Defense bill authorizes Catawba Nation to operate its casino near Charlotte


Danielle Battaglia
Thu, December 23, 2021, 4:00 AM·4 min read

A federal bill passed in Congress last week could settle a North Carolina land dispute between two Native American tribes and allow North Carolina’s newest casino to keep operating.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the Catawba Nation both claim that 17 acres of land in Kings Mountain originally belonged to their tribe.

But last week, Congress gave the force of law to Catawba ownership of the land.

The decision came in the form of a provision found in the National Defense Authorization Act that passed Congress last week. The bill funded military operations, including making improvements to three bases in North Carolina. But on the 905th page of the NDAA, senators took a standalone bill addressing the land and moved it into the larger military spending bill to ensure it passed.

Giving the land to the Catawbas allows the tribe to build a casino in Kings Mountain.

The N.C. Family Policy Council, a nonprofit education and research foundation founded in 1991 with the stated aim of upholding Judeo-Christian values, is opposed to gambling. The nonprofit’s executive director John Rustin called the move “a dangerous precedent” in a news release published Wednesday, saying it is the first time Congress has passed a bill to create an off-reservation tribal casino.

Some off-reservation casinos do exist. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has said that for such a casino to operate, it must be within commuting distance of the reservation and the Secretary of the Interior must find that the casino would not be detrimental to the community and would benefit the tribe.

The bill is a strong win for the tribe but isn’t a deviation from where things currently stand. The U.S. Department of Interior announced last year that it found that the Catawba tribe stretched into six counties in North Carolina and placed the land in Cleveland County into a trust for the Catawbas.

That allowed the tribe to hold a soft opening for the Catawba Two Kings Casino in July with 500 machines in a trailer surrounded by excavated dirt just off an exit ramp in Kings Mountain. The casino was so successful the tribe expanded to 1,000 machines last week on the same day the NDAA passed Congress.

That put the tribe at odds again with the Cherokees who, until then, operated the only casinos in North Carolina. Harrah’s Cherokee Hotel and Casino boasts video gaming, table games and more than 1,000 slot machines.

So far, the Cherokee have not commented on the NDAA, but the tribe criticizes the Department of Interior’s decision in a statement on its website with attached documents to support its position that the land belongs to the Cherokee and court filings fighting for the land to be returned.

“This flawed decision is a plain example of ‘reservation shopping,’ the practice of casino developers pairing a willing Indian tribe with a city or county open to a casino and seeking to have the federal government create a new reservation outside the willing tribe’s aboriginal territory,” the statement reads. “Both Congress and Indian Country have repeatedly denounced the practice of reservation shopping and have repeatedly engaged the Department of the Interior to press for changes in the Department’s rules to limit these kinds of deals.”

Catawba Tribal Chief Bill Harris said in a news release this month that he believes the NDAA will have a large impact on the federal lawsuit filed by the Cherokee against the Department of Interior and Bureau of Indian Affairs. He thanked North Carolina’s U.S. senators, Thom Tillis and Richard Burr, for helping to make the law happen.

“The Catawba Indian Nation Lands Act reaffirms the U.S. Department of Interior’s action recognizing our historical and ancestral ties to North Carolina,” Harris said in a news release. “Congress, Interior and the State of North Carolina and a federal court have now all confirmed what the Catawba people said from the beginning – these lands are the ancestral homelands of the Catawba people and we intend to use them to improve life of all people in the community.”

The Catawbas estimate building the casino will create thousands of construction jobs and around 2,600 permanent jobs at the casino and boost the local economy.

“Make no mistake, this legislation means more people will have good paying jobs, more kids will have a better education and more people will have better housing and health care,” Harris said. “That’s what this bill really means.”

Every member of North Carolina’s delegation voted in favor of the NDAA, except for Rep. Dan Bishop, who took issue with some of the military requirements within the bill.

President Joe Biden is expected to sign the bill.
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