Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people gather in Juneau for the opening of Celebration on June 5, 2024. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
The state of Alaska has filed suit against the federal Department of the Interior in an attempt to overturn a legal opinion that allowed the Native Village of Eklutna to open a federally regulated gaming hall near Anchorage.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday at the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., alleges that the legal opinion — issued by the Interior Department’s top attorney under the Biden administration — was “arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion, and not in accordance with law.”
If the court rules in the state’s favor, it could force the closure of the gaming hall, which has been operating since January. More broadly, it could deny all of Alaska’s 229 federally recognized tribes the ability to exercise jurisdiction over as much as 2.7 million acres of land held in trust for individual Alaska Natives by the federal government.
“This challenge isn’t about gaming. This is about jurisdiction over lands. We are asking a court to reaffirm what it has already said — the State maintains primary jurisdiction over Alaska Native allotments,” said Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor in a written statement announcing the lawsuit.
Allotments are parcels of land up to 160 acres in size that the federal government holds in trust for individual Alaska Natives and their families.
For decades, federal officials said that those parcels were not considered “Indian country” and thus not subject to the jurisdiction of tribes in the way that Indian reservations are.
Eklutna and other tribes have repeatedly questioned that idea. In 2021, following a lawsuit by Eklutna, the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., ruled that allotments do not count as tribal land for the purposes of opening a gaming hall.
But in early 2024, the Interior Department’s top attorney changed a legal interpretation that the department and courts had used for decades.
Using that new legal interpretation, the department and federal Indian gaming officials approved Eklutna’s plans for a gaming hall. It began operating on a limited basis last month.
Aaron Leggett, president of the Native Village of Eklutna, said in a written statement on Tuesday that the tribe is “saddened and disappointed” that the governor and attorney general would take the tribe to court over an economic development project.
“This is not only an unnecessary expense for NVE and the State, but also a time-consuming, unwarranted federal lawsuit that will increase the financial strain on the Eklutna people and create another barrier to economic benefits for Tribal members and the broader community. This is a burden the Tribe, the local community and the State of Alaska’s citizens should not have to bear,” Leggett said.
“Fifteen days ago, the Native Village of Eklutna opened its Chin’an Gaming Hall to the public. Already, over 60% of our Chin’an employees are Eklutna Tribal members. They are proudly working alongside colleagues who are neighbors from the local community,” he said.
The gambling hall has already been the subject of a different lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for Alaska, by several neighbors. Tuesday’s filing by the state says that since the D.C. District Court previously ruled on the Eklutna issue, that case should take precedence.
The Eklutna case is also part of a larger trend by the state, which has been fighting to restrict the ability of tribes to exert governmental jurisdiction over land in Alaska.
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 put most Alaska Native land here under the control of Native corporations — which are not sovereign governments — instead of tribes, which are.
Just as the state filed the Eklutna case, state attorneys were also at work on arguments in a separate lawsuit now in the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals about the ability of tribes to put land into federal trust on their own.
Last year, an Alaska judge said they have the right to do so, but the state is continuing to fight the case, with oral arguments possible later this year.
Complicating matters is the switch from the Biden administration to the Trump administration. In the first Trump term, the Interior Department opposed Alaska tribes’ ability to take land into federal trust. The Biden administration strongly supported that right. It remains to be seen whether the second Trump term will mark a return to the policies used in the first.
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