The reservation sits beside a creek in the shadow of the 280,000-square-foot Chumash casino. “And to build a second casino two miles from the one we have: Sheer economics would tell you that’s not an intelligent move.”īesides, he said, federal law - which sets out a difficult path for adding to reservations - also makes it virtually impossible to build a casino on reservation land acquired after 1988. “Building a casino? We absolutely will not do it,” he said. In an interview, tribal chairman Vincent Armenta was unequivocal. Rumors of rampant development plans have been fueled by a hostile local press and a small group of critics engaged in “a cannibalistic frenzy of myopic reactionism,” according to Chumash ally Carl Artman, a former assistant secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs. Dotted with Danish bakeries, Solvang flows more with butter than with blood, but the attorney’s point struck home: Only an outraged public could keep the Chumash from expanding their reservation by 1000% and, unfettered by county or state regulation, build a second casino, a massive hotel, a golf course or whatever else might turn a profit.Ĭhumash leaders say they have no desire to build anything but houses for the tribe’s 140 members on a piece of ancestral homeland.
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