rights
It is important to remember that the original and continuing contribution of Indian tribes to the Washington economy
was the land on which the state was founded (Figure 1). As of the
2000 Census, 5,062 square miles of the state’s 66,544 square miles
of land remains Indian reservation and trust land (US Census
Bureau, 2000). The other ninety-two percent (and even a sizeable
fraction of the reservation acreage itself) became non-Indian land
by treaty, by presidential order, by encroachment, by swindle, by
unilateral federal designation as “surplus,” by condemnation, by
sale, and by default. Though contemporaneous standards of fair
dealing often existed, such transactions did not meet them uniformly, let alone conform to modern principles governing fair
Wetlands on the Pend Oreille River, Kalispel Indian Reservation
The Indian forest harvest
was 70% as large as the
state lands’ harvest.
Manu Esteve
market value, takings, and due process (see, e.g., Wilkinson, 1987).
Yet that land today supports the mainstays of Washington’s natural resource economy (hydropower, agriculture, forestry, and fishing). Historically Indian territory, of course, whether ceded to the
United States in one fashion or another, or retained on reservations, comprises the entire landmass that is modern Washington.
Notwithstanding the pervasive concession of Indian land, today
22 of Washington’s 39 counties contain part or all of an Indian
reservation.
The property rights retained today by Indians and tribes have
not been transparent, well defined, well protected, or easily adjudicated, despite a federal trustee responsibility to ensure that
they be so. As a result, the high cost of exercising and developing
Indian property rights introduces unique, undue, and ultimately
unnecessary economic frictions to Indian life. Far from being a
no-longer relevant injustice of the past, the weaknesses of Indian
property rights continue to burden Indian economic development, and explain in great part the persistently depressed Indian
incomes observed on Washington reservations. In 1999, average
income for Indians residing on reservations were only 42% percent of the state average (Taylor, 2005, 23).
Today, Indian land is consumed to produce cheap hydropower
for the state’s benefit. The 9.5 million acre-feet of water behind
the 6,465 Gigawatt (GW) Grand Coulee Dam, covers 80,000 acres
over 151 miles (see, e.g., US Bureau of Recalamation). Much of
the Franklin Roosevelt Lake created by Grand Coulee lies on the
Colville Reservation’s southern and western borders. Indian land
also supports power generation by other, smaller dams. The Chief
Joseph Dam (2,069 Megawatts or MW) also sits partly on the
Colville Reservation. The Little Falls Dam (32 MW) sits partly on
the Spokane Reservation, and there are others. There are also offreservation dams that impose costs on Indian property rights. For
example, the Elwha Dam and Glines Canyon Dam critically obstruct salmon runs in the Lower Elwha River.
Chum Salmon
In the case of off-reservation dams, tribes receive little or no
remuneration for bearing costs to their property rights. On reservations, compensation has nearly universally consisted of land
rent rather than equity participation in the value created by selling cheap hydropower at market rates. Only recently in Montana
and Oregon have tribes begun to participate as owners of the dams
that have flooded their burial sites, agricultural lands, and fishing
grounds.
Figure 2
Washington Timber Harvest 1980 – 2002
billions
of board feet
8
Natural Resources
7
6
5
National Forest
State
Indian
4
3
Forest Industry
2
1
Private
0
80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02
“Other Federal” and “Other non-Federal” (1% of 2002 harvest) not shown.
(Larsen & Nguyen, 2002; Larsen & Nguyen, 2004)
14
Indian Tribes provide natural resources to the larger economy
from the lands they continue to possess. Washington tribal forests yielded nearly three hundred and twenty million board feet
of timber in 2002 (Larsen & Nguyen, 2004). The steep declines
of National Forest harvest in the 1990s put the Indian harvest at
second largest of government harvests (Figure 2). In 2002, the
Indian forest harvest was 70% as large as the state lands’ harvest,
and constituted nearly one tenth of the total timber harvested in
Washington (Larsen & Nguyen, 2004).
Indians harvest salmon
and shellfish under a treaty
splitting those harvests with
non-Indians.
Indians harvest salmon and shellfish under a treaty splitting
those harvests with non-Indians. The Washington salmon harvest
in 2004 yielded $19.4 million in revenue, $12.7 million of which
was landed by Indians (Figure 3). This yield represents a marked
decline from peak combined salmon harvest values of $132 million in 1987.1 The decline results from, among other things, declining wild stocks (the result of riparian habitat degradation, oceanic
change, harvest patterns, and other factors) and declining prices
(the result of competition with large volumes of farmed salmon).
Nonetheless, the salmon fishery remains an important source of
income for Indians.
Reported shellfish harvest value, by contrast, has been growing over time, and with it, the Indian share (Figure 4). In 2004
the total shellfish harvest was $104.7 million and the tribal share
stood at $33.9 million. A decade earlier, the Indian harvest was
barely more than a tenth the size and a mere 5% of the total. This
growth has helped supplant Indian salmon revenues which have
remained low. Indeed, beginning in 1995, Indian shellfish harvest
values have consistently exceeded those of salmon, and in 2004
did so by a factor of more than two-and-a-half.
Figure 3
Washington Salmon Harvest Value 1980 – 2004
millions of 2004 dollars
140
120
100
80
Indian
60
40
20
non-Indian
0
80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04
In addition, a large amount of agriculture takes place on Indian
lands, although systematic data are not readily available regarding
the statewide use of Indian land for farming or the income generated by it. The lowlands of the Yakama Nation in Yakima County, for
example, are home to scores of farms including the tribally owned
Yakama Land Enterprise. That enterprise harvests “corn, wheat,
alfalfa, asparagus, Merlot grapes, and fruit. Its orchard operations
alone realize between three and five million dollars in annual income” (Ash Institute, 2005). Together, the Indian and non-Indian
farms on the Yakama Reservation helped make Yakima County the
second largest Washington county in agricultural sales, at $844
million in 2002 (National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2003).
The Colville Reservation has approximately 288,000 acres of open
rangeland, 135,000 acres of forested range lands, 82,000 acres of
commercial wheat, alfalfa, barley, and apple croplands and associated packing and support facilities (Tiller, Malcolm Wiener Center
for Social Policy, & Harvard Project on American Indian Economic
Development, 2005, 962). Agriculture also features prominently
in other Indian economies around the state, for example, on the
Spokane and Swinomish reservations.
Personal Income
Note: Values are total volumes times the average price for those volumes
reporting prices.
(Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, 2005)
Figure 4
Washington Shellfish Harvest Value 1980 – 2004
millions
of 2004 dollars
140
120
100
60
40
Indians contribute their skills and time to the state economy
as individual workers. Personal income constitutes the vast majority of state and national GDP—83% and 82%, respectively, in
2004 (US Census Bureau, 2006b; Washington State Economic and
Revenue Forecast Council, 2005). As such, personal income is a
reasonable starting point to observe the broad picture of Indian
participation in the state economy. It would be inappropriate to
“gross-up” Indian earnings to an Indian “GDP” in Washington
because proprietor income, resource values, and the other components of GDP likely vary idiosyncratically from tribe to tribe and,
particularly, from state or national patterns. Nonetheless, as a preliminary proxy for GDP, Indian personal income captures total
purchasing power of Indian households in the state.
Indian
80
non-Indian
20
0
80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04
Note: Values are: total volumes times the weighted average price for those
volumes reporting prices.
(Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, 2005)
Indian per capita income in
Washington increased 14%
percent over the 1990s.
The 1999 Census-recorded income of American Indians and
Alaska Natives (AIAN) in Washington stood at $1.4 billion, up
26% from $1.1 billion in 1989 (Figure 5). Part of that increase is
attributable to rising Indian population, but not all of it. Indian
per capita income in Washington increased 14% percent over the
1990s. Not surprisingly given the pressures of directed and voluntary Indian relocation operating over much of the twentieth-century, eighty percent of that personal income is earned outside the
reservations, especially in urban areas.
Figure 5
Personal Income in Washington
2004 dollars
Income
(millions)
$200
$924
$788
$1,123
1989
Persons
$ per
capita
Income
(millions)
21,864
61,348
51,543
83,212
$9,127
$15,059
$15,293
$13,501
$284
$1,126
$1,068
$1,410
1999
Change
Persons
$ per
capita
Income
Persons
$ per
capita
25,949
65,350
59,482
91,299
$10,943
$17,233
$17,951
$15,446
42%
22%
35%
26%
19%
7%
15%
10%
20%
14%
17%
14%
5,636,186 $27,415
5,894,121 $26,048
52%
39%
34%
21%
14%
15%
Indians
On reservations
Not on reservations
In urban areas
Statewide
Population of all races
Washington urban
Washington
$101,574
$110,638
4,220,554 $24,067
4,866,692 $22,734
$154,518
$153,530
Indian is American Indian and Alaska Native alone and not in combination with other races. Some reservations are in census-designated urban areas.
(US Census Bureau, 1990; US Census Bureau, 2000)
To put the statewide numbers in context, Indian population at the 2000 census was on par with the sixth largest city in
Washington (Everett, pop. 91,290). Aggregate Indian personal
income ranked between that of Bellingham ($1.5 billion) and
Renton ($1.4 billion). Those cities are substantially smaller (pop.
66,815 and 49,894, respectively), highlighting the fact that Indian
incomes per person are less than sixty percent of statewide averages. These disparities are particularly pronounced on the reservations where incomes per person are less than half of the state
level. Nonetheless, as the right-most column of Figure 5 indicates,
the greatest per capita gains (twenty percent over the decade) are
found on the reservations.
Individual Indian Businesses
Figure 6
Businesses in Washington
revenues in million of 2004 dollars
1997
All firms
Firms
Statewide
2002
Indians
Statewide
4,689
467,337
5,731
$422,858
$1,424
$472,648
$1,031
129,780
974
135,614
979
$408,151
$1,297
$457,668
891
$3.1
$1.3
$3.4
$0.9
Employees
2,023,814
14,242
2,132,434
6,753
Min. implied empl.*
2,341,467
17,957
2,464,157
11,505
Revenue
Firms with paid employees
Firms
Revenue
Revenues/firm
*One person per firm without employees plus employees at firms with paid employees.
(US Census Bureau, 2001; US Census Bureau, 2006a)
16
Indians
447,433
An often overlooked engine of the Indian
economy is self-employment and business
ownership. Many individual Indians are selfemployed as contractors and consultants,
and a sizeable number own businesses that
employ others. In 2002, firms that were majority Indian-owned reported revenues of $1
billion dollars and together employed more
than 11,000 Indian and non-Indian employees
(Figure 6).
Note, however, that Indian firms with
employees saw a 31% decline in revenue and a
53% decline in employees. The size of minority-owned participation depends, in part, on
macroeconomic conditions. In the same period statewide, all firms’ revenues grew only 12%
Crucial as casino enterprise
has been to ease budgetary
constraints in Indian
Country, for the long term
most tribes seek to diversify
their economies away from
gambling.
whereas they had grown 361% in the prior period, 1992-1997 (US
Census Bureau, 1996). The proportionately smaller Indian firms
(see Revenues/firm in Figure 6) are more vulnerable to overall economic declines. The fall in business activity may also have resulted
from a sector-specific or Indian-specific cause or census sampling
issue. Nationally, Indian business revenues reported in this data
shrank 30% over the same period (US Census Bureau, 2001; US
Census Bureau, 2006a).
Tribal Enterprises
Derived as it is from tax returns, the foregoing data on Indian
enterprises excludes enterprises owned by tribal governments. As
discussed at length in Volume I, Congress and the IRS have recognized that the principle of intergovernmental tax immunity
and the goal of reservation economic development merit tribal
enterprise freedom from income taxation. After all, 100% of the
net income from such businesses goes to tribal government purposes—purposes that the US has both treaty obligations and a
trust responsibility to advance, yet which are broadly recognized
as substantially under-funded (see discussion regarding Figure 12,
below). Because the impact of this under-funding is critical to reservation life, tribally owned enterprises are key participants in the
Indian economy.
To the man on the street, casinos are the most conspicuous
tribal enterprises. Washington Indian governmental gaming has
grown rapidly in the past decade, averaging 37% in real compound annual growth from FY 1996 through FY 2005 (Figure 7). In
that period, Washington card rooms have grown quickly at times
(597% from 1998 to 2000), while all other forms of legal gambling
have held steady or declined. Since FY 2003, Indian gaming revenues have eclipsed the combined total revenues of all other gambling forms in the state, and in FY 2005, Washington Indian gaming revenues reached the one billion dollar mark.
Figure 7
Gambling Revenues in Washington
millions
of 2004 dollars by fiscal year
1800
1600
1400
1200
1000
800
Horse Racing
600
Lottery
400
200
But casinos are only part of the story. Some tribal enterprises
pre-date gaming, while others have been developed since casinos
were opened so as to diversify tribal economies away from gaming and related tourism. Consider the nearly three hundred and
twenty million board feet of timber harvested from Indian lands
in 2004 and shown in Figure 2. For several decades, a sizeable majority of that timber has been harvested and then processed by the
Colville, Yakama, and Quinault tribes and their enterprises. There
are also tribal enterprises that market shellfish, manufacture cigarettes, offer retail goods, grow crops, and participate in myriad
other activities. A comprehensive picture of Indian participation
in the Washington economy requires enumerating these businesses.
Indian Casinos
Raffles/FREs
PB/PT
1996
1997
Card Rooms
Bingo
0
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
Revenues are “net gambling receipts,” or revenues net of prizes paid out.
(Washington State Gambling Commission, 2005a)
Indeed, crucial as casino enterprise has been to ease budgetary
constraints in Indian Country, for the long term most tribes seek to
diversify their economies away from gambling. The tribes are well
aware that casinos are vulnerable to legislative fiat. Competitors
could suddenly appear as the result of a referendum vote, or tribes’
rights might be curtailed by legislation. Indian rights to wealth
have disappeared before, and the legacies of that history remain
evident today in the compromised conditions of tribal lands,
Tribes in Washington report
enterprises that collectively
earn $1.45 billion in
revenues, paying 13,000
people $361 million in
payroll.
salmon fisheries, and standards of living. And notwithstanding
this strong practical motivation for economic diversification, the
Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) aims explicitly “to promote
tribal economic development.” IGRA requires that gaming proceeds be spent only five purposes, one of which may be economic
development. 2
A survey designed by TPG and issued by WIGA to all federally
recognized tribes in the state indicates that, collectively, tribal enterprises are considerable in size. Twenty tribes of the twenty-nine
in Washington responded.3 These responding tribes report enterprises that collectively earn $1.45 billion in revenues, paying more
than 13,000 people $361 million in payroll (Figure 8). More than
two-thirds (70%) of their employees are non-Indian and 9% are
Indians from tribes other than the owning tribe. Four-fifths of the
revenue and a greater share of the payroll and employment come
from the gaming side, but at nearly $300 million in revenue, the
other tribally owned businesses are significant. These enterprises
range from convenience stores, museums, and gift shops to timber companies, defense subcontractors, and construction companies.4
Figure 8
Enterprises Owned by Indian Governments, 2004
twenty Washington tribes reporting
Employment
Gaming*
Other
Total
1,740
787
2,527
Tribal Members
Other Indians
1,358
106
1,464
Non-Indians
8,772
383
9,155
11,870
1,276
13,146
TOTAL
Because survey participation was incomplete, these figures understate the actual economic contribution of the tribes. Some of
the non-participating tribes represent substantial capacity investments in the casino market like Upper Skagit (Figure 9) or Spokane
(not shown in the figure). Moreover, some tribes provided data for
only some of their tribally owned enterprises.
Dollars (millions)
Revenues
$1,158
$292
$1,450
$306
$55
$361
Payroll
* Includes related hotels, restaurants, and entertainment.
(Survey of Washington Tribes)
Even so, the survey data captures the bulk of tribal enterprise.
The “Gaming” revenues in Figure 8 (which include hotels, restaurants, and entertainment but lack Upper Skagit and Stillaguamish
casino data) exceed a billion dollars. By comparison the Gaming
Commission’s figure for Indian gaming (a figure which excludes
ancillary non-gaming revenues) was $888 million dollars for 2004
(Figure 7). While it would always be preferable to have more data,
the survey responses sufficiently cover the subject enterprises
to yield a robust, though slightly understated, picture of Indian
Country in Washington.
Figure 9
Player Terminal Inventory by Tribe 2005
in thousands
4
3
Tribal Governments and Budgets
2
1
Skokomish
Shoalwater
Quinault
J. S'Klallam
Swinomish
Stilliguamish*
Port Gamble
Lummi
Nooksack
Chehalis
Squaxin
U. Skagit*
Nisqually
Colville
Yakama
Kalispel
Suquamish
Muckleshoot
Tulalip
Puyallup
0
*Non-responsive to the Survey of Washington Tribes. The Spokane Tribe
(not shown) was also non-responsive. See endnote 3 for a complete listing.
(Washington State Gambling Commission, 2005b)
Indian government activity ranges from monitoring endangered species habitats and counseling drug abusers to building
roads and educating children. For a long time, government employment was the major source of employment on the reservations. Even at the time of the 2000 census, combined federal,
state, & local government employment on Washington reservations was 22% of total employment, compared to 16% in the state
and 15% in the nation more broadly (US Census Bureau, 2000).
Sixteen of the twenty-nine federally recognized tribal governments in Washington returned survey data to WIGA regarding
the size of their tribal government budgets. Together they report
receipts of more than $695 million from all sources and employ
4,427 government workers. Of those sixteen, all but one provided disaggregated income source information. Interestingly, only
about one-third of the funds for those fifteen governments come
18
Sixteen of the twenty-nine
federally recognized tribal
governments report receipts
of more than $695 million
from all sources and employ
4,427 government workers.
from state or federal treasuries. About one fifth derive from tribal taxes, lease revenue, fees, and other government charges such
as third-party billing for health care. The remaining 45% are net
enterprise distributions (Figure 10). In other words, two-thirds of
Washington tribal revenue arises from tribally directed policy and
development. To a degree never seen before, tribes are building on
fiscal foundations of their own making.
Funds derived from tribal economies are essential to supplementing inadequate federal budgets for Indian health, education,
and welfare. As noted in Volume I, the US Commission on Civil
Rights has conducted two broad analyses concluding that funding
for Indian programs is inadequate to meet needs—often by wide
margins.5 For one dramatic example, consider per capita Indian
health care spending—an acknowledged federal trust responsibility. It lags behind other categories of federal health care spending
by multiples; spending on federal prisoners is twice as high (Figure
12).
Non-Indian Economic Activity
A final category of economic activity on the reservations is
neither Indian owned nor tribally owned, but owned by nonIndians who for historical or current economic reasons find it advantageous to be located on the reservations. Unfortunately, for
the purposes of quantification, there are no comprehensive sources of data pertaining to these businesses. No statewide chamber
of commerce of such businesses exists, and the usual government
sources of data cannot distinguish this economic activity from
that of the surrounding regions. Only a few data points shed light
on this subject.
Perhaps the most salient example is the Quil Ceda Village on
the Tulalip Indian Reservation (Quil Ceda is discussed extensively
in Section IV below). The Village is the first-ever federally chartered municipality on a reservation. It is designed explicitly to attract outside business tenants. Since its conception in 1998, the
Village has become an economic juggernaut, attracting scores of
businesses. In 2003 the Village generated $95.5 million in sales
taxable by Washington—yielding $6.2 million in taxes to support
the budgets of the State of Washington, Snohomish County, and
Marysville. (Washington State Department of Revenue, 2005). By
2005, when the bulk of the Seattle Premium Outlet stores were
opened, state-taxable sales at Quil Ceda Village had grown to $311
million, yielding $26 million in collections (Reese, 2006b). While
the Tulalip Tribes do collect lease income as the landowner (revenue which is reflected in Figure 10 and Figure 11), no tax revenue
from Quil Ceda Village accrues to the government that zoned,
planned, built, and maintained it. In any case, the booming business has resulted in, among other things, about 1,400 non-gaming
Figure 10
Sources of Washington Tribal Government Revenues
$545 million reported by fifteen tribes
3%
Enterprise Distributions
31%
45%
Taxes, leases, fees, etc.
Federal grants & contracts
State grants & contracts
21%
Sixteen tribes reported $695 million in government revenues, but only
fifteen tribes broke the sources into the categories shown here.
Figure 11
Variation in the Sources of Tribal Government
Revenue 2004
100%
75%
50%
25%
0%
Enterprise Distributions
Taxes, leases, fees, etc.
Federal grants & contracts
State grants & contracts
(Fifteen of twenty respondents to the survey of Washington tribes)
Figure 12
Relative Under-funding of Indian Health Programs
thousands of dollars per person, FY03
6
5
thousand$
Between tribes, however, sources of government revenue vary
considerably (Figure 11). Some tribes depend heavily on federal
funding (up to 83%) and others stand on a more independent
footing (as low as 7% federally funded). Even between relatively
independent tribes, however, the degrees to which tribal governments depend on non-federal sources of funding vary considerably.
4
3
2
1
0
Medicare
VA
US per
capita
Medicaid
Federal
Prisoners
FEHB
Benchmark
IHS
medical
care
IHS nonmedical
VA: Veteran’s Administration, FEHB: Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan;
IHS non-medical includes water and sanitation infrastructure and related
spending.
(US Commission on Civil Rights, 2003, Fig. 3.2)
By 2005, state-taxable
sales at Quil Ceda Village
had grown to $311 million,
yielding $26 million in
collections.
Tulalip Tribes
employees on the site (Reese, 2006a), more than eleven thousand
daily visitors to the site (including the casino), and the first Indian
and non-Indian business association, the Marysville-Tulalip
Chamber of Commerce.6
Some stores in Quil Ceda Village
While Quil Ceda Village is superlative in many regards, nonIndian economic activity is also taking root on other reservations
around the state. Non-Indian farmers work land and raise livestock
on the hundreds of thousands of acres of rangeland and farmland
on the Yakima and Colville reservations. Similarly, the Puyallup
Tribe is landlord to Northwest Container, an intermodal freight
yard (Tiller et al., 2005, 962, 991, and 1027). These non-Indian economic activities are properly included in the tally of Indian economic participation in the Washington economy since the policies, planning, and infrastructure necessary for this development
are at least partially if not wholly the purview of the reservation
governments. Unfortunately, the revenues and jobs associated
with most such businesses are currently beyond knowing.
In addition, as Figure 8 showed, non-Indians participate heavily in tribal enterprise, constituting more than two thirds of its
workforce. Why do Indian casinos and other tribal businesses
hire so many non-Indians when addressing reservation poverty is
such a priority? The answer hinges, to large degree, on geographic
variation. For tribes like Colville and Yakama, whose large reservation populations are located far from casinos serving Puget Sound
and Spokane, demand for Indian employees is low relative to the
supply. By contrast, for tribes like Tulalip, Muckleshoot, Kalispel,
and Puyallup, the reservation labor force is insufficient to support the enterprise, so the tribes must turn to non-Indians for
staff. Since much of casino capacity concentrates in urban markets, the Tulalip-type experience dominates the statewide average.
Such Indian enterprise activity is an engine for employment in
Washington, and as Section III shows, Indian enterprise employment and associated purchasing has effects well beyond the reservation boundaries.
Whether through timber harvesting, casinos, or Indian personal income, tribes are playing an increasingly important role
in the Washington economy. Altogether, documented data indicate that the “Indian economy” provides livelihoods to 30,000
residents of the state and garners more than $3.2 billion in revenues (Figure 13). Moreover and by definition, adding activities
for which data could not be gathered would increase this figure.
Figure 13
2004 dollars in millions
Plus
Minus
Plus
Plus
Sector
Revenues
Jobs
Individual Indian business
$1,031 11,505
Tribally owned business
$1,450 13,146
Net enterprise transfers
($333)
Tribal government
$695
4,427
$311
1,400
Non-Indian business
TOTAL
$3,154 30,478
Year
Notes
2002 Most recent available data is older; see Figure 6.
2004 Undercounts by nine tribes; see Figure 8.
Subtracted to avoid double-counting.
2004 Undercounts by thirteen tribes; see discussion before Figure 10.
2005 Undercounts by unobserved businesses; see pp. 19-20.
Notes: Indian personal income (per Figure 5) is omitted here due to significant overlap with the categories shown.
20
Just how large are the numbers in Figure 13? If all the jobs in
this “Indian economy” were aggregated into a US Bureau of Labor
Statistics “industry,” it would exceed the Washington accommodations sector (hotels, inns, B&Bs, etc.) and fall slightly short of
the food manufacturing sector (Figure 14). Statewide Indian employment ranked between the civilian employment of Bellingham
and Renton recorded in the 2000 census and between the civilian
employment of Cowlitz and Grant Counties (Figure 15).
Statewide Indian
employment was
comparable with civilian
employment reported in
the cities of Renton and
Bellingham in the 2000
census.
Figure 14
Washington Employment by BLS Industry
December 2004
Accommodation

27,500
Repair and Maintenance
27,500
Clothing and Clothing Accessories Stores
28,700
Architectural, Engineering, & Related Svcs.
32,200
Food Manufacturing
32,700
Management of Companies & Enterprises
33,500

Note: “Accommodation” includes all hotels, inns, B&Bs, RV parks, and
boarding houses.
(US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2006)
Within the context of Washington’s Indian Country workforce, recent Indian employment numbers are welcome but modest. In the 2000 census, the combined population of Indians living on Washington reservations was 25,949, of which 14,071 were
working age.7 Yet the total Indian employment in the tribal enterprises shown in Figure 8 amounts to only 3,991. Some additional
Indian employees would surely appear on the payrolls of non-respondent tribes and businesses, but still, the need for economic
development persists. Figure 15
Employed Civilians in Washington, 2000
cities & counties by statewide rank

Rank
City
Employed
Rank
County
Employed
7
Federal Way
42,194
10
Benton
66,233
8
Kent
40,322
11
Skagit
45,729
9
Bellingham
33,704
12
Cowlitz
39,888
10
Renton
27,552
13
Grant
29,364
11
Kirkland
27,454
14
Chelan
28,507
12
Yakima
27,018
15
Grays Harbor
27,556

(US Census Bureau, 2000)
III. Economic Impacts of Tribal Enterprise on the
Washington Economy
Off-reservation taxable sales
and property values do not
decline in response to casino
introductions.
D
espite the significant and growing participation of Indians
in the Washington economy, arguments have persisted that
such growth comes at the expense of Washingtonians—particularly Washington taxpayers. An influential exponent of this view
is the Washington Research Council, self-described as an “independent authority on taxes and government.”8 The WRC writes:
State and local governments have limited ability to collect taxes from activities on tribal lands. Money spent at
non-taxed tribal businesses would, in the absence of those
businesses, be spent in ways that generate state and local
government revenue. The amount of foregone revenue is
not trivial. (2002, 1)
ild the la
rgest,
h
lt
u
and hea
ing to b
Figure 16
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is nobuttress
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argument,
the Council advances a scenario quoted
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Washington Research Council the state – the Em
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us wate and:A
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athe
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Th
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sults
at nearb a, in addition of and
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veIndian
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Tribal
depend critically on offusineeconomies
w
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b
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v
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are
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$135.8
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Total ta
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c
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reservation
(virtually
all of whom are taxu
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-f
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are considerable.
need fo triangle, havable),
be collected
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e
.
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Bellevu l facilities, bec tage. They wo e facilities wo some local juri
T h e to th e n e t to th is a
on,gaming as it is structured in Washington dit of
van
s, th Indian
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h
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ompe
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A v o id in v e a d v a n ta o m p le x e s
have a c ices, and if
rectly
Withachieves at least one state goal: distributing jobs and income
ti ti
t c
c o m p e n te rt a in m e n d b y th e
ded serv construction. ir plans.
d
a
e
/e
e
n
th
x on
p la n
c a s in o
atingareas
of the state with high relative unemployment. And finalsales ta re reevaluto
e one
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li k e th
ps.
dictions
Puyallu
(Washington Research Council, 2002, verbatim p. 22)
22
ly, Indian casinos, which are required by law to be governmentowned, are taxed, in effect, at a rate of 100%. As the case studies in
Section IV will elaborate in detail, casino proceeds must be spent
on reservation roads, wastewater treatment, emergency services,
economic diversification, socioeconomic recovery, and other government functions. And when they are, off-reservation citizens
benefit.
Taxable Sales on Reservations
The proposition put forward by the Washington Research
Council that “state and local governments have limited ability to collect taxes from activities on tribal lands” (1) is demonstrably false. As noted above, Washington collected $26 million
in taxes on $311 million in taxable sales from the Tulalip Indian
Reservation in 2005.
The proposition put forward
by the Washington Research
Council that “state and
local governments have
limited ability to collect
taxes from activities
on tribal lands” is
demonstrably false.
Even where the enterprise
in question is a tribally owned
enterprise—and therefore not
subject to state taxing jurisdiction—transactions are not automatically tax-free. Tribes can and
do set their own tax policies. For
example, the Squaxin Island Tribe
has a series of taxes in place such
that cigarettes, restaurant meals,
hotel rooms, gift shop purchases
and the like are taxed at rates often
comparable to the state tax. At the Little Creek Hotel, for example,
the room occupancy tax is set at 10%. In nearby Shelton, the combined sales and hotel/motel tax was 10.3% in 2005 (Washington
State Department of Revenue, 2005). Even at the casino gift shop
there may be a sales tax (as there is at Squaxin). In short, Indian
reservations are not inherently or universally tax-free zones: state
and tribal taxes do apply to many goods and services.
In direct contradiction to the WRC’s observation, it is the
tribal governments which have “limited ability to collect taxes
from activities on tribal lands.” The Tulalip Tribes cannot tax the
transactions in the village it zoned, planned, built, and supports
without pancaking Tulalip taxes on top of state and local taxes,
thereby giving non-tribal businesses cause to shun the reservation. This scenario is not unique to Tulalip, but repeats itself elsewhere in Washington whenever a non-tribal business operates on
an Indian reservation. The tribes’ taxes (if any) cannot displace
the state’s but must raise the cumulative burden, regardless of the
relative contributions of non-Indian governments to developing
the reservation economy. And generally speaking, it is federal and
tribal governments who drive reservation economic development
policies, not state, county, and municipal governments.
Little Creek Casino Resort, Squaxin Island Tribe
Casinos and Off-Reservation Taxes
The Washington Research Council (2002) further asserts
without supporting evidence that “the diversion of economic activity to untaxed tribal business costs state and local governments
revenue” and “the amount of foregone revenue is not trivial” (1).
First of all, tribes are local governments. More to the point, systematically analyzed evidence contradicts this claim. A statistical examination of taxable sales in 268 Washington jurisdictions
It is important not to
lose sight of how the
economic geography of
tribal enterprise differs
significantly from private
ownership.
over fourteen years shows no discernible effect of Indian casino
introductions nearby. Similarly, there is no discernible decline in
property values. These empirical findings are consistent with other statistical research on casino introductions, which shows that
casino openings bring economic vitality, not declines in taxes in
non-Indian jurisdictions (Volume I, Section IV.D). If the foregone
state tax revenue were indeed “not trivial,” one would expect it to
appear in such statistical evidence, particularly around the time of
casino openings. It does not.
Reservation Interdependence with Washington’s Economy
Figure 17
Indian Gaming Finance at a Glance
It is hard to find statistical evidence for the WRC’s claim in
part because Indian reservation economies do not exist in isolation from Washington’s. When a customer goes onto a reservation
to engage in a transaction that is neither taxable by Washington
nor taxed by the tribes—say, a night playing the slots—the result
is not an economic disappearing act. To the contrary, demand for
a night at the casino begets derived demand for electricity, CocaCola, air conditioner parts, janitorial services, parking valets, etcetera. Likewise, when a tribal government spends casino profits
on child care, housing, teacher salaries, road construction, or habitat restoration (see Section IV, below), those purchases translate
into demand for off-reservation goods, services, and labor (Figure
17).
Customers
Tribal Government
Casino
Vendors
Workers
Taxes
Profits
Taxes
Programs
Outside Jurisdictions
(Taylor, 2005, Figure 20)
It is important not to lose sight of how the economic geography of tribal enterprise differs significantly from private ownership, particularly public shareholder ownership, where profits
may be widely dispersed across the United States or the world. By
contrast, tribal government spending of casino profits is, by public law (IGRA) and by tribal interest, oriented locally on tribal and
local government. Meanwhile, try as they might, Indian reservation governments have not been able to achieve economic selfsufficiency. Operating tribal enterprises and administering tribal
governments necessitate trade with off-reservation economies.
Figure 18
Vendor Outlays and Payroll are Dispersed OffReservation
weighted average of case study casinos and governments
Reservation
Vendor
Outlays
Payroll
Both
~6%
~14%
~9%
Reservation zip code
12%
31%
18%
Home county
24%
61%
35%
Washington State
Total
66%
99%
76%
100%
100%
100%
(Jamestown S’Klallam; Kalispel; Squaxin Island; and Tulalip Tribes)
Detailed accounting records from the four case study tribes
quantify the proportion of tribal government and casino purchasing that is made outside these specific reservations (Figure 18, second column). For the case study tribes as a group, around nineteen of every twenty dollars spent on vendors are spent outside
the reservations. In most places the proportion is even higher. In
the cases of three of the case study tribes whose reservations are
very small (Jamestown, Kalispel, and Squaxin), only a miniscule
portion goes to vendors located on the reservations. In each of
these three cases, the zip code containing the reservation also encompasses at least one sizeable non-Indian, off-reservation town
which skews the impression of the second row in Figure 18 toward overstatement. Purchases in that second row concentrate in
Sequim, Usk/Cusick/Airway Heights, and Shelton, respectively—
all off-reservation towns sharing the reservations’ postal code.
Figure 18 also shows that paychecks are mailed substantially
outside the relevant reservation (third column). Notwithstanding
a tribal interest in improving reservation economic conditions,
tribes have to hire workers from beyond their borders to meet the
demand for labor. Fully 99% of the payroll is paid in-state.
24
Indian government activity
is associated with an
estimated $2.2 billion in
state domestic product and
$141 million in state and
local taxes.
Indian Purchasing and Tax Collections
While purchases made by tribal governments are generally not
taxable in the initial transaction, the input purchases and household spending that arise from them are. When a Washington
household, which depends upon a casino paycheck, buys laundry
machines from an off-reservation department store, for example,
the transaction is taxed by Washington. A non-Indian trucking
company serving an Indian casino will make off-reservation diesel
purchases that are taxable by Washington, and so on.
Input-output models are regularly used to estimate how given
levels of demand translate into final demand: for example, how
adding or removing a casino’s purchasing will affect total household purchasing and intermediate demands for electricity, CocaCola, air conditioner parts, etc. Also known as multiplier or impact
models, these approaches not only estimate final demand associated with an activity, but also the tax collections arising out of the
intermediate and household demands as well.
Figure 19 shows the results of applying one such model,
IMPLAN, to Washington tribal activity. In the case of casino purchasing, TPG aggregated detailed data from the four case study
tribes and used it to extrapolate a production function from those
tribes to the gross purchasing and payroll numbers reported by
the twenty survey-responding tribes. For the sake of conservatism
in estimating casino impacts, only purchases that were known to
be in-state payments were counted in the production function.
In-state derived demand from the casinos’ out-of-state purchasing was also excluded, further understating results. In the case of
non-gaming enterprises and tribal government, the in-state proportion of spending was allocated in the standard fashion according to IMPLAN’s regional purchasing coefficients. The estimates
in Figure 19 are further depressed by the non-participation of the
tribes in the survey.
Figure 19
Estimated Effects of Indian Purchasing on the
Washington Economy
million 2004 dollars
Gross Valueadded
State & Local
Taxes
646
57
Other enterprises
423
36
Tribal government
1,160
48
2,228
141
Casinos
TOTAL
(Jamestown S’Klallam, Kalispel, Squaxin Island, and Tulalip Tribes; Survey
of Washington Tribes, IMPLAN)
Indian government activity (arising from casinos, non-gaming tribal enterprises, and tribal programs) is associated with an
estimated $2.2 billion in state domestic product (value-added). As
a result, very substantial tax collections arise from “non taxable”
tribal government and enterprise activity. An estimated $57 million in tax collections arise out of gaming payroll and purchasing
and $36 million from non-gaming tribal enterprise in the State
of Washington. When combined with the effect of tribal government purchasing, the total amounts to an estimated $141 million
annually. These sizeable sums, parts of which register in the cities and towns immediately adjacent to the reservations, explain
in significant part why there is no statistically discernible tax impact of Indian casino introductions as the WRC would assert. The
funds that allegedly “disappear” from the state-taxable economy
return to it forthwith. Moreover, the multiplier effects of individual Indian income (per Figure 5), business ownership (per Figure 6),
and non-Indian enterprise (for example, at Quil Ceda Village) add
significantly to the sizeable participation in the state economy
documented in Figure 19.9
Indian gaming helps to
advance the state’s goal
of improving the health of
weaker county economies.
Indian Gaming and Remote Tribes
Indian gaming also helps to advance the state’s goal of improving the health of weaker county economies, and does so without
the fiscal cost of tax abatements. The state-tribal gaming compact
caps each tribe’s gambling terminal count at 675 devices. The only
way to exceed the cap is if another compacted tribe can be found
willing to lease part of its device allocation. Because the cap constrains the statewide market below what casino capacity would be
under the operation of free-market forces, the leases have value.
Over time, tribes in remote, less-populous markets have taken
advantage of the lease provision to trade with tribes in larger markets. As of year-end 2005, 7,286 “device rights” were under lease.
Twenty of the twenty-seven compacted tribes in Washington
participated in leases, five as buyers and sixteen as sellers. Of the
traded capacity, twenty-percent (1,475 devices) came from tribes
at least partially located in counties where the three-year average
unemployment rate is one-fifth higher than the state’s. By the
state’s definitions, such counties are economically “distressed.”10
Speaking more generally, seventy-three percent of the traded capacity (5,286 devices) comes from tribes at least partially located
in counties where the three-year unemployment rate averages
more than the state’s.
The lease payments between the tribes are commercially sensitive and not disclosed in detail, but they are not trivial. As noted
below, the amount received by the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe
from its leases is about four percent of a tribal budget that sustains 100 full-time equivalent staff and ancillary costs. Thus, for
Clallam County (a county that in 2003 qualified as “distressed”
and in 2005 had three-year unemployment averaging above
the state level) roughly four in-county FTEs and their associated
household spending could be said to derive from Indian gaming
that takes place in the I-5 urban corridor (see Figure 1). Repeated
across another fifteen tribes, this lease revenue amounts to a sizeable transfer of resources to tribes, relatively unemployed counties, and distressed counties.
Seven Cedars Casino, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe
26
In sum, Indian enterprise need not cause policy concern.
“Non-trivial” Washington fiscal costs do not result from Indian
gaming. Indian participation in the Washington economy does
not cause money to disappear, to the detriment of state and local government treasuries. To the contrary, tribal integration into
the Washington economy redounds to the benefit of employees,
vendors, and even the state and local treasuries as tribal governments, enterprises, and Indian and non-Indian employees turn to
the Washington economy for goods and services. In addition, the
device leasing arrangement of the state-tribal compact encourages
tribes to help address a Washington policy priority: improving the
geographic distribution of income and employment statewide.
Moreover as the next section shows, the tribes’ use of enterprise
revenue has positive spillover effects to non-Indian communities.
When tribes invest in their infrastructure, education, housing,
and socioeconomic recovery, non-Indian Washingtonians benefit, too.
IV. Tribal Investment in Socioeconomic Change:
Four Case Studies
I
t is a primary objective of tribal governments to accelerate the socioeconomic recovery of their citizens. For generations, Indians
living on reservations have been, and still now remain, one of the
poorest identifiable minorities in America (Kalt & Singer, 2004,
38). Conditions so entrenched are not easily altered. Nevertheless,
in the State of Washington, data from the last two decennial censuses show a perceptible narrowing of the previously persistent
gap between living conditions on reservations and statewide averages (Figure 20). Steady growth in Indian gaming beginning in
the latter half of the 1990s (recall Figure 7) has allowed tribes to in-
$25
25%
$20
20%
Unemployment
Income/capita 000
Figure 20
Conditions for Indians on Washington Reservations have Improved, 1990-2000
1999 dollars
$15
$10
$5
$0
10%
5%
US all races
Overcrowded Housing
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Washington all
races
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Indians on WA
Reservations
Washington all
races
US all races
Indians on WA
Reservations
Washington all
races
US all races
Indians on WA
Reservations
Washington all
races
US all races
Indians on WA
Reservations
Washington all
races
US all races
20%
16%
12%
8%
4%
0%
US all races
Homes w/o Full Plumbing
High School Attainment
Washington all
races
50%
Indians on WA
Reservations
College Attainment
15%
0%
Indians on WA
Reservations
4%
3%
2%
1%
0%
1990
2000
8% 7%
10% 9%
Family Poverty
50%
%
WA
ons
Indians living on
reservations have been,
and still now remain, one
of the poorest identifiable
minorities in America.
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Washington all
races
US all races
Indians on WA
Reservations
Washington all
races
US all races
High School Attainment is the proportion of adults with only high school degrees.
(US Census, 1990 & 2000 as cited in Taylor, 2005, Figure 15)
In the State of Washington,
data from the last two
decennial censuses show a
perceptible narrowing of the
previously persistent gap
between living conditions on
reservations and statewide
averages.
vest in socioeconomic recovery at levels never before possible. In
Washington, as elsewhere, tribal spending has spanned a range of
government functions including healthcare, education and childcare, natural resources management, housing, public works and
administration, social services, and more (Figure 21).
Figure 21
Tribal Government Spending in Washington
aggregate 2004 spending by fifteen tribes
16%
Health
30%
As casino revenues have placed new resources at their disposal,
tribes have seized opportunities for extending and enhancing selfgovernment. Legally speaking, many of these opportunities have
been available since as early as the mid-1970s. Practically, however,
such opportunities were impossible to seize until adequate tribal
government income became available. This final section records
and examines specific investments in socioeconomic recovery
and other realms of tribal governance made by four specific tribes:
the Jamestown S’Klallam, Kalispel, Squaxin Island, and the Tulalip
Tribes. These tribes capture a diversity of size, location, and experience with casinos, and they were willing to share detailed data
about their community life. Recording their experience in this way
evinces nuanced portraits of the strategies for and effects of Indian
socioeconomic investment. Presented side-by-side, these portraits
reveal both common trends and salient differences in the shape
and progress of tribal socioeconomic recovery in Washington.
Capital & Constr.
Nat. resources
15%
Ed. & childcare
Social svcs.
Ec. dvpt.
Emerg.
2%
Housing
3%
Other*
13%
5%
7%
9%
*Includes variously: judicial functions, legal representation, real estate,
public works, museums, commissions, enrollment, administration, and
debt service.
As the case studies show, economic recovery has gone handin-hand with social and cultural recovery. The means of counteracting the negative legacy of generations of entrenched poverty
differs from tribe to tribe because patterns of economic activity,
cultural practice, social organization, and civic participation differ
as much, if not more, between tribes as between Walla Walla and
Redmond. So it is important to register not just shared features,
but variations in recent developments from tribe to tribe. In all
cases, however, the case studies show how the combined, mutually reinforcing elements of economic, governmental, and cultural
self-determination work together as a powerful engine for positive
change, benefiting not just Indian tribes, but surrounding communities as well.
The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe: Pioneering Self-Government
The
Jamestown S’Klallam
Tribe
The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe is located in Clallam County
in the northeast corner of the Olympic Peninsula. The Salishspeaking S’Klallam peoples signed the Point-no-Point Treaty with
the United States in 1855. In response to settler encroachment
and Bureau of Indian Affairs pressure to move elsewhere, a band
of S’Klallams raised funds to buy a 210-acre parcel near Dungeness
in 1874. The Jamestown S’Klallam community, as that group came
to be known, continued to resist further pressure to move out of
the region onto other reservations. When the federal government
discontinued services to the Tribe in the 1950s (during a period
known as the Termination Era of federal Indian policy), Jamestown
continued as a self-organized political community. Beginning in
the 1970s, the Tribe sought to restore formal federal recognition,
which it finally obtained in 1981. Today, Tribal headquarters are
at the south end of Sequim Bay. As of 2004, the Tribe had a population of nearly 560 and owned more than seventy acres of land
(Tiller et al., 2005, citing tribal & BIA sources, 967).
28
Jamestown S’Klallam, like many tribes today, embodies both
of two meanings for the phrase Indian self-government. In generic terms, self-government (uncapitalized) stands for the process of
displacing outside decision-makers and taking charge of reservation affairs. In this sense, self-government has been a longstanding Indian objective. Fed by deep historical roots, the impulse to
self-govern developed explicit political meaning in the 1960s and
emerged into tribal policymaking that today ranges from archeological preservation and elder care to bilingual education and
constitutional reform, the full array of which is aimed at socioeconomic improvement and cultural recovery for Indian people.
In the second sense, Self-Government (capitalized) is a term
of art denoting a specific process by which tribes perform the
functions of federal programs. Since the passage of the Indian
Education and Self-Determination Act of 1974 (and subsequent
amendments), tribes have been able to contract for the delivery of
specific federal functions on or for their own
reservations, and broadly compact across a
range of federal functions with latitude to reprioritize and re-purpose programs to match
reservation circumstances. Under contracting, the tribe is strictly responsible for the
federal function as an explicit deliverable,
whereas under compacting, the tribe sits in
relation to the federal government much the
way states do under block granting arrangements: the tribe has wide discretion to alter
programs and funding allocations, subject to
an annual audit.
Self-government carries
two meanings in Indian
Country: The term stands
for taking charge of
reservation affairs and for
a specific process by which
tribes perform the functions
of federal programs.
Jamestown S’Klallam Tribal Government Offices
Self-Government at Jamestown S’Klallam
Change at the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe reflects both senses
of self-government. Jamestown S’Klallam is known for its refusal
to be relocated and instead purchasing its own land in the nineteenth century. It is also known for its leaders’ strong national
stances on behalf of Indian sovereignty—of which the right to
open a casino is a critical component. Perhaps most importantly,
Jamestown S’Klallam stands out for its strategic use of and advocacy for Self-Governance powers. Beginning in 1990, the Tribe was
one of ten tribes in the US to participate in the Self-Governance
Demonstration Project, and it has continued to play a leading role
in Self-Governance as the policy has evolved.
Based on the experience of Jamestown S’Klallam and the other
Self-Governance tribes operating in the first half of the 1990s, the
Inspector General of the US Department of Interior found that:
[Self-Governance] tribes had more flexibility to establish
program priorities in response to tribal needs rather than
following Federal program objectives. Tribes were able to
expand, consolidate, and create new programs to improve
services to their tribal members. Tribal employment was
increased through the transfer of funds that were previously used by the [Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)] to administer its agency, area, and headquarters offices. (US
Department of the Interior, 1995, 53).
Jamestown S’Klallam Totem Poles and Sequim Bay
Figure 22
Jamestown S’Klallam Funding from
Federal, State, & Private Granting Sources
millions of 2004 dollars by fiscal year
More recently, the US Government Accountability Office observed
that:
7
tribes that were Self-Governing or engaged in a high level
of contracting showed greater gains on average in employment levels from 1990 to 2000 than did tribes that were
contracting to perform fewer of their own programs and
services (US GAO, 2004, 5).
6
Natural Res.
5
Economic Dev.
4
Health
3
Social Services
Administration
2
All Combined
1
92* 93
94
95
96
97
98
99
00
01
02
03
* In FY92, health and social services were reported together. Breakdowns by
department were not given for FY01 & FY02.
(Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe Annual Reports, 1992, 1993, 1994-5, 1997-98,
2001, 2004)
Jamestown S’Klallam not only pioneered the effort as a demonstration project tribe, it also spearheaded a national Self-Governance
Education and Communication Project with the Lummi, Hoopa
Valley (CA), and Quinault Tribes so that other Indian communities could undertake the block-granting process quickly and
smoothly.
For Jamestown S’Klallam itself, compacting has procured a
number of benefits. The movement of functions out of the federal government’s central and regional offices inherently means
greater employment and activity in the tribal government. In the
first year of compacting alone, the Tribe was able to add four employees (Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, 1991). More importantly for
the socioeconomic condition of the Tribe, the compacting process
allowed innovation to emerge at the lowest level of government,
unfettered by federal micromanagement (except for annual audits). The Tribe’s Social Services Department introduced culturally
relevant care. Funds were moved to education to serve more students. Housing was built faster. Health care was delivered under
an unorthodox and ultimately award-winning innovation (more
below).
In part because of Self-Governance, Jamestown S’Klallam
has become adept at raising funds for government services—to
the benefit of its approximately 560 tribal members and to the
Sequim region as well. From FY 1992 to FY 2003, the Tribe’s budget derived from federal, state, & private grants and contracts grew
by 84% after adjusting for inflation (Figure 22). This funding also
directly benefits non-Indians around the Reservation through,
for example, improved habitat functioning or health care access
and indirectly through rising household incomes and associated
multiplier effects as dollars from outside the region are spent in
Clallam County.
Jamestown S’Klallam’s construction and telecom
company, JKT Development
Figure 23
Businesses of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, 2004
JKT
Gaming
JKT
Development*
Jamestown
Seafood
NW Native
Expressions
7 Cedars
Casino
Construction,
telecom,
excavation
Seafood
processing &
sales
Art gallery
Tribal members
19
6
-
1
Other Indians
16
-
1
2
Principal
activity:
Employment
Non-Indians
Total
269
26
6
2
304
26
7
5
* Consisting of Jamestown Technology Communications Services, JKT Construction Services, Jamestown
Information Technologies, & JKT Traffic Control Services. See, also, www.jktdevelopment.com.
(Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe)
30
The Tribe has supplemented this federal
funding with profits from its own enterprises.
However, contrary to the popular view that casinos and Indian tax policy imply that starting
Indian businesses is a guaranteed road to riches,
the Jamestown S’Klallam has found that its geography and market position are business constraints to take seriously. The Tribe has not been
immune to business failure. Several businesses
have closed in past years, and the casino struggled in its first years. To reflect market realities, casino employment had to be substantially reduced
from 500 at the opening in 1995. It took two years
for the casino to reach profitability (Stauss, 2002,
48). In 2004 Seven Cedars Casino still employed
The Jamestown S’Klallam
Tribe now rests on a firm
economic foundation of its
own making and is primed
for long-term self-reliance.
only 304. Nonetheless, in spite of the unavoidable challenges of
market risk, in 2004 four main tribal companies provided substantial employment (Figure 23). Together, the enterprises employed
342 people, 303 of whom were non-Indians.
Other sources of funds supplement government contracts
and enterprise revenue. The tribal government levies taxes, leases real property, sells geoducks,11 charges gaming regulatory fees,
and receives healthcare fees and reimbursements at its clinic.
Together these sources comprise 30% of the tribal budget (Figure
24). The Tribe also leases gambling terminal rights to other tribes
in Washington, thereby adding about 50% to its own enterprise
distributions for a combined 12% of the tribal budget derived
from Indian enterprise (either Jamestown’s or its lessees’). In sum,
the Tribe derives 56% of its budget from federal and state government grants, and the remaining 44% from the Tribe’s exercise of
self-government. Immediately after recognition, by contrast, government grants funded 100% of tribal government (Jamestown
S’Klallam Tribe, n.d.). The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe now rests on
a firm economic foundation of its own making and is primed for
long-term self-reliance.
Figure 24
Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe: Sources of Funds, 2004
5%
4% 2%
8%
Net enterprise distributions
Taxes, leases, fees & natural res.*
30%
Federal Grants & Contracts
State Grants & Contracts
Terminal Allocation Revenue
Today, the Tribe’s funds sustain a government staff of more
than 100 FTEs who implement a broad variety of programs (Figure
25). Some of the programs are descended from federal programs
(e.g., the low income home energy assistance program – LIHEAP).
Others have been substantially modified by the Tribe. For example,
recipients of general assistance have to sign a contract with the
Tribe “outlining the steps they will take to improve themselves”
(Simcosky & Holmes, 2005, 192).
Still other programs represent new innovations by the Tribe.
Since 1995 the Tribe has provided medical care to its members under an non-traditional managed care program funded with Indian
Health Service (IHS) dollars under a Self-Governance compact.
This program was the first of its kind in Indian Country and a 2002
winner of the Washington Health Foundation’s “Innovations in
Health Care” award.12 Similarly, the elder family caregiver support
program does not provide elder care directly with tribal staff, as is
done in many other places. Instead, it orchestrates efforts by the
elder’s entire family to: a) take care of the elder within the family,
and b) transition to other solutions as the need for care intensifies
(Simcosky & Holmes, 2005, 192).
Jamestown College Support
Three of the Tribe’s recent program achievements demonstrate its commitment to reinvesting in the tribal community and
highlight what has been made possible by assertive self-determination and enterprise success: college tuition support, habitat restoration, and health care delivery.
Around Indian Country, education is a high priority. On the
reservations, college attainment among adult American Indians
and Alaska Natives stood at 12.1% in 2000. Nationwide, Indian
college attainment was a bit higher, at 18.0%. Both figures pale
against the US all-races average of 30.7% (US Census Bureau, 2000).
To address the discrepancy at Jamestown S’Klallam, the tribal gov-
Other
51%
*Includes fees & reimbursements at the Jamestown Family Health Clinic.
Proceeds of a long-term loan recorded in 2004 are excluded.
Figure 25
Selected Government Programs of the Jamestown
S’Klallam Tribe
Adult education
enhancement
After school culture
program
Chemical dependency
prevention &
treatment
Child care voucher
program
Child welfare program
Community health
services
Economic development
Economic support
services
Elder family caregiver
support
Elders program
Employment services
Family development &
counseling
Fish & wildlife
enforcement
Food voucher program
General assistance
Habitat restoration
Higher education grants
Housing improvement
Individual development
savings accounts
Dental clinic
Health clinic
Low income home
energy assistance
program
Managed health care
Natural resource
monitoring
On-the-job training
program
Shellfish management
Summer culture program
Tribal food bank
Water quality monitoring
Watershed management
Work experience jobs
Youth mentoring &
leadership
(Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe Annual Report 2004)
Without Jamestown
funds, critical land
purchases would not have
been possible, and the
Jimmycomelately salmon
habitat restoration might
never have been completed.
ernment supports its member college students with enterprise revenues. The college support program has grown substantially over
the last six years (Figure 26). The combination of rising numbers
of students and rising assistance per student means that the total
expenditure nearly tripled.
Salmon Runs in Jimmycomelately Creek
The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe is also investing substantially
in the quality of habitat essential to the runs of salmon near their
7 Cedars Casino in Blyn. Jimmycomelately Creek had once been
the home of a thriving summer chum salmon run, but beginning
with nineteenth century timber and railroad development, the
creek was moved, straightened, channeled, and otherwise made
inhospitable to the salmon. Likewise, the estuary at the mouth had
been dredged, drained, filled, and diked. As a result, the returning
salmon population fell precipitously and became nearly extinct.
Only seven of the endangered chum returned to Jimmycomelately
Creek in 1999 (Newberry, 2003).
Figure 26
20
Jamestown
S’Klallam College Education Support $12,000
15
$9,000
10
$6,000
5
$3,000
0
$0
00 - 01
01 - 02
02 - 03
Students Funded
03 - 04
04 - 05
05 - 06
Funding per Student
Figure 27
Jimmycomelately Creek Summer Chum Salmon
1975 - 2005
2,000
Most physical restoration work completed summer '04
1,500
Channel reconstruction begins summer '02
1,000
Broodstock pgm. begins
500
0
1975
1980
1985
1990
Escapement
1995
2000
Catch
Escapement and catch together comprise the total run of the river.
2005
Beginning in 1999, the Washington Department of Fish &
Wildlife (WDFW) began a breedstock program with support from
the Tribe. Under this program a portion of the returning fish’s eggs
were raised in a hatchery or under human protection instream. As
a result, the population recovered substantially (Figure 27). The
Tribe resolved to do more.
A team consisting of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, Clallam
County, Clallam Conservation District, WDFW, the US Fish &
Wildlife Service, the US EPA, the Washington Department of
Transportation, technical consultants, local landowners, and contractors had been working together since the mid-1990s to restore
the Creek’s physical condition. State and federal funding and inkind contributions from many other governments helped drive
the project, but the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe also spent $627,800
of its own funds to buy lands abutting the creek, particularly from
landowners who were not interested in allowing the project to
proceed. Without Jamestown funds, these critical land purchases
would not have been possible, and the Jimmycomelately salmon
habitat restoration might never have been completed.
The $6 million dollar project has entailed constructing a
bridge on Highway 101 to replace culverts, restoring a log yard to
1870 shoreline, removing wooden pilings and a pier, destroying
several roadbeds, removing the Old Blyn highway, revegetating
landscape with native plants, demolishing buildings, moving utility rights-of-way, and of course, moving the creek to its original
sinuous course (Figure 28). Altogether more than 30,000 yards of
earth were removed from the estuary (Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe,
2004), and in October 2004 the majority of the stream flow was
diverted to the new channel (Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, 2005b).
An estimated $2.9 million was spent by the project on local consultants and contractors. Ultimately, it is hoped that the restoration will yield a perpetual salmon run, better shellfish habitat, and
flood protection benefits to the highway and surrounding human
development (Newberry, 2003).
32
As ambitious as this work is, it is not out of character for the
The Jamestown S’Klallam
Tribe recently helped to
maintain a cornerstone
of the Sequim health
infrastructure.
Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe to demonstrate this level of commitment to habitat protection. For years the Tribe has worked with
state and local governments and private actors to clean and
protect the Dungeness River further to the west. Since 1995 the
Tribe has helped replace irrigation ditch screens and reline channels by obtaining more than a million dollars in grants on behalf of the Dungeness River Agricultural Water Users Association
(Stauss, 2002, 21). The Tribe has also supported the Dungeness
River Audubon Center with annual contributions of $11,000.
The Tribe has also been an active player in forestry, shellfish, and
salmon policymaking on the Olympic Peninsula and elsewhere in
Washington.
Figure 28
Jimmycomelately Creek Before, During, and After Restoration
Pre-existing condition
Actual condition on January 4, 2006
Rendition of anticipated final condition
New bridge
Channelized
creek
Randy Johnson, WDFW
Restored
sinuous
creek bed
Walker & Assoc.
Randy Johnson, WDFW
7 Cedars
Casino
Jamestown Family Health Clinic
The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe recently helped to maintain
a cornerstone of the Sequim, Washington health infrastructure.
Toward the end of the 1990s, costs in the Tribe’s managed care
program began to exceed the resources available from the IHS, and
the Tribe searched for alternatives to keep costs contained.
In an unrelated development in October of 2001, the largest
medical clinic in Sequim declared it would shut its doors at the
end of the following March. Tribal members (and many nonindian economy in washington 33
Indians) would lose the provider of about half of the primary
care in Sequim, and several physicians would lose their place of
employment. After exploring mutual interests, three physicians
from the old clinic and officials of the Tribe agreed that a new
clinic would open under tribal ownership. The plan was credible
enough that the Olympic Medical Center (OMC) was dissuaded
from implementing its own plan to operate a temporary clinic in
Sequim. OMC joined Jamestown S’Klallam in opening the clinic
(Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, 2004; Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe,
2005a).
Jimmycomelately Creek Restoration
What resulted from their combined effort was a seamless transition from the closing clinic to the new one. The day after the
Virginia Mason clinic ceased operations, the Jamestown Family
Health Clinic opened its doors. It operates on two-and-a-half
acres of land donated by OMC adjacent to OMC’s radiology, lab,
and physical therapy facilities. As of 2004, the clinic served about
6,000 patients—the vast majority of whom are non-Indian. The
staff has expanded to six full-time doctors, a physician’s assistant,
a nurse-practitioner, and eight nurses (Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe,
2004).
All told, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe is a significant presence in the life and growth of the Sequim Bay region. As it was
before formal federal recognition, the Tribe is an integrated part of
the economy and society of the region. Today however, the grants
it obtains, the revenues it earns, the programs it provides all benefit the non-Indians of the region to a degree not possible without
genuine powers of self-government. Indian self-determination is
working not just for the Tribe itself but also to the larger benefit of
the community around it.
The Kalispel Tribe: Strategies for Long-term Recovery
The Kalispel Tribe
The Kalispel Reservation is in Pend Oreille County in the
northeast corner of Washington. The Kalispel were encouraged
to move to a reservation in Montana in the nineteenth century.
The current-day Kalispel Tribe descends from the Lower Kalispel
group that chose to stay in its traditional lands. The population
dwindled from an estimated 1,600 in Lewis and Clark’s time to 100
in 1911. The reservation, instituted by Woodrow Wilson’ executive
order in 1911, was located on the banks of the Pend Oreille River
to protect the Tribe from settler encroachment and the associated harms of land dispossession, alcoholism, and social collapse.
Poverty impinged on Kalispel quality of life through the twentieth
century. In 1965, only one or two houses had running water and
there was one telephone on the reservation (Kalispel Tribe, 2006).
Late in the twentieth century the Tribe’s fortunes improved as increased federal spending and enterprise development unleashed
powers of tribal self-governance to address social conditions. As
of 2004, the Kalispel had 364 members and 7,614 acres of land, including 290 acres in Airway Heights, to the west of Spokane (Tiller
et al., 2005, citing tribal sources, 969).
The Kalispel Tribe comes relatively late to casino operations.
Its Northern Quest Casino in Airway Heights opened in December
of 2000, making it one of the most recent Washington tribes to
open a facility for the first time. Nonetheless, the Kalispel Tribe
34
has quickly directed its revenues towards social and economic
change that benefits its own members, as well as many other tribes
in eastern Washington, and non-Indians.
The Kalispel Indian Reservation,
located on the Pend Oreille River near
Usk and Cusick, consists of 4,655 acres
(US Census Bureau, 2000). Virtually
all of the land there is unsuitable for
construction. Around half is part of
the 100-year flood plain of the Pend
Oreille River, and much of the remainder is too steep to build upon (Holmes,
2005). The Tribe developed its casino
on trust land in Airway Heights, and
the casino site has also become a location of important tribal government expenditure, mainly through
the Camas Institute, a multifaceted
social service entity with operations
in Airway Heights, in Cusick, and elsewhere.
Figure 29
Kalispel Government
Gaming Agency
General Council
Surveillance
Gaming Board
Cultural Program
Judges
T. Business
Council
Camas Board
Police
President
Legal
CEO
Chief
Finance
T. Administrator
IT
Natural Resources
Day Care
Case Line
Social Services
Gov. & Pub Affairs
Agriculture
Planning & Dev.
Wellness Center
Human Resources
Tribal Court
Clinic
(Kalispel Tribe)
Kalispel Government
The Kalispel tribal government has grown very rapidly. In the
late 1990s the vast majority of the tribal government (amounting
to only a few departments) was funded by private and US government grants and contracts, subject to the constraints of federal
budgets. Today the Kalispel government is a fully fledged local
government complete with a gaming regulatory agency, courts,
enterprise and non-profit boards, and departments (Figure 29).
Intergovernmental grants account for less than a quarter of the
2004 tribal revenues, whereas casino distributions constitute
more than two-thirds (Figure 30). A fraction (12%) of these revenues goes to per capita distributions, and the vast majority (88%)
goes to government activities ranging from police protection and
literacy to capital projects and natural resource protection (Figure
31).
The Tribe supports its members through a number of different
direct assistance programs ranging from funeral and emergency
travel assistance to supplemental substance abuse coverage. The
Tribe makes additional assistance available for household emergencies, supplemental medical and dental assistance, orthodontia, and eye/ear equipment. All such assistance is subject to annual
caps and limited by HUD’s income thresholds for means-testing.
In addition, the Tribe has made a number of direct investments
in the quality of life on the reservation. The Tribe replaced critical
water supply infrastructure so as to reduce the exceptionally high
iron level in the water. The Tribe built homes to address the low
quality and limited quantity of housing. The Tribe has made DSL
broadband and computers available to the homes on the reservation. It has fully supported a culture program that preserves land,
maintains an archive, and offers classes in traditional crafts. The
cultural program sponsors:
Figure 30
Kalispel Governmental Revenues, 2004
6%
5%
21%
1%
Intergov't & other grants
Casino
Licenses, rental & fees
Donations
Other*
67%
* Sales, settlements, investment income, debt proceeds, & other.
(Moss-Adams, 2005)
Figure 31
Kalispel Governmental Expenditures, 2004
5%
6%
24%
General Govt.
9%
Debt Svc.
Capital exp.
Natural Res.
12%
Per capita pmts.
15%
Education
Health & welfare
Other*
13%
16%
(Moss-Adams, 2005)
The Kalispel Tribe not
only provides short-term
assistance to members; it
is interested in long-term
recovery from socioeconomic
deficits.
a camas dig and bake, huckleberry picking, bitterroot
gathering, hide tanning, beading, roach making, making of regalia… basket weaving, and drying meat (Kalispel
Tribe, 2005a).
The Tribe also hosts an annual Culture Camp.
Long-term Investments: The Camas Institute
The Kalispel Tribe not only provides short-term assistance to
members, it is interested in long-term recovery from socioeconomic deficits. The main vehicle for tribal efforts in this regard is
the Camas Institute. Named for a critical food staple that sustained
the Kalispels’ forebears, the Camas Institute focuses on three broad
areas:
1. Behavioral Health programs offer DASA-certified13 outpatient
counseling for chemical dependency, counseling for problem gambling, and family and individual counseling. These
programs also provide training to tribal members and staff in
suicide triage, problem gambling awareness, and parenting
skills.
2. Education programs aim to encourage life-long learning and to
address educational deficits:
a. The Equity Assurance Program offers tribal members financial assistance to supplement college aid, and it provides ancillary college counseling services.
Powwow Grounds, Kalispel Reservation
b. The Read Right program develops student and adult reading proficiency in the Cusick, Havermale, and Newport
schools and at the Camas Institute itself—less than a mile
from the casino. The tutoring program uses a curriculum
from Read Right Systems to help adult and young readers
reach proficiency at their age level (more below).
c. The Camas Learning Center provides a range of services
aimed to improve academic achievement. These services
range from computer education, tutoring, and cultural activities to online test preparation and summer youth employment. The Learning Center also provides assistance
for college education and career counseling, financial aid
education, college admissions assistance, and GED preparation.
d. The Indigenous Learning Company is a web-based publishing company that makes material about Kalispel culture and history available to the Cusick public schools.
3. Career Development programs are intended to help members
and employees who are finished with formal schooling by
providing classes, on-the-job training, internship support,
and mentoring arrangements. For many people who have not
held long-term employment, it is important to learn professional etiquette, how to balance a checkbook, the importance
of calling in when sick, and how to arrange leave. The Camas
Institute provides these services as a part of its Job Readiness
36
program that also teaches clients how to find and retain employment. A tribally-created Supported Tribal Education
Program (STEP) for member-employees works with the human
resources staffs of the government departments and enterprises to offer training that is relevant to career advancement
(Kalispel Tribe, 2005b).
Even though the Camas Institute is relatively new, dividends
for both members and non-Indians are considerable. The Read
Right program, for example, has been deployed in the Cusick
School (K-12), in Airway Heights (for tribal members and employees), at Newport Jr. and Sr. High Schools, and at the Havermale
Alternative High School. All four locations serve Indians and nonIndians and demonstrate considerable achievement (Figure 32).
Five hundred students have gained more than eight hundred reading-level grades in two years. This improvement in reading proficiency translates into better grades, more confidence, and brighter
prospects for each of the students affected (Peone, 2006).
The Institute has also dramatically increased education funding. Before the casino
opened, the BIA funded one or two college students with a grant of $11,000. Tribal funding
for secondary education has increased steadily since the casino opened from $713,000 in
2004 and $785,000 in 2005 to more than one
million dollars in 2006. Three students have
recently received Associate’s Degrees, two of
whom are pursuing Bachelor’s Degrees. Three
members have recently received Bachelor’s
Degrees. Three are pursuing graduate degrees
(Peone, 2006). Likewise, the Behavioral Health
Program has seen its budget rise dramatically
from $109,000 at its inception to nearly half a
million dollars in 2006.
Figure 32
Efforts and Results of the Camas Institute’s
Read Right Program
Contact
Hours
Grade
Level
Gains
Start
Students
Served
Cusick
11/03
291
12,336
673
Airway Heights
2/04
74
952
55
Newport
9/05
73
579
42
Havermale
10/05
56
213
37
Site
(Peone, 2006)
Northern Quest Casino, Kalispel Tribe
Kalispel Natural Resources Department
The Kalispel Tribe, like most others in Washington, has long
had a Natural Resources Department to help monitor, protect, and
restore habitats and wildlife. The success of the Northern Quest
Casino has energized these efforts. The tribal resource management budget was about $250,000 in the mid-1990s, around $2.5
million in 1998, and $3.5 million in 2004 (Holmes, 2005; MossAdams, 2005). The Department operates under a Tribal Councilapproved management plan, and oversees five programs: fisheries, watershed & environment, wildlife, cultural resources, and a
geographic information service (GIS) that supports the others.
The fisheries program works to combat the degradation of
habitat due to hydropower, development, mining, forestry, and
agriculture. It aims to restore a sustainable subsistence and sport
fishery producing at historic levels throughout the lands ceded by
the Tribe. The watershed and environmental program supports
that effort through water-quality monitoring, remediation, timber harvest monitoring, and water quality standard-setting. In
November of 2002, the Kalispel Tribe was certified by the US EPA
for “treatment as a state” (TAS) status under the Clean Water Act.
This certification gives the Tribe the power and the responsibility to set water quality standards for surface waters of the reservation. The wildlife program’s mission is to “actively seek funding
and cooperative management efforts that will protect, enhance,
and/or restore wildlife, wetland, riparian, and botanical resources throughout Kalispel ceded lands.” This expansive view of the
Tribe’s wildlife management responsibility has resulted in, among
other things, wildlife projects on 3,100 acres to mitigate the effects
of the Albeni Falls Dam, and ownership of more than 740 acres
of land near the reservation on which the Tribe manages wildlife.
The Department has also sought to become technically expert in
bio-engineered shoreline erosion protection, in part to prevent
loss of the Tribe’s land base. The cultural program works with federal and state agencies to protect archeological resources in the
Tribe’s ceded territory, particularly around reservoirs and dams. It
also maintains a cultural property inventory and aims to preserve
the traditional language (Kalispel Tribe, 2005a).
Camas Institute, Airway Heights
All of these programs are made possible in significant part by
casino profits. While the experience of Kalispel Tribe with gaming
is relatively young, its investments in socioeconomic recovery are
developing rapidly. Positive outcomes affect not only members of
the Tribe, who might receive a better house, a better job, or better
health care, but also non-Indian children and employees and their
families. Education, counseling and other services are spreading
benefits outside the Tribe at no expense to the Washington taxpayer.
The Squaxin Island Tribe: Towards Self-Sufficiency
Squaxin Island
Tribe

Squaxin Island
38
Squaxin Island is located off the southwestern shore of Puget
Sound, due north of Olympia and east of Shelton. The Lushootseedspeaking forebears of today’s Squaxin Island Tribe signed the
Treaty of Medicine Creek in 1854, retaining the four-and-a-half
mile long island as a reservation. Gradually as the Squaxin Island
Indians moved back to their original homelands on the mainland,
the Island population dwindled. No one resides there any longer.
Over the years, Squaxin Island members established residence on
the mainland south of Shelton, between Totten Inlet and Little
Skookum Inlet, west of the Island in Mason County. Today the
area, known as Kamilche, is home to tribal enterprises, residential
developments, and a growing number of other buildings housing
tribal administrative departments. Though they do not live on
the Island, tribal members continue to return to it to hunt, gather,
fish, and practice other cultural traditions. As of 2004, the Tribe
had 812 members and owned more than 763 acres of land (Tiller et
al., 2005, citing tribal sources, 1011).
If the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe stands out in Indian Country
for its leadership in demonstrating the benefits of Self-Governance
compacting to Indian Country, the Squaxin Island Tribe—also
an early adopter of Self-Governance—ought to be known for its
broad-based approach to investing in socioeconomic recovery.
Economic strength initiated by gaming has accelerated the community’s move toward self-sufficiency, yet long before the Little
Creek Casino became an engine of growth, the Squaxin Island
Tribe set and pursued concrete goals for socioeconomic recovery.
Over the last two decades the Squaxin Island government has
grown a capable professional administration whose achievements
range from discovering and conserving a rare archeological specimen (a 500-year old cedar gill net) to treating substance abuse patients using grief resolution and Indian religion. These kinds of
innovations are a far cry from the lock-step implementation of
federal Indian policy under BIA control that was so common in
Indian Country in decades past. The Tribe’s efforts in education,
community development, economic diversification, tax collection, health care, and social services have helped to revitalize the
community and the families within it.
Long before the Little Creek
Casino became an engine
of growth, the Squaxin
Island Tribe set and
pursued concrete goals for
socioeconomic recovery.
The Squaxin Island Tribal Government
The cultural importance of salmon and shellfish generally,
and the Boldt Decision of 1974 in particular, propelled most tribes
in coastal Washington to build natural resource departments
through the 1980s to monitor, police, and enhance fishery resources. However, it was not until Self-Governance compacting
became widespread that tribal administrations grew into the systematic, diverse, and creative organizations that they are now.
For a considerable time, the Squaxin Island government has
been explicitly and formally focused on socioeconomic recovery
for its citizens. Since at least the early 1990s, the Tribal Council
has prioritized employment, education, and culture, undertaking
systematic changes on behalf of these interests. The members of
the Tribe amended its constitution, staggering the terms of the
Council, thereby creating more political stability. The amendments also took the power to approve or reject constitutional
amendments away from the Secretary of the US Department of
Interior, leaving the Tribe accountable for its own self-government. The Tribe also crafted policies to advance its goals directly.
For example, to increase tribal employment, it instituted a ten-day
job posting period open to tribal members only before a wider announcement is made (Whitener, 1998). It also has a revenue distribution policy that ensures tribal funds are allocated in a systematic
fashion to support income assistance, tribal programs, and future
needs (more below).
As of 2004, the Squaxin Island government channeled its efforts in fourteen departments employing 201 people:
1. Community Development provides general administrative
services, public works infrastructure, housing support,
and enrollment services.
Former offices of Island Enterprises and
the Squaxin Island Tribal Council
Current Squaxin Island Tribal Administration Building
Squaxin Island’s tribally
generated revenues eclipsed
funding from outside
sources in 2003.
2. Health & Human Services provides for the physical, mental,
and spiritual well-being of the community by offering primary medical and dental care, mental health counseling,
traditional healing, substance abuse counseling, Indian
child welfare protection, and a pharmacy.
3. The Cultural Resources Department collects, preserves, and
interprets the original culture of the Squaxin Island bands
by restoring historic sites, repatriating artifacts, teaching
Lushootseed language, caring for elders, recording oral
history, and reviewing land use proposals. The Tribe also
has a non-profit museum and library.
4. Human Resources implements the personnel policy of
the Tribe, recruits members for job openings, and maintains a drug-free workforce. The department also runs the
Tribe’s own welfare-to-work program (under Temporary
Assistance to Needy Families, TANF) and related assistance and vocational programs.
5. Natural Resources maintains the quality of water, fish,
shellfish, wildlife, timber, and plants on tribal lands and
elsewhere in the state by monitoring fish stocks, recording member harvesting, seeding clam beds, rearing salmon smolts, and identifying delicate habitat.
6. The Northwest Indian Treatment Center promotes abstinence from alcohol and drugs and develops sound lifestyles by applying a spectrum of innovative, integrated,
and culturally relevant inpatient and outpatient counseling services to youth and adults (see below).
7. Public Safety & Justice houses a police force and a tribal
court system. The police provide law enforcement on and
off the reservation. Off-reservation policing extends to
treaty harvest areas and through Mason County under a
cross-commissioning agreement.
Tu Ha’ Buts Learning Center, Squaxin Island Tribe
8. The Tu Ha’ Buts Learning Center provides after-school and
summer programs, tutoring, scholarships, job training,
and recreational programs to advance life-long learning
for tribal members (see below).
Figure 33
Squaxin Island Government Revenue
millions
of 2004 dollars
30
9. The Squaxin Island Gaming Commission oversees and regulates gaming in accordance with relevant tribal, federal,
and state law.
Other*
25
10. Finance, Legal, Information Services, and Planning departments support the community and the rest of tribal government (Squaxin Island Tribe, 2003).
Loans &
transfers‡
20
15
Sales
Taxes & Fees
10
Indirect
Grants, contracts
and compacts
5
0
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
*Consists of rental and use charge income, interest and dividend income,
donations, and other income.
‡Consists of loan proceeds, enterprise equity transfers, and other transfers
from corporations.
(Squaxin Island Tribe, 1998, 2001, 2003)
40
These departments submit annual assessments to the Tribal
Council. Directors provide quantitative measures of departmental
outputs and report progress in advancing tribal goals.
Squaxin Island Fiscal Growth
In recent years, the revenue available for these departments
has increased steadily as enterprise revenue grew and as the Tribe
has undertaken Self-Governance compacting (Figures 33 & 34).
In 2004, Loans and Transfers (the Tribe’s financial category
that includes loan proceeds, enterprise equity transfers and other
transfers from enterprises) virtually matched the funding that the
Tribes obtained from US government and private sources for program operations (Grants, contracts and compacts and Indirect in Figure 33).
Funds derived from self-determined economic activity (including
Taxes & Fees, Sales, Loans & transfers, and Other in Figure 33) comprised
60% of the budget. By contrast, a decade earlier intergovernmental
and private grants, contracts, compacts, and their associated indirect funds were almost 85% of the tribal budget. Squaxin Island’s
tribally generated revenues eclipsed funding from outside sources
in 2003, and over the period 1995-2005, the total tribal budget
more than tripled in inflation-adjusted terms. Squaxin Island government employment has also increased, rising recently from 168
in FY02 to 180 in FY03, and to 201 in FY04 (Puhn, 2005).
Figure 34
Squaxin Island Government Expenditures
millions
of 2004 dollars
30
Debt Svc.
25
Culture*
20
Public Safety &
Justice
Education
Comm.
Dev.**
15
Pass Thru &
Transfers‡
HHS
10
Nat. Res.
5
0
1995
General
Government
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
*Programs covering heritage, culture, and museum.
‡Internal allocations of funds including per capita distributions.
**Economic development, housing, infrastructure, social services, and
other programs.
(Squaxin Island Tribe, 1998, 2001, 2003)
Squaxin tribal law specifies the fiscal categories in which enterprise profits and tobacco tax proceeds may be spent. One key
element of the allocation is a Permanent Trust Fund from which
only the interest is spent—all of it for tribal government purposes.
The Tribe continues to build the Fund to ensure long-term fiscal
stability. Another category, direct distributions for government
functions, is spent approximately equally between current programs and projects. All tobacco-derived profits are spent on education. A third category dedicates land-acquisition funds in equal
measure to: a) buying back Squaxin Island; and b) buying land in
the Kamilche corridor (where the tribal offices, housing, and enterprises are located) or buying critical habitat and cultural sites.
A fourth category, economic development, is administered by
Island Enterprises according to a Tribal Council-approved annual
plan (Squaxin Island Tribe Supp. No. 4, 3-06, § 2.36.090). Over the
last ten years, the Tribe increased spending in its departments by a
factor of two-and-a-half (after accounting for inflation).
Squaxin Island Child Development Center
The Squaxin Island Tribe supports its working families through
the Squaxin Island Child Development Center. The one-and-ahalf million dollar facility opened in September 2004. It employs
twenty-five staff who care for 117 enrolled children in programs
from infancy through preschool. Nearly half are children of tribal
members or of non-member employees, and the remainder are
members of the general public (Figure 35). The Tribe contributed
three-quarters of the construction cost and the remainder was
paid for under a HUD grant. Tuition, which runs $680 per month,
is fully covered for tribal members and half-covered for all nonmember employees. To receive the tuition grant, the tribal member
parent or guardian must have verifiable full-time employment or
be enrolled full-time in an approved educational program (SICDC,
n.d.).
Figure 35
Child Development Center Enrollment
2005
32%
Tribal
Non-Tribal Employees
47%
Child Care Asst. Grant
General Public
Tu Ha’ Buts Learning Center
15%
The Squaxin Island Tribe also demonstrated its commitment
to education through the primary school years when it quadru-
6%
(Kindle, 2005)
The Squaxin Island Tribe
quadrupled funding for
education.
Squaxin Island Child Development Center
pled Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) funding for education support
(Figure 36). The additional funding, which is made possible by the
casino, has allowed the Tu Ha’ Buts Learning Center to staff a fulltime director and offer more education support activities, more
cultural programming, and greater scholarship support.
Figure 36
Tu Ha’ Buts Learning Center Funding History
800
thousands
of 2004 dollars
600
400
Tribal $
200
BIA
0
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
students
students
Figure 37
Squaxin Island College Tuition Assistance
2004 dollars by FY
20
$60,000
15
$45,000
10
$30,000
5
$15,000
0
total expenditure
(Cooper, 2005)
$0
2001
Higher Ed
2002
Adult Ed
2003
2004
Job Training
(Cooper, 2005)
Total funding
In comparison to what is possible under the Squaxin Island
Tribe’s BIA funding alone, Tu Ha’ Buts can offer a GED program,
tutoring, indigenous language classes, and support staff. Most importantly, Tu Ha’ Buts offers hundreds of hours of after-school programs (612 hrs. in FY04), and a six-week long summer recreation
program (enrollment: 120). These services bolster the primary education that most Squaxin Island tribal members receive from local public schools. Given that the senior-year non-completion rate
has fluctuated between twenty-two and fifty-five percent, such
support services are essential to the Tribal Council’s long-term
goal of improving educational attainment. The annual Sgwi’ Gwi
education recognition event has become one of the most widely
attended tribal events, and underscores the Tribal Council’s commitment to educational excellence (Kindle, 2005).
The Squaxin Island Tribe also supports higher education.
From fiscal year 2001 through 2004, five Tribe members completed Technical Certificates, five received Associate’s Degrees, eight
received Bachelor’s Degrees, and two received Master’s Degrees.
Total outlays for college tuition assistance in support of these
students nearly doubled over the last four fiscal years to $52,000
(Figure 37). Scholarship funds not only support recent high school
graduates but also help address long-standing educational deficits:
the age range of recipients extends to as high as fifty.
The Northwest Indian Treatment Center
According to the 2004 National Survey on Drug Use & Health,
more than twelve percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives
use drugs illicitly, compared with eight percent of the all-races
population. Among youth ages twelve through seventeen, the
Indian use rate of twenty-six percent was more than double the US
average of nearly eleven percent (SAMHSA, 2005). This is clearly
an issue of concern for Indian communities everywhere, and the
Squaxin Island Tribe is no exception.
In 1994 the Tribe established the Northwest Indian Treatment
Center. Its mission is:
To create an innovative treatment program that results in
42
The Center provides residential care at the Center’s Elma,
Washington facility, and outpatient care near the tribal headquarters in Shelton. Since the client base is largely Indian, the Center
integrates Indian culture, traditions, and religion into the treatment approaches. Indian individuals experience poverty not just
as inadequate household income, but also as a consequence of
cultural destruction. The combination often yields an insidious
mix of despair, depression, abandonment, substance abuse, domestic violence, and other pathologies. Accordingly, the Center’s
core focus of work is the “unresolved trauma and grief related to
chronic relapse patterns” (NWITC, n.d.). Its Indian name translates to “Returning from the Dark, Deep Waters to the Light” (id.),
and the aim is a lifelong path of sobriety.
The Center originally began in cooperation with the Indian
Health Service (IHS), but core philosophical differences between
the IHS and the Tribe drove the two apart. Whereas the IHS wanted
thirty-day residential stays, the Center wanted forty-five. Whereas
the IHS wanted the facility to be located near centralized medical
facilities, the leadership of the Center wanted a rural location close
to the Squaxin Island community. Similarly, the center and the
IHS clashed over appropriate patient-counselor ratios and criteria
for admission. Eventually the Tribe negotiated a Self-Governance
compact under which the Center could follow its own creative vision (Simcosky & Holmes, 2005, 64).
The Washington Division
of Alcohol and Substance
Abuse reviewed the Squaxin
residential program and
found it to be one of the best
in the state.
abstinence from alcohol and drugs and enables a satisfying lifestyle for patients (Squaxin Island Tribe, 2003).
Squaxin Island Museum Library
and Research Center
The Center has been accredited by the Commission on
Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF) every three
years since shortly after its inception, and it has received high
marks in that process. In the 2001 certification, CARF ranked
the Center in the top three percent of programs (Squaxin Island
Tribe, 2001), and in 2004 it was ranked “among the best in the
nation” (Squaxin Island Tribe, 2003). The Washington Division
of Alcohol and Substance Abuse reviewed the Squaxin residential
program and found it to be one of the best in the state (Squaxin
Island Tribe, 2003). The cornerstone of its success has been its consistency in having an exceptional treatment success rate of over
50%. Substance abuse remains a challenge in Indian Country,
yet investments like the Northwest Indian Treatment Center give
hope of progress.
Squaxin Island Economic Diversification
Over time, the Squaxin Island Tribe has developed several
tribal enterprises. In the early 1970s, for example, the Tribe purchased Harstine Oyster Company. The company today operates
oyster farms on Harstine and Squaxin Islands and an associated
processing plant which together comprise a subsidiary of Island
Enterprises, Inc., the Tribe’s holding company for non-gaming
businesses. The Tribe has also owned a café and a grocery (Tiller,
1996, 602).
Northwest Indian Treatment Center
Since the casino opened in 1995, gaming has made it possible to invest much more aggressively in economic diversification. There are directly related investments, of course. The casino
The casino reduced the
Squaxin Island Tribe’s cost
of capital significantly over
the last decade.
has made possible ancillary businesses like the Little Creek Hotel
which helps attract and retain tourist traffic. Likewise, the casino
has brought growth to the nearby Kamilche Trading Post. The
Trading Post is a convenience grocery, liquor store, and gas station,
originally opened in 1974. The heavy traffic created by the nearby
casino has helped the Trading Post grow into a multimillion dollar
business with sales and profits growing consistently for years at a
time. Kamilche Trading Post reported seven consecutive years of
sales and profit growth in 1999 (Squaxin Island Tribe, 1999).
The Tribe has also made investments in businesses unrelated
to the casino’s customer base or traffic. In 2005, Island Enterprises
opened Skookum Creek Tobacco Company, a cigarette manufacturing plant and distribution channel. The company manufactures middle-grade cigarettes. The profits from the sales of its own
brand and the proceeds of a cigarette tax on other brands (equal to
Washington’s) bring additional revenue to the Tribe.
Cutthroat fingerling
The casino also confers a very important indirect economic
benefit: it reduced the Squaxin Island Tribe’s cost of capital significantly over the last decade. A decade ago, the Tribe was hamstrung by a classic paradox of poverty: precisely because the Tribe’s
need for capital was acute, the cost of borrowing was prohibitive.
The tribe was a risky proposition to bankers. In the middle 1990s,
around the time Little Creek Casino was built, the Tribe borrowed
at rates that were many points above market. But as casino revenues have increased, that markup has declined to enable a recent
refinancing of an enterprise loan at slightly more than a point
above market. Over the same period, fixed fees paid by the tribe for
originating the loans also fell—to approximately one-half point.14
The Tribe is now competitive with other successful borrowers.
The Squaxin Island Tribe stands out for its multidimensional
and comprehensive investment in economic diversification and
socioeconomic recovery. The Squaxin Island government has created conditions that make it possible for creative and bold managers to grow businesses for the Tribe’s fiscal benefit and to build programs that repair families and assist individuals towards fruitful
participation in the economy. Concurrently, the Tribe is investing
in its culture, language, and heritage. The citizens of Washington
benefit directly as employees of and suppliers to the Tribe, but also
indirectly as the Tribe transitions from poverty to economic vigor
and from socioeconomic distress to community vibrancy.
The Tulalip Tribes: Diversification in Action
The Tulalip Indian Reservation lies between Puget Sound to
the west and Interstate 5 to the east. It is north of Everett, across
the Interstate from Marysville, and entirely within Snohomish
County. Once intended to be the sole reservation for most
Washington tribes, the Tulalip Reservation is now home to
Indians who descend from the Lushootseed-speaking Snohomish,
Snoqualmie, Skagit, Suiattle, Samish, Stillaguamish Tribes and allied bands—hence the plural name: Tulalip Tribes. The Tribes were
signatories of the Treaty of Point Elliott in 1855, which set the exterior boundaries of the Reservation in combination with an 1873
executive order. Today the federal government owns approximately half of the 22,000 acre Reservation in trust for the Tribes. Either
44
The Heritage School, a high
school in the Marysville
system and on the Tulalip
Reservation, receives salary
subsidies from the Tribe
which reduce studentteacher ratios.
individual Indians or non-Indians own the remainder under fee
simple title. In 2000, the Reservation was home to 1,875 Indians
and 7,371 non-Indians (US Census Bureau, 2000). In 2005, 3,411
people were enrolled members of the Tribes (Tiller et al., 2005, citing tribal sources, 1020)
Tulalip Tribes
Notwithstanding the large number of non-Indian leaseholders (including Boeing), economic activity on the Reservation
could not meet the Tribe’s needs. In 1990, the Indian unemployment rate on the Tulalip Reservation was twelve percent (compared with 4% statewide). Indian family poverty stood at 24%
(compared with 7% statewide), while Indian income per capita
stood at $10,000 (compared with $23,000 statewide).15
Yet tribally driven economic growth was poised for a takeoff. The Tribes initially opened their casino as a bingo operation
in 1983. It employed tribal members and others, some of whom
were coming off welfare for the first time. The Tribes were also reinvesting the proceeds from gaming back into the tribal economy
and government services. Once litigation resolved the legal uncertainty around what kind of machines the Tribes could have in
their casinos in 1997, this growth escalated.16 The Tribes also had
the geographic advantages of proximity to Everett, Marysville and
Interstate 5. Late in the 1990s, however, the Tribes embarked on a
unique approach to streamlining business development. The resulting growth in reservation economic activity can only be described as explosive.
A Decade of Tulalip Growth
Over the last ten years, the Tribal discretionary budget has
grown substantially as a result of enterprise success. Government
revenues not derived directly from intergovernmental grants and
contracts doubled between 1995 and 2004.17 The growth was not
all on account of enterprise success, however. As Figure 38 indicates, the relative share of non-enterprise revenues ebbed and
flowed over the decade, leaving the enterprise share only two
points higher in 2004 than it had been in 1995. So while growth
of the tribally owned business sector has been substantial, growth
in revenues coming from taxes, health clinic billings, leases, indirect cost reimbursement, and other similar sources, kept pace.
Proportionately, lease revenue is a smaller share at the end of the
period, but revenues from other sources made up the difference.
Tulalip TANF & Education Programs and the Canoe Family
Growth in revenues has enabled a number of critical investments in Tulalip socioeconomic recovery that would not have
been possible otherwise. The Heritage School, a high school in
the Marysville system and on the Tulalip Reservation, receives salary subsidies from the Tribe which reduce student-teacher ratios
and improve teaching of tribal culture. The Tulalip Boys and Girls
Club is fully funded by the Tribes (HPAIED, 2003). It provides after-school activities, tutoring, athletic and arts facilities, a learning center, and summer programs for children on the reservation.
The beda?chelh program (Lushootseed for “our children”) uses
tribal discretionary dollars to provide traditional story telling,
art therapy, and gymnastics training for children, and domestic
Spearfisher, Tulalip Casino
Figure 38
Tulalip Tribes’ Discretionary Revenue Shares
100%
Indirect
Miscellaneous*
Leases & rental
80%
60%
Taxes & fees‡
40%
Enterprise
Revenue
20%
0%
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
* Includes interest, donations/charity, and other income.
‡ Includes stumpage, liquor taxes, court fines & fees, third-party billing,
& other fees.
(Tulalip Tribes)
Roughly eighty-five percent
of the funding for the clinic
construction came from
tribal sources.
Tulalip Tribes
violence counseling for women (Tulalip Tribes, 2006). In addition,
the Tribes fund a Montessori school, a recreational department,
sports and tutoring programs elsewhere in the Marysville school
system, college tuition and books, and family support programs so
as to ensure the next generation of Tulalip Indians has a solid base
of education and skills on which to build careers (Reese, 2006b).
Boys & Girls Club, Tulalip Tribes
The Tribal Health Care Center whose construction was subsidized by the Tribes’ discretionary revenues is much more suited
to Tribal needs than the overcrowded facility it replaced. One result of its construction has been much greater access to and use
of health care by Snohomish County Indians—both Tulalip members and others—who previously had to travel miles off the reservation to receive basic services. Roughly eighty-five percent of the
funding for the clinic construction came from tribal discretionary
(i.e., non-grant) sources. Tribal dollars have allowed the expansion
of specialty care, pediatric dentistry, orthodontia, and in-home elder care to a degree that was previously impossible under Indian
Health Service budgets. Likewise, because tribal revenues supplement Indian Health Service dollars for substance abuse treatment,
Tulalip patients can obtain longer inpatient care and more treatment services can be provided by more experienced staff (Reese,
2006b). Given the disparity in health care funding shown in Figure
12, this supplementation of Indian care is critically important.
A homeless shelter consisting of a five-cabin complex and
common building was created wholly with tribal funds, and clients receive housing assistance, such as the first and last months’
rent, to help them get re-established in homes. The Tribal TANF18
program provides locally available classes on self-sufficiency and
job counseling alongside time-limited welfare payments. The program also benefits employers of TANF recipients with a wage subsidy and tax credits. While this program is federally funded, having
a Tribal TANF agency means that clients’ concerns and problems
are addressed quickly and locally rather than by the regional state
office. The Tribes make modest emergency food and utility grants
available to tribal members under a Tribal Family Assistance Plan
which is wholly funded by the Tribes (Reese, 2006b).
Old Health Clinic Building, Tulalip Tribes
Health Care Center, Tulalip Tribes
46
The Tribes also underwrite a number of cultural programs.
One of the most salient of these is the Canoe Family. Every year
the Tulalip Tribes join other coastal Salish tribes in the Pacific
Northwest and British Columbia for the Canoe Journeys—many of
which have captured media attention (see e.g., Kamb, 2003). Prior
to the picturesque journey, however, the Tulalip Canoe Family prepares inwardly. In regular classes the participants learn traditional
canoe songs, dances, and ceremony from elders in the Tribes. The
emphasis of the Canoe Family is connection with old traditions
and with other members of the family, but there is a modern goal
too: sobriety. Participating in canoe journeys (which can be as
long as hundreds of nautical miles) requires moderation and selfdiscipline. Counseling circles in which young and old alike share
their experience with substance abuse are an integral part of the
Canoe Family before and after the journey itself. Neither the journey nor the preparatory work leading up to it would be possible
without tribal support from discretionary funds.
Together, these and other programs have been able to address
much of the “situational” or episodic poverty at Tulalip—the poverty resulting from lost jobs or sudden deaths in families. Still,
chronic poverty remains a significant challenge (Reese, 2006b).
Some Indian families have lived in poverty for several consecutive
generations, and the culture, human capital, and family integrity
of the current generation will not magically restore itself solely
with a decade or two of economic success. While Indian income
per capita on the Tulalip Reservation rose fifteen percent between
1990 and 2000 and the rate of Indian child poverty had fallen from
thirty-four percent to twenty-nine percent, both figures remained
significantly worse than the state averages.19 The Tulalip Tribes
will likely need to sustain remedial investment in their people for
decades to come.
The emphasis of the Canoe
Family is connection with
old traditions and with
other members of the family,
but there is a modern goal
too: sobriety.
Police Station, Tulalip Tribes
Tulalip Retrocession of Criminal Jurisdiction
The Tribes have also undertaken responsibility for criminal justice on the Tulalip Reservation. With the passage in 1953 of Public
Law 83-280, Congress declared that certain states should exert law
enforcement and civil judicial authority on Indian reservations.
Washington opted to assume and exercise criminal jurisdiction in
the late 1950s, but over the years, the Tulalip Tribes became convinced that state jurisdiction was not working as well as tribal jurisdiction would. The state’s approaches were culturally oblivious
to Tulalip patterns of life and relationship and legally oblivious to
Tulalip norms and codes. Moreover, criminal cases were often tried
by juries not of the defendant’s peers (in any meaningful Indian
sense), and there were few, if any, opportunities to introduce tribal
notions of justice into adjudications.
In the late 1990s the Tribes began seeking to have PL-280 criminal jurisdiction retrocede to the Tulalip government. To do so required obtaining the blessing of the state and federal governments
and building the institutional apparatus to prosecute, try, and enforce criminal law. By November 2000, the Tribes had requested
the retrocession by resolution, the Governor of Washington had
approved the retrocession by proclamation, and the Secretary of
the Interior had formally accepted it (Federal Register Vol. 65, No.
234, 2000).
Until this time, the Tribes had been regular participants in
the Northwest Indian Court System (NICS). This award-winning
intertribal consortium provides a pool of judges and prosecutors
from which the Tribes could draw as needed (HPAIED, 2003). After
retrocession, however, the Tulalip Tribes needed both judges and
prosecutors on a full-time basis, so the Tribes rewrote the terms of
If a tribal government
cannot police its own
citizens, it lacks a critical
tool for socioeconomic
recovery: the effective
deterrence, punishment,
and rehabilitation of its
most troublesome members.
Tulalip has met the need.
their relationship with NICS to have judges and prosecutors annually assigned to administer justice in the Tulalip Tribal Court.
The NICS arrangement offers two main benefits. First and
foremost, Indians are administering justice on the Tulalip Indian
Reservation, applying the Tulalip Tribes’ codes and processes. As
a result, local conditions, laws, and cultural norms figure much
more prominently in the prosecution of justice than they would
otherwise. The incorporation of tribal values encourages confidence in the fairness and legitimacy not only of specific trials and
punishments, but ultimately of the tribal government itself. As
professional and legitimate as the state courts might be for nonIndian Washingtonians, they were delivering results that seemed
patently unjust to Tulalip Indians.
At the same time, under the NICS arrangement, the administration of justice is one step removed from the politics of reservation life. In a tightly knit Indian community like Tulalip, family
relations can dominate the processes of making of law and policy.
Having judges who are insulated from political pressure is essential to perceptions of fairness. Under the NICS arrangement, the
judges must administer Tulalip law, but strictly speaking, they are
not tribal employees whose paychecks might be subject to lobbying by an aggrieved party to a case. As a result, the NICS arrangement greatly reduces potential for constituent pressure on elected
leaders to alter judicial outcomes. This judicial independence not
only signals development progress, it supports it by showing all
manner of “investors” in the Tulalip community that they will be
treated fairly in their dealings with the Tribes.
Tulalip Tribes
Retrocession of PL-280 criminal jurisdiction is a major accomplishment. The law itself dates from the period in American
Indian policy when the federal government sought to terminate
tribes, and tribes have long chafed under its negative implications
for tribal self-rule. If a tribal government cannot police its own
citizens, it lacks a critical tool for socioeconomic recovery: the
effective deterrence, punishment, and rehabilitation of its most
troublesome members. Yet despite the general desirability of retrocession, going from a standing start to the full administration
of justice overnight requires considerable institutional ambition.
The Tulalip Tribes demonstrated not just the ambition, but the executive capability and fiscal capacity necessary to meet the need.
Entrance to Seattle Premium Outlets, Quil Ceda Village,
Tulalip Indian Reservation
48
Business Beyond Casinos: Quil Ceda Village
As discussed in Section II, many Indian tribes seek to diversify
their economies away from casino gambling. The Tulalip Tribes are
in the forefront of these efforts. Notwithstanding the considerable
incentive tribes have to diversify, Indian tribes face a number of
unique hurdles in raising capital for non-gaming economic development on reservations. Among other things, the uniqueness of
tribal regulation, the power of sovereign immunity, the difficulty
of collateralizing trust lands, and the uncertainty surrounding
tribal taxing powers mean that investors have to bear additional
costs when they cross onto reservations. These costs may be passed
on to tribes in higher rates (see the discussion of Squaxin Island’s
cost of capital), or may scare quality investors away from the reservations.
The Tulalip Tribes
undertook to create a
physical and legal setting
where the process of
starting businesses could
be streamlined. Quil Ceda
Village was the result.
The Tulalip Tribes understood these obstacles intimately from
prior economic development experience and undertook to create a physical and legal setting where the process of starting businesses could be streamlined. In a large parcel on the east side of
the Reservation where the Tribes had once leased a large facility to
Boeing, the Tribes created the first-ever federally chartered reservation municipality. Quil Ceda Village was the result.
The Tribes spent several years zoning, planning, and building the groundwork for the Village. They established a Council
to oversee it. They formulated a development plan. They set aside
acres for wetland restoration and preservation. They took the lead
in orchestrating $16.5 million in state and federal transportation
funding to rebuild the highway interchange at 88th Street, contributing $300,000 of the Tribes’ own earnings.
Quil Ceda began with a few small malls that were soon joined
by Home Depot and Wal-Mart. In 2003 the Tribes opened their
expanded casino in the Village, and in 2004 the Seattle Premium
Outlets mall opened at the north end of the Village. By the end of
2005, the roster of business open in the Village was long (Figure
39). The attractiveness of the Village offerings is apparent in the
jump in regional traffic (Figure 40). At the exit immediately north
of the Village, traffic has risen by seventy-five percent over the
1995-2005 period. At the 88th Street interchange, traffic has grown
by 420% in six years. By comparison, two miles south of Quil Ceda
Village at the intersection of Marine Drive and 31st Street where
the Tribes’ old casino is located, traffic counts have been relatively
flat for the past ten years, rising only fifteen percent in the period
1994-2004. While not all of the increase shown in Figure 40 is attributable to the Village alone, Quil Ceda is a large and growing
attraction in the area.
Figure 40
Traffic Counts Near Interstate 5 & Quil Ceda Village
average
weekday daily trips in thousands
30
Exit immediately south of QCV
20
Exit immediately north of QCV
10
0
1994
1995
1996
1997
1999
116th Street west of I-5
2000
2001
2002
2003
Marine Drive 31st Ave
2004
2005
88th Street west of I-5
(Gibson Traffic Consultants)
The non-tribal businesses of Quil Ceda Village generate land
lease revenues for the Tribes and diverse employment opportunities for Indians and non-Indians alike—approximately 1,400 jobs
Figure 39
Businesses at Quil Ceda Village
Adidas
Adrienne Vittadini
Company Store
Aeropostale
Aerosoles
Aldo Shoes
Ann Taylor Factory Store
Banana Republic Factory
Store
Bank of America
Bass
BCBG Max Azria
Big Dog Sportswear
Brooks Brothers Factory
Store
Burberry
CableVision
Calvin Klein
Carter’s
Central Plaza
Chico’s
The Children’s Place Outlet
Clarks Bostonian
Coldwater Creek
Convention Center
Dana Buchman
Dinners Ready
Dressbarn
The Dry Cleaning Station
Easy Spirit Ecko Unltd.
Eddie Bauer
Educational Community
Credit Union
Ellen Tracy
Factory Brand Shoes
The Flysmith
Gap Outlet
Geoffrey Beene
Guess
Haggar Clothing Co.
Hoity Toity
Home Depot
Izod
J. Jill
J.Crew
Jackpot Teriyaki
Jackson Hewitt Tax
Jockey
Jones New York
Jorgensen Golf
Journeys
Key Bank
L’eggs Hanes Bali Playtex
Levi’s/Dockers Outlet
Lids for Less
Liz Claiborne
London Fog Pacific Trail
Lucky Brand Blue Jeans
Maidenform
Marysville-Tulalip
Chamber of
Commerce
Mira Star Gas Station
Morning Star Espresso
Naturalizer
Nautica
NauticaKids
Needful Native Things
Nike Factory Store
Nine West
OshKosh B’Gosh
PacSun
Perry Ellis
Polo Ralph Lauren Factory
Store
Port of Subs
Puma
Quiksilver
QCV Council &
Conference Center
Rave
Robert Wayne Footwear
Shoe Pavilion
Skechers
Strasburg Children
Stride Rite Keds Sperry
Taco del Mar
Tommy Hilfiger
Tulalip Casino
Tulalip Data Services
Tulalip Liquor Store &
Smoke Shop
Tulalip Nails
The UPS Store
Van Heusen
WalMart & Grocery
Wilsons Leather Outlet
Zumiez
Stores in Italics are within Seattle Premium Outlets.
(Quil Ceda Village, 2006; Seattle Premium Outlets, 2006)
Tulalip Tribes
By 2005, State-taxable
sales at Quil Ceda Village
had leaped to $311 million,
yielding $26 million in
collections for the state.
Seattle Premium Outlets, Quil Ceda Village,
Tulalip Indian Reservation
50
outside the casino. Another prime beneficiary of the development
activity at Quil Ceda Village is the state treasury. Washington’s
Department of Revenue estimated that in 2003 the Village generated $95.5 million in sales taxable by the State of Washington
(Washington State Department of Revenue, 2005). By 2005, Statetaxable sales had leaped to $311 million, yielding $26 million in
collections for the state (Reese, 2006b). Yet ironically, the tribal
government that zoned, planned, and built Quil Ceda Village—
the Tulalip Tribes—does not reap any sales tax revenue at all from
the Village. To do so under current Indian tax law would require
pancaking another tribal tax on top of state levies, and the Tribes
do not want to discourage investment by doing so.
Notwithstanding the Tulalip government’s inability to tax at
Quil Ceda Village, its development has capitalized upon a tribal
natural resource—location—to help sustain the Tulalip Tribes.
Much as the Tribes’ forest and salmon harvesting sustained them
economically in the past, this new resource promises to provide
long-term benefits to the Tribes. The employment and revenues
from Quil Ceda Village will be essential to the socioeconomic recovery of the Tulalip Tribes in years to come.
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Tulalip Tribes. beda?chelh [Web Page]. URL www.tulaliptribes-nsn.gov/
health/beda_chelh/index.asp [2006, January 17].
US Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2006). Current Employment Statistics Survey.
Washington, DC: US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
US Bureau of Reclamation. Grand Coulee Dam [Web Page]. URL http://
www.usbr.gov/dataweb/dams/wa00262.htm [2006, June 29].
US Census Bureau. (1990). Census 1990 Summary Tape File 3.
Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census.
US Census Bureau. (1996). 1992 Economic Census: Survey of MinorityOwned Business Enterprises. Washington, DC: US Census Bureau.
US Census Bureau. (2000). Census 2000 Summary File 3. Washington, DC:
Bureau of the Census.
US Census Bureau. (2001). 1997 Economic Census: Survey of MinorityOwned Business Enterprises. Washington, DC: US Census Bureau.
US Census Bureau. (2006a). American Indian- and Alaska Native-Owned
Firms: 2002 . Washington, DC: US Census Bureau.
US Census Bureau. (2006b). Statistical Abstract of the United States, Table
656. Washington, DC: US Census Bureau.
US Commission on Civil Rights. (2003). A quiet crisis: federal funding and
unmet needs in Indian Country. Washington, DC: US Commission on
Civil Rights.
US Commission on Civil Rights. (2004). Broken promises: evaluating the
Native American health care system. Washington, DC: US Commission
on Civil Rights.
US Department of the Interior. (1995). Fiscal Year 1995 US Department of
the Interior Annual Financial Report. Washington, DC: US Department
of the Interior.
US GAO. (2004). Indian Economic Development: Relationship to EDA Grants
and Self-determination Contracting is Mixed. Washington, DC: US
Government Accountability Office.
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. (2005). Commercial
Harvest Database. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Washington Research Council. (2002). Special Report: Untaxted and Lightly
Regulated. Seattle, WA: Washington Research Council.
Washington State Department of Revenue. (2005). Lodging Information
Rates and Changes Effective October 1, 2005. Olympia, WA:
Washington State Department of Revenue.
Washington State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council. (2005).
Total Personal Income Washington and the United States. Olympia, WA:
Washington State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council.
Washington State Gambling Commission. (2005a) Fiscal Year Net Receipts
Comparison [Web Page]. URL http://www.wsgc.wa.gov/docs/stats/
PieCharts.pdf [2005a, December 14].
Washington State Gambling Commission. (2005b) Tribal Lottery System
player terminal inventory for the State of Washington [Web Page]. URL
www.wsgc.wa.gov/egl/New_tribal_lottery_system_Player_ter.asp
[2006b, January 31].
Washington State Gambling Commission. (Background on gambling in
Washington [Web Page]. URL http://www.wsgc.wa.gov/docs/background.pdf [2006, March].
Whitener, D. (1998). Letter from the Tribal Chairman. Squaxin Island
Tribe Fiscal Year 1998 Annual Report. Shelton, WA: Squaxin Island
Tribe.
Wilkinson, C. F. (1987). American Indians, time, and the law: Native societies in a modern constitutional democracy. New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Above, names and dates alone refer to personal communication,
usually with tribal staff. Photographs presented without credit
were taken by the author.
54
VI. Notes
1.
Unless otherwise indicated, all dollar values given in this report are
inflation-adjusted to 2004 dollars by the CPI-U.
2.
Under IGRA, Indian governments must spend gaming revenue to:
i) fund tribal government operations or programs;
ii) provide for the general welfare of the Indian tribe and its members;
iii) promote tribal economic development;
iv) donate to charitable organizations; or
v) help fund operations of local government agencies.
25 U.S.C. §2701 and §2710(b)(2)(B).
.
Survey respondents were: The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the
Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation,
the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, the Jamestown
S’Klallam Tribe, the Kalispel Indian Community, the Lummi
Tribe, the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, the Nisqually Indian Tribe,
the Nooksack Indian Tribe, the Port Gamble Indian Community,
the Puyallup Tribe, the Quinault Tribe, the Sauk-Suiattle Indian
Tribe, the Shoalwater Bay Tribe, the Skokomish Indian Tribe, the
Snoqualmie Tribe, the Squaxin Island Tribe, the Suquamish Indian
Tribe, Swinomish Indians, and the Tulalip Tribes.
.
These consist of: Chehalis Cigarette Distribution, Fisherman’s Cove
Marina, Gliding Eagle Marketplace, Harstine Oyster Co., Island
Enterprises, Jamestown Seafood, JKT Development, Kamilche
Trading Post, Lummi Mini-Mart, Quinault Maritime Resort,
Muckleshoot Smoke Shop, Nisqually Childcare Center, Nisqually
RezMart, Nooksack Market, Northwest Native Expressions, Port
Gamble Development Authority, Queets Trading Post, Quil Ceda
Village, Quinault Credit Office, Quinault Enterprise, Quinault Land
& Timber Enterprise, Quinault Pride Seafood, Quinault Utilities,
Saxas Construction, Skookum Creek Distribution Co., Skookum
Creek Tobacco Co., Suquamish Seafood, Tahlola Mercantile, Twin
Totems, and Yakama Forest Products.
.
See Volume I at p. 20-22 and the reports of the US Commission on
Civil Rights (2003; US Commission on Civil Rights, 2004).
.
For more on the award-winning Quil Ceda Village, see www.ksg.harvard.edu/hpaied/hn/hn_2003_QuilCedaVillage.htm.
.
American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) alone and not in combination with other races ages 18 through 64 (US Census Bureau,
2000).
.
See, e.g., www.researchcouncil.org/Main/boardof.htm.
9.
Multiplier and (especially) tax impacts were not calculated for these
sectors of the Indian “economy” because substantial risks of misestimation and/or double-counting arise when trying to identify on- and
off-reservation businesses and employees, Indian and non-Indian income, vendor and non-vendor firms, and taxable and non-taxable
income.
10. See, e.g., RCW 50.65.138. Note that Volume I showed higher proportions coming from distressed counties at p. 19. Variation arises as
lease contracts expire (six of the twenty-six extant in September 2004
were set to expire by 2006), as new ones are negotiated, and as the
distribution of unemployment varies within the state (two counties
became “distressed” between 2003 and 2005 and five ceased to be).
11. Geoducks are the largest burrowing clam in the world, a native of
Puget Sound, and a delicacy in Asia.
12. Tribes from around the country have studied and emulated their
model (Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, 2004).
1. Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse, Department of Social &
Health Services, Washington State.
1. Sources: Squaxin Island Tribe loan origination documents and related amendments dated 5/24/94 through 6/20/05. Later in the period,
rates were calculated on a sliding scale that depended upon business
leverage. In such cases, maximum rates were used for comparison
with earlier loans. Under low-leverage, the rates due are lower than
described above.
1. Inflation-adjusted to 2004 dollars. Decennial census: (US Census
Bureau, 2000) and (US Census Bureau, 1990).
1. This is what the Washington Gambling Commission calls the “friendly lawsuit” (Washington State Gambling Commission, 2006).
1. In inflation-adjusted terms. Note that this category counts indirect
government support, that is, the administrative overhead funds that
flow from the federal government under Self-Governance contracting and compacting.
1. The federally funded Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
19. Inflation-adjusted to 2004 dollars. Decennial census: (US Census
Bureau, 2000) and (US Census Bureau, 1990).
56
VII.About the Author
Jonathan Taylor is an economist with expertise in natural resources,
gaming, and economic development. He has provided consulting expertise to tribes and bands in the United States and Canada consisting of
public policy analysis, strategic advice, and economic research. He has
also authored or supported expert testimony in litigation and other public proceedings for a number of Native American groups.
Recent work includes:
Taylor, J. B. (2005). Tribal Self-Government and Gaming Policy: The
Outcomes for Indians and Washington State. Cambridge, MA: Taylor
Policy Group, Inc.
Taylor, J. B., and J. P. Kalt (2005). American Indians on Reservations:
A Databook of Socioeconomic Change Between the 1990 and 2000
Censuses. Cambridge: Harvard Project on American Indian Economic
Development.
Grant, K. W., K. A. Spilde, and J. B. Taylor. (2004). Social and Economic
Consequences of Indian Gaming in Oklahoma, American Indian
Culture and Research Journal, 28:2, 2004, 97-129.
Grant, K. W. and J. B. Taylor. (in press). Improving the Chances for
Success in Tribally Owned Enterprises, in Jorgensen, M. R., ed.,
Resources for Nation-Building: Strategies, Cases, and Tools for American
Indian Economic Development (Tucson: University of Arizona Press),
forthcoming.
Mr. Taylor is President of the Taylor Policy Group, an economics
and public policy consultancy. Mr. Taylor is also a Research Affiliate at
The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at the
Kennedy School of Government, and a Senior Policy Associate at The
Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, University of Arizona, Tucson.

The Character and Effects of the Indian Economy in Washington State

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