The Little Bighorn Casino’s doors were shut a year ago when a new tribal council took charge.It’s set to reopen soon, but political turmoil is again the wild card.

Story by Erik Olson Photographs by Amy Caplis

T he ground floor of the Little Bighorn Casino on the Crow Reservation looks more like an eviscerated shell than a respectable gambling establishment.

The windows on the front doors are boarded up as construction workers file out, carrying tools and wood. Visitors must sign in at the front desk and wear badges so every person in the building is accounted for.

Four rectangles made of masking tape surround each of the building’s support poles on the floor, marking the space that the poker and keno machines will fill after the casino reopens. The doors to the cashier’s booth are open, as is the safety vault, though neither money nor valuables are inside.

A car pulls into the nearly empty parking lot, and Sara Bird-In-Ground, general manager of the casino, goes out to greet the visitors. They are a retired couple from North Dakota and heard the casino was readying to reopen.

Bird-In-Ground tells them not yet, but soon.

It’s been almost a year since the familiar sounds of video gambling and the calls of bingo numbers were heard inside the two-story building not far from Crow Agency, headquarters of the 10,000-member Crow tribe.

Inside Little Bighorn Casino it’s been quiet since last July, when a new Crow tribal council began to administer Crow affairs. But outside, across the reservation, where 85 percent of the residents speak Crow as their first language, it’s been anything but calm.

Seven years ago the Crow tribe gambled that a casino on its Montana reservation would reap the tribe rewards. It negotiated a gaming compact with the state, hired a company that invested $3 million in starting a casino and created jobs on the reservation where for too many residents unemployment was a bleak reality of daily life.

But that wager has so far paid back mostly headaches. Disputes with the state over the number and nature of gambling machines in the Little Bighorn Casino started as soon as the newly renovated building opened its doors in January 1994. First, casino workers pulled out half of the machines and replaced them with a bingo operation after months of arguments with state regulators about the whether the 200 machines exceeded legal limits. The tribe’s gaming commission disputed the state’s interpretation, but the day before the deadline replaced 100 machines with a bingo operation, saying it was more profitable in any case. Then the state said the remaining 100 machines — which paid off by spitting coins into a tray instead of compiling credits that could be cashed in by printing a paper ticket — were slots, and thus illegal.

The casino’s location next to Interstate 90 near Crow Agency had seemed perfect, a prime spot for pulling in tourists already drawn to the reservation by the Little Bighorn Battlefield, just five minutes away. But for whatever reasons, a solid tourist trade never materialized. In its first 18 months of operation the casino managed a modest profit of about $100 a month.

The bright side, however, was that it employed between 90 and 130 tribal members, depending on the season, a significant statistic on a reservation with an average unemployment rate of 44 percent.

Unfortunately, some of those employees put a black mark on the casino’s reputation that has yet to be erased. In 1996, 13 workers were indicted for embezzlement. That kicked off further investigations and within two years more than 20 people had been indicted, including the most important person on the reservation: Crow Tribal Chairwoman Clara Nomee.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office charged that Nomee had used eight checks totaling $10,600 from the casino for her own benefit. Nomee claimed the money was used to support Native American Days in nearby Billings and to send a delegation of tribal elders to Washington, D.C. Those charges against Nomee were dropped in 1999, five months after she was found guilty on an unrelated felony charge of misusing tribal money to buy herself 80 acres of tribal land at a fraction of its worth.

Tribal government was in upheaval, with some members filing lawsuits contending the conviction meant Nomee had to forfeit office. She refused, but when she ran for reelection in May 2000, opponent Clifford Birdinground’s entire slate of candidates won tribal council seats by a 2-1 vote.

The Birdinground administration promised a new beginning.

It canceled a water compact for the Big Horn River that had been negotiated with the state.

It rejected an agreement that let Conoco extend its lease for a pipeline that runs across the reservation.

It voided all decisions and agreements made by the Nomee administration from the day she was indicted in 1997.

On the day the new administration took office, the Billings Gazette reported that new Vice Chairman Vincent Goes Ahead told those assembled for the ceremony: “I’ve never been in the presence of more millionaires. Your land is rich beyond belief. Your mountains are sacred. ... We have the potential of being one of the wealthiest tribes in this great nation.”

The Birdinground administration also released a statement that said, in part:

“In the past, administrative policies included hiring of favorites or of relatives and friends without regard for ability. It is our intent to hire and ultimately stabilize with competent and honest directors and employees who want to put pride back into the Crow name.”

While many cheered the new Birdinground administration, few realized how drastic the change would be for the Little Bighorn Casino.

In the last week of the Nomee administration, all casino employees got pink slips. The gaming commission — appointed by Nomee — canceled the licenses required of all employees to work in any casino. About 130 employees lost their jobs and the casino closed.

Many Crows are angry the casino had to shut down, angry that tribal politics forced so many people out of work and slowed a promising economic development project. One former security guard mentioned that other reservations have had changes of power, but their casinos stayed open throughout the transfer.

Wales Bull Tail, the tribe’s economic development director, says about 90 percent of personnel hired by the Birdinground administration are new to their positions.

Dan Brien was one of those employees who lost his job at the casino. He had worked as the maintenance supervisor for four years, supporting his wife, two children and a grandson, before the casino shut down.

“The first two weeks was like vacation, and after that it was frustrating,” he says.

Brien spent two months on unemployment, collecting money from the government and working on his arts and crafts hobbies. However, the $486 he received every two weeks wasn’t enough, and he began falling behind on paying his bills.

Brien blames politics for putting him out of work.

Arlo Dawes was Nomee’s executive assistant and a member of the gaming commission. He says the old gaming commission under Nomee heard that the Birdinground administration wanted to bring in all its own people to work at the casino, including a new gaming commission to be appointed in late July. He said the new casino employees would have likely started work before a new gaming commission could be appointed and Dawes says there was not enough time to license them, which requires a detailed process.

The Nomee-appointed commission could be held liable for unlicensed personnel in the building, Dawes says, so the commissioners decided to cancel the licenses of all employees and, in essence, shut down the casino.

“It closed because of the politics, the change of administration,” he says.

The Birdinground administration wanted to make sure the casino got off to a solid start, so Clifford Birdinground looked to someone close to him who had casino oversight experience — his niece Sara Bird-In-Ground.

Sara Bird-In-Ground, who kept the family’s traditional spelling, was a gaming commissioner at the Wildhorse Pass Casino on the Gila River Reservation near Phoenix. Sara, 41, is a registered member of the Pima tribe, and she helped start its first Arizona casino. She was the third person to be licensed for gaming on the Gila River Reservation, and she had watched the business grow until it expanded to include a second casino. She owned a house where she lived with her two sons, and the three of them were happy where they were.

However, when Sara Bird-In-Ground got a phone call from the newly elected chairman of the Crow tribe asking her to run the Little Bighorn Casino, she says she knew she had to go for it.

Why did she want to leave her home and her life to head to a casino that was in a state of flux and trying to get back on its feet?

“When I said yes without hesitation, I did it out of honor of my father’s name,” she says. Bird-In-Ground is half Crow, but she barely knew her father, who had left her family to return to his home Crow reservation when Sara was a little girl. She says her resentment toward him increased as she entered her teens and 20s and he wasn’t there to see her grow into a woman. In the early ‘90s, Bird-In-Ground says, her father had changed his ways, left alcohol behind, and become chief judge of the Crow tribal court. Slowly Bird-In-Ground began rebuilding the broken bridge between them. Although the reconciliation took seven years, she says, her pain finally healed.

So when her father lay on his deathbed in late April 2000, suffering the final stages of terminal cancer, Bird-In-Ground jumped on a plane and headed to Montana. She stayed in Montana until her father’s funeral on May 6, and a month later, got the call in Arizona from her uncle Clifford asking her to take the job. She traveled to the reservation in mid-July to see what needed to be done.

“That showed me at that time they needed somebody to open it up and establish it for them,” she says. On Aug. 8, she resigned her job at Wildhorse Pass and began her move to Montana.

Bird-In-Ground’s priority was to bring the casino a sense of respectability. All the machines were hauled out to clean the building, and the walls were repainted. Bird-In-Ground plans to move half of the 100 machines upstairs and eliminate the bingo tables, giving customers more space to play.

The cosmetic changes will help, but Bird-In-Ground knows white walls and more elbow room will not patch the remaining scars on the casino’s image. Only through total compliance with federal and state regulations will the casino be able to rise above its bad reputation, she says. For example, the casino had eight surveillance cameras when it first opened and added eight more after the news of the embezzlements came to light. She wants to install at least 20 cameras, both inside and surrounding the premises, to make sure no movement by customers or casino personnel goes unobserved.

Some of those personnel are already on board.

Lansing Birdinground, Clifford Birdinground’s son, will be a new gaming commissioner, though he freely admits to having little experience in his new position and looks to his cousin Sara for guidance. Without Sara Bird-In-Ground, he says the transition to a new casino management team would have been far less smooth.

“She has brought a lot of knowledge,” he says.

Most people working to reopen the casino are enthusiastic about its chances for success. Tribal officials are cautiously optimistic. Bull Tail, the tribe’s economic development director, says he’s looking forward to the good jobs the casino will bring the tribe, but he is hesitant to set his sights much higher. Without a better location—like what the Salish & Kootenai tribes enjoy on Flathead Lake — and a more liberal gaming compact that allows more machines and bigger payoffs, Bull Tail says he hopes for the best, but the tribe cannot depend on the casino to be a big moneymaker.

Bull Tail is not the only Crow who is frustrated by the tribe’s current compact with the state. Allen Old Horn worked at a casino run by the Pequot tribe in Connecticut that boasted 6,000 slot machines and 300 gaming tables. In the 1970s the Pequot had only two people living on a small reservation. Today its 400 tribal members realize more than a billion dollars a year in revenue. Old Horn says the tribe used that money to invest in a second casino and a hotel as well as social services for its members.

“Montana needs to catch up,” he insists.

The Pequot tribe’s Foxwoods Casino and Resort attracts thousands of tourists because it sits along the eastern seaboard. Although Old Horn recognizes that the Crows can’t match that location, he still thinks the casino can succeed if tribal politics stay out of casino operations and the management makes sure the casino obeys all the rules.

Bird-In-Ground agrees. “The casino needs to operate separately from tribal politics,” she says.

While the question of whether the tribe can separate politics from its business endeavors remains unanswered at this point, its economic status has taken a severe turn for the worse and that’s affected the casino.

In March the tribe laid off 68 employees and in April said more layoffs were coming. The Birdinground administration fired, then rehired its accountant, John Donham, who then quit less than two weeks later.

Donham claims the tribe is nearly bankrupt. He told the Billings Gazette that the tribe has 300 more employees than it can afford and that payroll costs have jumped 78 percent since the Birdinground administration took office. He also claims federal funds have been misused to meet the tribe’s cashflow problems.

Tilton Old Bull was elected tribal council secretary on the Birdinground slate, but was then fired in October by the tribal council. He claims leaders have been spending wildly since taking office.

Leroy Not Afraid, a spokesman for the tribe, has said the council’s financial problems were inherited from the Nomee administration and that it’s had to lay off employees because of two tax revenue lawsuits that recently went against the tribe.

At the casino, Bird-In-Ground has lost only one employee to the layoffs so far, but she says the financial constraints have not allowed her to bring the casino into full compliance with all federal gaming regulations. Lack of money has also brought the long process of licensing employees to a virtual standstill, she says.

Bird-In-Ground had hoped for a huge grand opening for the casino, complete with a cookout and hundreds of visitors from the reservation and surrounding area. However, she will not see that dream completed. She’s decided to leave her job at the casino on July 1 to return to Arizona.

Bird-In-Ground says she’s grown weary of constantly fighting for the proper funding for the casino in a time of economic woe, and she’s afraid her reputation could be tarnished if something goes wrong at the casino under her charge because it was not compliant with regulations.

When back in Arizona she says she’ll apply for a tribal small business loan and start work as an independent gaming consultant, lending her expertise to other tribes in need of help running their casinos. She also has her eye on the Pima tribal council, a position she’s run for twice and barely missed.

While she still hopes for a bright future for the Little Bighorn Casino, she also knows her part in it is almost over.

“I didn’t come here to get a new life,” she says. “I came here to jump-start this casino.”