Bearskin's Gamble

What Bearskin didn't count on was a long legal fight over whether he had the right to open a temporary casino. First, three other northeastern Kansas tribes filed a motion for a temporary restraining order: the Sac and Fox (which has a casino in Powhattan, west of Horton), the Iowa (which has a casino in White Cloud, at the northeastern tip of Kansas) and the Potowatomi, whose Harrah's Prairie Band Casino is just 15 miles north of Topeka.

The tribes found an ally in Governor Bill Graves, who refused to support any out-of-state tribes wanting to build a casino in Kansas.

"We have four tribes who reside here," says Natalie Haag, Graves' chief of staff. "The purpose of the Indian Gaming Act was to provide economic opportunities for the members of a tribe. We're trying to protect those tribes." She says the state opposes the Wyandotte's earning revenue in Kansas, then taking it out of state. She adds that any of more than a dozen other tribes with a historical connection to Kansas could make a claim similar to Bearskin's if he succeeds.

Although the federal court in Topeka granted the restraining order, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver swiftly overruled the Topeka court.

The decision boiled down to this: Whining about the adverse effects of competition doesn't impress a judge. "Our economy is based on competition. Those are weak arguments," says Mario Gonzalez, who served as attorney for the Kickapoo tribe in Horton, Kansas.

The Kickapoo took part in a second, more successful lawsuit against Bearskin's tribe, in which it was joined by the Wyandot tribe. Instead of opposing Bearskin on the grounds of competition, they claimed that placing a casino next to sacred land such as the cemetery would desecrate the site. Though the Kickapoo had no historical connection to the cemetery -- and also ran a casino that would have to compete with Bearskin's -- the tribe hoped the desecration argument would be more convincing.

But the Kansas Wyandots had been burying their dead at the cemetery for 150 years. They say their cousins in Oklahoma have had designs on the cemetery for years. "If you understand the history, the local Wyandot Nation of Kansas has always felt strongly about protecting the cemetery," Gonzalez says. "On the other hand, the Oklahoma tribe doesn't have the closeness. Most of their deceased relatives were buried in Oklahoma. On numerous occasions, they have attempted to sell the cemetery."

The Kansas Wyandots number less than 600 nationwide, but with several hundred members living in the Kansas City area, the tribe is collegial and close-knit. The members don't own a reservation, a common tribal office or a cultural center, so the cemetery has become the heart of their community. Several times a year, the tribe gathers there for religious ceremonies, where its members educate the young as well as clean up the beer bottles, condoms and other debris that litter the place.

Bearskin first started rumbling about the cemetery in 1994 and put the Wyandots on alert by putting his foot in his mouth. Holly Zane had led a delegation of Kansas Wyandots to see Bearskin and to express the Wyandots' hope that he would leave the cemetery alone. Bearskin instead promised he would do whatever it took to build a casino on the site, even if it meant putting one on stilts over the cemetery itself.

"His tone was booming," Zane says. "He's a very strong presence." Zane recalls her sister asking if Bearskin would put bingo lines on the glass floor -- perhaps lining up over the graves. He returned a steely look, she recalls, and the Kansas Wyandots ended up walking out.

"We never intended to build a casino over the cemetery," Bearskin now says about what would have been not only a logistical and engineering nightmare but also a political one.

But everyone took him at his word. "He said if the cemetery came between his casino, he'd take a shovel and dig up the bodies himself," says Zane, who adds that the Kansas Wyandots didn't even want a casino next to the cemetery.

Gonzalez carefully points out that Bearskin is highly respected in Oklahoma, that he has an admirable military background and is a "very nice person." Still, Gonzalez can't help characterizing Bearskin as an insensitive despoiler of Wyandot heritage. "I don't know what would motivate him to put a casino above a cemetery. If it's a holy site, you have to keep it holy. That's repugnant to almost every tribe across the country."

"We're just as interested in our past as most tribes in the United States," Bearskin counters.

Bearskin eventually reached a settlement with his Kansas cousins, promising that the Wyandottes would never build anything on top of the cemetery. Further, if Bearskin ever developed a casino anywhere else, his tribe would donate $250,000 to turn the Masonic Temple into an Indian center.