Raegan Miller, KRBD - KetchikanRhonda Ren drove from Craig to Klawock two days in a row to play the machines at the Klawock Casino.Nearby, Robert Baza was coming away from his machine with $300. He had heard that the Klawock Cooperative Association opened the casino early last month, and wanted to try it out.Gaming isn’t new to Klawock — before COVID-19 came to the island, the Tribe hosted regular bingo games and pull tabs.
“I mean, this is land held in trust for the benefit of the tribe,” said attorney Lloyd Miller with the firm Sonosky Chambers based in Anchorage. It’s a little complicated, but Miller said it all comes down to land. The key problem was that Eklutna wanted to open the casino on a Native allotment — land that belonged to Tribal members, not the Tribe itself.
A Class II license covers things like pull tabs and bingo, including the slot-style electronic machines. It’s a step behind a Class III license that would allow for Vegas-style games with big jackpots. Class II licenses do come with conditions — if a Tribe wants to have pull tabs, they have to host regular bingo games. The machines in the Klawock Casino count as bingo, according to the Commission.
“ just starting another enterprise,” Armour said. “I mean, this, the smoke shop is what we pay a lot of our Tribal employee salaries with if they’re not covered by a grant. And we just need another revenue source. So it was just one of the ideas that we started discussing. And the opportunity kind of fell in our laps.”
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