From Gambling Magazine, September 2001:
The Grand River Iroquois Indian reserve in Ontario has spent as much as $429,000 on legal and lobbying fees to establish a gambling district in Brownsville, a leading official of the reservation said.
David General, a member of the Six Nations band council, said leaders of the Six Nations band council have visited Fayette County to look into the property, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported in Sunday editions.
The council is the governing body of the 10,000-resident reservation in Brantford, Ontario.
David General is a colleague of Ken Hill:
Former Six Nations band councillor Ken Hill is emerging as one of the movers and shakers behind the Douglas Creek protest in Caledonia.
Hill, who was arrested by Six Nations police early Wednesday in connection with a scuffle at the protest site, has been charged with two counts of assault. He is one of six protesters police have been seeking because of fights between area residents and the protesters. A highly successful Six Nations businessman, Hill runs a construction company and is also a director of the reserve's largest manufacturer, Grand River Enterprises, which makes millions of cigarettes a day just outside Ohsweken.
Hill has been very active in the Douglas Creek protest.
Chief Coun. David General...sat on council with Hill for nine months in 2001.
Now, as it turns out, Ken Hill was involved in the Brownsville gambling initiative. Here's his approach for "looking into the property", with an eye on getting around pesky anti-gambling laws:
Casino and riverboat gambling remains illegal in Pennsylvania, but the purchase of Brownsville's business district to create a gambling district is still being pursued, General said.
Ken Hill, who sits on the council's land-research committee, said members intended to argue that Fayette County, where Brownsville is located, was inhabited by the Six Nations of the Iroquois in the 18th century, and would push for the establishment of a reservation in the area.
So Ken Hill had planned to argue that the land was really Iroquois based on a 200-year-old claim, then establish a reservation on the property where right now no natives actually live. The property consisted of derelict and abandoned buildings. No one was living there, but the entire area was owned by a single land speculator, and not by a multitude of individual owners. Once in the hands of Ken Hill, the newly incorporated native land parcel would have become a gambling district, evading local and state laws that ban gambling. Presumably the abandoned buildings would have been torn down in favour of a casino.
There was a hiccup though:
Gaming Commission spokesman Richard Schiff said establishing a reservation and then lobbying to have gambling allowed on reservation lands would difficult.
"It is a very long process for land that is not now Indian land to become Indian land," he said. "As far as Indian gaming, even if they were to work with their U.S. counterparts, there would still be a lot of hoops to jump through."
And not just fights with the state Gaming Commission, but also with his own people:
Money spent on legal efforts in Brownsville surfaced last week during a contentious council meeting when reservation residents demanded that leaders be more open about how reservation money is spent.
Representatives of the Six Nations have not contacted city officials about any plans to purchase the properties, said Jack Lauver, president of the Brownsville Council.
So Ken Hill was burned in Brownsville in September of 2001. He found an uninhabited property and planned to make it into a casino site. First, he would have the land designated a reserve, then without anyone actually living there, the land would essentially handed over to him. But executing this plan through the courts and through government officials was costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, angering band leaders and members of the tribe.
Do you think he learned something from the experience? How to speed things up dramatically by turning a civil process into a political crisis? How using other people's money comes with strings attached? How important it is to have popular support?
Fast-forward to Caledonia, Ontario in 2006. The Douglas Creek Estates are currently unoccupied, the developer only just starting to build infrastructure. Just like the property in Brownsville, it would make a good site for a casino -- access to roads, near a major population centre, no proliferation of individual property owners to deal with one at a time. Instead of a legal fight for the land, though, there is a violent protest. Instead of years of jumping through legal hoops, the provincial government capitulates in a matter of weeks and prepares to hand the land over. Instead of hundreds of thousands of dollars of band money, Ken Hill spends his own money, no strings attached:
[David] General [said], "They've alleged that he brought the tires, the pallets and the vehicles that were burned there and that it's his [Hill's] equipment that dug up Highway 6."
Protest spokesperson Janie Jamieson said Hill is a protest supporter and has donated to the cause, much like many other community members.
And instead of an angry band council, he has thankful fans:
[David General] said it is well known in the community that Hill has been an ardent supporter of the protest.
"People have thanked him over the radio for bringing in the gravel and trucks that formed the barricade," said General.
Is a casino going to be part of Caledonia's future? Was the land that was going to be the site of dozens of family homes at the Douglas Creek Estates going to become a place where gamblers fritter their money away? Is Ken Hill simply trying to do in 2006 what he failed to do in 2001?
