Future Pasco casino or water park caught in tribal homeland dispute

Pasco city officials have been asked to immediately end talks with the Colville about a potential casino development because the land belongs in another tribes’ ancestral territory.

The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation sent a pointed letter to Mayor Saul Martinez and City Manager Dave Zabell calling it a ploy by the Colville to gain rights or develop outside its reservation boundaries.

The three-page letter came less than two months after the Pasco City Council and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation signed an historic agreement to collaborate on tourism, education and a plan to offset the cost of emergency services on a future tribal development.

The Colville Tribes previously spent $2.9 million on 184 acres — north of the King City Truck Stop and east of Highway 395 — with the intent of someday building an off-reservation casino or water park.

“This is the Yakama Nation’s notice to the City of Pasco that we object to the Colville’s attempt to lay any claim within the open and unclaimed lands of our Treaty Territory,” said the letter. “We stand firm in our position that the Colville’s do not belong in Yakama Nation ancestral territories, and we remain prepared to oppose this development at every level.”

Opposing development

The letter from Virgil Lewis, chairman of the Yakama Nation Tribal Council, asks Pasco leaders to respect a treaty that’s been in place for 165 years and oppose Colville’s “attempt to colonize our homelands.”

It stopped short of threatening legal action, but directed Pasco to contact the Yakama Nation’s lead attorney with questions or concerns.

Rodney Cawston, chairman of the Colville Business Council, has described the Pasco area as the homelands of his mother’s people, the Palus tribe.

The Palus are now known as “Palouse,” and are one of the 12 tribes in the Colville Confederation.

“The Palus people lived in this part of the country for millennia, and their connection to their historic territory is strong to this day,” he said. He said the word “Pasco” is derived from a Palus place name.

A representative with the Colville Tribes could not be reached Friday to comment on the Yakama Nation letter.

The Yakama Nation said in addition to Pasco and the Colville Tribes, a standing objection has been lodged with Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee, the cities of Kennewick and Richland, Franklin County and the United States government to include the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Working all tribal governments

Zabell, Pasco’s city manager, told the Tri-City Herald that Pasco appreciates the position of the Yakama Nation.

“Respectfully however, the city is committed to and has a responsibility to engage in an open and transparent manner with all tribal governments within the region having an interest in lands or other concerns or interests within Pasco,” Zabell said.

“For instance, for decades the city has consulted, sought and invited input from the Umatilla, Yakama and Colville tribes prior to disturbing ground in its parks and trails located on U.S. Army Corps-owned land along the Columbia River,” he added.

He also noted the city’s recent collaboration with a local business and the Wanapum, Nez Perce and Lakota tribes to get a permanent headstone for the long-deceased Leroy Gray Horse — Little Bear, who was of Chippewa heritage and buried in Pasco’s City View Cemetery.

This territory dispute involves land that is situated within Pasco city limits and the city’s utility service areas.

It is necessary for the city to “communicate and coordinate as appropriate with tribal officials on the possible development of the property, the provision municipal services, and the impact of future development on public systems, operations and facilities,” said Zabell. That includes transportation, water, sewer, police and fire.

Yakama, Palouse claim the territory

In signing off Nov. 20 on the new partnership, Pasco and the Colville Tribes agreed to negotiate the payment of those municipal services to a future development since it will no longer be on the property tax rolls.

The Colville have applied for a fee-to-trust acquisition which would transfer the land into a trust status, or federal ownership, and in the long-term affect property, sales and gas taxes.

Lewis said the Yakama Nation have thrived on the lands and resources handed down from “Tamanwalá, the Creator.”

And while their rights from the Treaty with the Yakamas of June 9, 1855, “extend broadly throughout our aboriginal territory,” they also are exclusive and primary to any other original nation within the territory described in that treaty.

The Yakama territory description covers Pasco: “thence down the Snake River to its junction with the Columbia River; thence up the Columbia River to the “White Banks,” below the Priest’s Rapids.”

“It is our Nation, the Yakama Nation, that possesses the rights to the lands above ceded.

Neither Colville nor any constituent band of Colville possess such rights,” Lewis wrote in his letter. “The Palouse of Colville members cannot lay claim to the Yakama Nation’s lands.”

The Palus territory extended from the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers to the confluence of the Snake and Columbia rivers.

Attempt to gain rights is old ploy

Lewis pointed out that while members of the Palouse Band signed the treaty and remain named in its preamble, some Palouse people chose not to join the Yakamas and eventually became located on the Colville Reservation.

The Palouse of Colville, he said, only have rights that Colville established with an executive order in 1872 and an 1891 agreement.

“Indeed, Colville and its constituent bands are not parties to any treaty with the United States and do not possess rights beyond the exterior boundaries of their previous reservation,” Lewis said.

“Colville’s attempts to gain rights or develop outside its 1872 Reservation boundaries is not a new ploy,” he added. “The United States District Court for the District of Oregon and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals have already rejected similar attempts.”

The Ninth Circuit determined Colville and its bands “failed to maintain political cohesion” when they deliberately separated from the Yakama Nation.

Ultimately, said Lewis, “there is no basis for Colville’s current assertion of historical claim to the Yakama Nation’s ancestral territories within the Tri-Cities area.”