The Big Gamble
Can the once proud Snoqualmie Tribe regain its heritage and future by following the casino path?
According to a Snoqualmie legend, Moon the creator, on his way upstream in search of the people from whom he was snatched as a baby, came upon a place in the river where a large weir obstructed fish passage. He turned this spot into a lofty cataract—present-day Snoqualmie Falls—and ordained: “Birds flying over…will fall, and people shall gather them up and eat them. Deer coming down the stream will perish, and the people shall have them for food. Game of every kind shall be found by the people for their subsistence.” Many, many years later, the modern-day Snoqualmie tribe is once again turning to game—but of an entirely different sort—for its subsistence, and much more. Like so many tribes in Washington and across the country, the 650-member Snoqualmie tribe—whose people live primarily in the SnoqualmieValley, but also around Marysville and south Seattle—decided to bet on a casino to change its fortune. Snoqualmie Casino—whose opening last November drew upward of 30,000 area residents, with a line of cars stretching for some four miles along the breakdown lane of Interstate 90—was the culmination of years of dreaming, hard work and perseverance in the face of sometimes overwhelming obstacles.
Unlike other tribes who have opened casinos in the state, the Snoqualmies—who once dominated western Washington, controlling the all-important trade route through the Cascades to the sea—at one time weren’t even recognized by the federal government and had no reservation or land of their own. Their quest for government recognition took decades—years in which they pieced together enough evidence of cohesion to convince the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to recognize them as a “domestic sovereign nation” under federal law—a designation they had lost in 1952. When they were finally granted this status in 1999 the tribe embarked on a quest to make its dreams—a reservation that tribal members could call home, world class healthcare for Snoqualmies and other Northwest natives, and access to as much education as any individual tribal member would want to pursue—come true.
As a recognized tribe, the Snoqualmies were free to buy land and, pending approval from the BIA, convert it into their sovereign territory not subject to the laws or taxes of the surrounding country, state or nation. While establishing a reservation and opening a casino seemed a likely path for the tribe, there was initial resistance. “The tribe didn’t like the idea,” says Ray Mullen, the tribe’s “drum bearer” and one of nine members of the democratically elected tribal council, which essentially runs the tribe. Some tribal members were opposed to gambling in and of itself, let alone profiting from it, Mullen relates, while others, like himself, thought it just seemed too overtly commercial and unrelated to the tribe’s history.
As drum bearer, Mullen is responsible for learning traditional Snoqualmie songs and sharing them at tribal ceremonies whenever he is called to serve. With long, flowing salt-and-pepper locks offset by an elegantly groomed mustache and goatee, Mullen, 48, looks the part. He grew up learning dribs and drabs of Lushootseed, the common language of the northwest coast before white settlement, from his grandmother’s, both full-blooded Snoqualmies. One of his brothers, Joseph, currently chairs the tribal council, while another, John, is employed as the tribe’s master carver.
“The options really were unlimited at the time,” says Mullen of those heady days a decade ago following the tribe’s 1999 acknowledgment. He was pushing the tribal leadership to consider building and running a recycling processing center for the region, which could employ lots of tribal members and generate revenue for the tribe’s priorities, all the while helping the wider community and the planet. Other ideas, from starting a construction company to selling arts and crafts to providing financing to tribal entrepreneurs, were floated as well.
“But in economics when you lay the numbers out in front of you, what makes sense is the largest numbers,” says Mullen. Potential profits from a casino penciled out thousands of times higher than from any of the other ventures the tribe was considering.
And if the tribe was successful in finding land to purchase on the East side, close to their ancestral homeland, their casino would be near many Microsoft-enriched Eastside enclaves, as well as being the closest casino to the city of Seattle.
No doubt gaming had proven lucrative for other tribes in Washington. Tribal casinos around the state generated some $1.34 billion in combined revenue in 2007, more than an eightfold increase in just a decade. Tribes were using this influx of cash to build state-of-the-art healthcare facilities, fund college tuition and even put money directly into the pockets of their members.
After suffering through decades of dispossession and abject poverty, the Snoqualmies weren’t interested in struggling to just make ends meet any longer (in 2001, a demographic survey revealed unemployment at 42%; it dropped to 31% in 2006). To tribal administrator Matt Mattson, casino gambling was the only option that offered “the opportunity to restore the tribe to its rightful position of prominence in the land that’s named after it.”
Mattson, a white guy from upstate New York with shortcropped brown hair, boyish good looks and an impish smile, was initially hired as an attorney—the tribe’s first non-native employee—in 2000, just after reacknowledgment.
“We interviewed quite a few people,” recounts 77-year-old Snoqualmie elder Katherine Barker, the only lifetime appointee to the otherwise elected Tribal Council. “He was fresh out of law school, and we figured we could train him to learn our ways, and that’s why we took him on.”
Assigned to write a code of laws for the newly sovereign tribe, the 24-year-old Mattson hit the ground running, demonstrating not only a deep understanding of the legal issues facing the tribe but also an affinity for politics and business. And perhaps more importantly, he was a good listener.
“When I got here, I started listening to tribal council members about projects they wanted to do,” he relates. The top priorities were clear from day one: start health and housing programs to benefit tribal members. “They were asking if I could help get these programs off the ground, and I was there so I said, ‘OK, sure.’”
In 2002, tribal leaders—more than satisfied with Mattson’s savvy and commitment—created a new position befitting the elevated duties he had assumed: tribal administrator. In this role, Matson runs the tribes government and oversees its business and legal dealings for the guidance of the nine-member tribal council. He is essentially the CEO of what has become a bustling business entity with upward of 1,000 employees—approximately 900 work at the casino (about 20 of whom are tribal members), while another 100 (mostly tribal members) work for the tribe directly— and an annual operating budget in the tens of millions. Not a bad gig for your first job out of law school.
Of course, it’s hardly been a cakewalk. While getting re-acknowledged had taken some two decades, the real work was just beginning. For starters, finding land to convert to sovereign tribal land on which to build the casino proved no easy task. The tribe’s initial plan to snatch up a building lot in downtown Bellevue and erect a large casino was met with consternation from public officials. Mattson recalls King County Executive Ron Sims responding to the proposal with four choice words: “Over my dead body.” The tribe, ever eager to remain conciliatory, begged off and continued looking.
In 2006, the tribe finally found a spot everyone could agree on: a 56-acre parcel on the outskirts of the town of Snoqualmie, just a couple of miles from the tribe’s spiritual heart of Snoqualmie Falls. The initial backer of the tribe’s gaming endeavors, Arizona-based MGU Development, LLC, purchased the land on the Snoqualmies’ behalf for some $3.8 million and proceeded to put another $20 million into site work in anticipation of the BIA approving the tribe’s application to turn it into its sovereign reservation land.
But just when things were progressing smoothly, MGU unexpectedly pulled out of the deal as federal regulators began unraveling a trail of sketchy financial dealings by the firm’s principal.
While the setback almost kiboshed the casino, Mattson and company figured out a way forward by getting a bridge loan, buying out mgu’s interest and then raising money through the bond markets. The $375 million the tribe was finally able to secure in early 2007—without any collateral besides the right to build a casino on its sovereign reservation land—to this day represents the biggest initial bond offering ever in the short but high-rolling history of Indian gaming. The tribe broke ground on the casino in February 2007, finishing up just in time for its November 2008 grand opening.
While the approach to the Snoqualmie Casino by car is quintessential northwest, with towering evergreens yielding to a clearing and then an elegant “grand lodge” building exterior, walking inside is pure Las Vegas. Designed, built, and styled by some of the world’s top casino makers (including Vegas-based Architects Bergman, Walls & Associates and interior designers Yates-Silverman Inc.),But crafted with regional appropriateness in mind, Snoqualmie Casino is about as tastefully outfitted as a 170,000-square-foot monolithic structure with an attached to six-story parking garage in the middle of a forested area can be.
Inside the sprawling steel and glass structure, 1700 slot machines, 52 game tables, 17 poker tables, five restaurants, a cigar bar (smoking is allowed everywhere but the restaurants) and a cadre of roaming waitstaff leave few inches unscratched. Overhead, massive crossbeams (non-combustible steel trusses with a wood grain covering) Lend a Northwest flare to the scene. a central bar beckons patrons looking to drink and chit chat between hands of blackjack and pulls on the slot machines. The tribe’s crescent moon logo is a fixture throughout the building, from the bases of the slot machines to the embossing on the menus. An adjacent concert and event center where Jessica Simpson sang on opening weekend, further sweetens the deal for visitors interested in a little entertainment with their gambling.
But the anemic economy, coupled with hazardous snowstorms and flooding during the first few months the casino was open, has meant that business is lagging behind the tribe’s undisclosed yet acknowledged optimistic estimates. Before any money can be spent on the goals of health care, housing and education, the tribe must first meet the monthly interest payments on its borrowed money. While the tribe’s finances are private, there certainly hasn’t been any evidence yet that there are sufficient profits for the tribe to move forward with its larger goals.
In February, Moody’s downgraded its rating on Snoqualmie Entertainment, the division of the tribe responsible for developing and running the casino, issuing “negative outlook” and warning investors that the tribe might not be able to “ fully cover interest payments on loans… and tribal distributions in 2009.”
For his part, Matson brushes off any intimation that the tribe’s big gambit is already running into financial trouble. “What the economic downturn means to the tribe is that some of the plans that the tribal council had will be on a longer fuse,” he says. “The best-case scenario clearly is not happening because of the broader economic conditions, but the tribe and Snoqualmie Casino is holding its own.” He points out that the entire gaming sector is suffering as a result of the economic downturn, and that within the sector, Snoqualmie Entertainment is relatively well regarded by analysts.
“Our bonds are trading at the same level as Mohegan Sun’s are trading at, and MGM’s bonds are trading below hours,” he says, referring to two of the leading companies in the gaming sector. “There’s a general, broad-based concern about gaming, and entertainment—but we still believe and maintain that we’re going to make it,” he says, expressing confidence in the casino’s management, location and business model. “We’re just not at that point where we are talking about not meeting our obligations. We’re not even contemplating that.”
In the meantime, more than 1,000 patrons make their way through the casino everyday, and the tribe is now the largest employer in the Snoqualmie valley. “The tribe,” Mattson reports, “has very much had its profile.”
Of course, having a higher profile also brings with it challenges. a splinter group within the tribe, and bittered by not being granted full tribal membership for failing to prove that they had enough Snoqualmie blood to qualify, formed its own “shadow government” in an attempt to wrest control of the tribe—and future casino profits. the actual tribe summarily banished the nine ringleaders, including several members of its own Tribal Council, from the tribe altogether.
In response, the banished members filed suit in US District Court claiming the tribe violated its civil rights by not giving them enough of a voice in the banishment process. This past may, Judge James L. Robart ruled in favor of the “Snoqualmie 9,” requiring the tribe to lift its social banishment (which prohibits them from visiting tribal lands or interacting with other tribal members) within 90 days.
At press time, the tribe wasn’t sure how it would respond. One option would be to hold another banishment hearing and give the nine individuals a better opportunity to speak their voices—although it’s unknown if that would satisfy the judge’s civil rights standard—and then have the full tribe vote again on whether or not to welcome them back. Another option would be to fight the decision by filing an appeal in federal court.
Regardless, the tribe is upset that the federal government is tampering with its Sovereign membership system. “It’s an internal matter that should be exclusively in the tribe’s domain,” says Mattson. “There are broader sovereignty implications when the federal court starts getting involved in telling tribes how they have to go about disciplining their own members, or how they have to go about determining who is and who is not a member.”
While tribal members wish the issue was behind them, they are trying to stay focused on the future. The tribe has already made inroads toward the creation of an envisioned regional Native health center catering to the medical (and medicinal) needs of not just Snoqualmies but of tribal members from across the Pacific Northwest. In June of 2008 the tribe finalized the $30 million purchase of the Snoqualmie Valley hospital, a historic 48-acre medical campus—still occupied by the hospital as a lease-back while it searches for a new, larger home—right near the new casino. For its part, the tribe, without the profits it is hoping for, is in no hurry for the existing hospital on the site to vacate.
Another priority for the tribe is the creation of a reservation in the more traditional sense, where members can actually live together as neighbors, not scattered across the larger region. While the tribe already helps some members in need with rental and utility assistance—thanks to Federal grant monies—the long-term goal is “to buy some land and build homes for tribal families,” related Mattson.
“We’ve looked at models where tribal members can have some equity in their homes, sort of along the lines of how Habitat for Humanity works,” says Mattson. “We want our tribal members to be able to contribute financially or with sweat equity and have some ownership.”
While the preferred location for this residential reservation would be a site separate from the casino, Mattson Acknowledge is it will be logistically easier to enlarge the existing reservation to accommodate housing, although neighbors would have to be willing to sell, of course. and there’s the matter of living next to or near a casino. most tribal members are happy to reap the financial rewards of the casino, but would rather not have to look at it every day.
The tribal council is also serious about investing future profits in the education of the tribe’s young people. “It’s important that the younger people stay in school and get a good education and come back and help the tribe,” says elder Katherine Barker, who herself only got as far as the third grade. She hopes that more young tribal members follow in the footsteps of her granddaughter, who will be a senior at the University of Washington in the fall. “She wants to get a degree in Indian law,” Barker beams, “ and come back and work for her people.”
For his part, drum bearer Ray Mullen couldn’t have imagined even a decade ago that the tribe he has devoted his life to advancing would be poised to become a major economic and cultural force in the region. In control of their own destiny for the first time in 150 years, the Snoqualmies’ future is looking much brighter these days. It’s now possible to envision the casino as a modern-day version of the all-giving falls in the Snoqualmies’ creation story, created by Moon for the benefit of the tribe so many eons ago.
“I believe this is just the beginning of what the tribe is going to make happen,” Mullen says. “We’re still in our infancy. Make that our re-infancy.”
THE SNOQUALMIE STORY
The Snoqualmie creation story, in which Moon is the central character, was recorded by anthropologist Arthur Ballard in 1916, told to him by Snoqualmie Charlie, a tribal elder. After Moon finds Snoqualmie Falls—still a sacred place to the Snoqualmie people—he foretells a grand future for the tribe.
“After he had changed everything, and before he entered upon his work of giving light, Moon created the various peoples and all the rivers as they are now,” Snoqualmie Charlie related. “Moon said, ‘Fish shall run up these rivers; they shall belong to each people on its own river. You shall make your own living from the fish, deer and other wild game,’” Snoqualmie Charlie continued. “It is all the work of Mmoon and no one else but Moon.”
By the time Snoqualmie Charlie told this story to Ballard, the largesse promised by Moon was nothing but a fading memory to the Snoqualmie people, once a 4,000-member tribe that populated the Cascade Foothills and highlands east of Puget Sound. The Snoqualmies were among the tribes that agreed to the Point Elliott Treaty of 1855, essentially trading away all tribal lands for a little cash and access to a centralized reservation. By signing on the dotted line, Snoqualmie chief Patankin ceded his tribe’s entire domain for just over $25,000, a relative pittance even back then, given the huge amount of land at stake. A few Snoqualmies chose to move on to the mixed reservation at Tulalip with other tribes—Patankin himself died there within 3 years of signing the treaty—while others opted to stay behind and eke out a living among the whites in the foothills their people had inhabited since time immemorial.
But the Snoqualmies were careful to maintain connections with one another. Seventy-seven-year-old Katherine Barker, now a Snoqualmie Elder and tribal council member, grew up assimilated in Redmond. But she remembers traveling as a child with her mother and siblings every month to the tribe’s meetings in the Snoqualmie Valley and elsewhere. “My mother attended all the meetings, and, of course, we went with her and sat on the chair and listened,” recounts Barker.
Meanwhile, tribal leaders work steadily to secure a new homeland. In the late 1930s, the tribe petitioned Congress to grant approximately 10,000 acres along the Tolt River in what is now the town of Carnation as a reservation exclusively for displaced Snoqualmies. But when World War II broke out, Congress turned its attention to the war effort, and the proposal was tabled.
Snoqualmie leaders were hopeful that once international hostilities died down they could get the reservation they had wanted. But in yet another slap in the face, the federal government shifted policy, opting to assimilate Indians into mainstream society, rather than segregating them on reservations. To speed this process along, the feds moved to terminate recognition of landless tribes. In 1953, the Snoqualmies were one of the first to be cut from federal rolls, leaving hundreds of tribal members already barely treading water at the poverty line without any federal support. Despite the hard times—alcoholism and unemployment were prevalent, and tribal customs were falling by the wayside—tribal leaders kept meeting every month. And it’s a good thing they did. Having to bear the burden of proof that its members had maintained cultural and political continuity and cohesion since termination decades earlier—no small task for a people reliant on the oral tradition—the tribe was finally (re)acknowledged by the United States in 1999, decades after it had initially applied.
CANOE CULTURE
An annual powwow keeps Northwest Native Americans connected
Two dozen or so Snoqualmie Indians will convene at the base of Snoqualmie Falls-a sacred tribal site-later this month to begin their annual Canoe Journey, this year a 100-mile voyage into and across Puget Sound to a five-day powwow hosted by the Suquamish Tribe at its reservation on the Kitsap Peninsula. Each year a different coastal or river-based Northwest tribe hosts the powwow, with dozens of other tribes paddling to the event to celebrate their common culture and heritage.
Back in 1997, Ray Mullen, the Snoqualmies’ drum bearer, helped get the tribe involved in the Canoe Journey in order to build camaraderie and teach mutual respect among the tribe’s youth. The powwows also help foster trust between the tribes and are fertile ground for the cross-pollination of ideas about everything from building better canoes to running more successful businesses to reviving tribal cultures.
Angela Wymer, a young Snoqualmie woman, was inspired by her 2005 Canoe Journey to learn Lushootseed, the common language of the tribes of the Pacific Northwest. “I had found exactly what I wanted to do with my life,” she relates. Today, as part of her job working for the tribe’s social services office, she teaches fellow Snoqualmies the ins and outs of Lushootseed during free weekly evening classes.
The Canoe Journey tradition has also been instrumental in reviving another age-old Snoqualmie tradition: wood carving. Needing canoes and paddles to accommodate all tribal members who want to go on the annual Canoe Journey, the tribe established a woodworking budget and secured a carving shed soon after it was reacknowledged in 1999. These days, four tribal members, led by John Mullen (the brother of drum bearer Ray), work full-time at the shed, making dugout canoes out of old-growth red cedar trees and paddles out of big leaf maple wood and cedar, just as their forebears did in centuries past.
This past winter, the tribe’s carving crew finished its third seaworthy canoe, which will make its debut at the upcoming Canoe Journey. When the powwow winds down, tribal members will make the arduous return trip upstream to their homeland, no doubt bringing back with them a newfound wisdom gleaned from their journey.
This articles originally appeared in the July 2009 issue of Seattle Magazine. Photographs by Stuart Isett.