they wonder if the tribe is engaged in a shrewd chess game to block Shakopee’s development plans, then move out into open countryside to start reacquiring vast stretches of ancestral land. It’s a question emerging from New York to California as tribes riding high on casino profits have begun spending that wealth to reassert control over that ancestral land.

In Shakopee itself, said Mayor John Schmitt, “It appears they’re out to garner as much as they can get, wherever they can get it. And they have the war chest to do that.”

For his part, however, Stan Ellison, the tribe’s land manager, points to a pile of historic maps as a reminder of who, historically, interfered with whom.

“This land,” he said, “was taken by the point of a gun — and we are buying it back with American dollars.”

Full Story: startribune.com

(via a day in the life)