A casino on Douglas Island — what does the governor think?

The entrance to the Two Coppers Casino on Wednesday, June 3, 2026. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Independent)

By Donald Craig Mitchell

The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which Congress enacted in 1988, delegates the chair of the National Indian Gaming Commission authority to approve an ordinance that authorizes an “Indian tribe” to operate a commercial gambling facility on the tribe’s “Indian lands.”

In January 2025, NIGC chair Sharon Avery approved an ordinance that authorized the Tlingit-Haida Central Council to operate a commercial gambling facility on a tract of land on Douglas Island that is part of an Alaska Native Allotment. 

In February 1994, the Bureau of Indian Affairs informed Alaska Congressman Don Young and the other members of the House Committee on Natural Resources that the Central Council “is not a federally recognized tribe but is a regional organization” that had been “recognized by statute for the limited purpose of distributing judgment funds; not as a tribal government exercising general governmental powers over its members and member villages.”

But Philip Baker-Shenk, the Washington, D.C., lobbyist the Central Council had hired, persuaded the committee’s staff to ignore the BIA. Since Congressman Young and Alaska Sen. Frank Murkowski, who was a member of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, were inattentive and neither understood the legal consequence, in the literal dead of night and without a recorded vote in either body in October 1994 Congress passed into law a bill, which Baker-Shenk had participated in writing, that “acknowledged that the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska is a federally recognized Indian tribe.”

So since 1994 the members of the Central Council have been an IGRA “Indian tribe.”

But last September, Deputy Secretary of the Interior Katie MacGregor informed NIGC chair Avery that attorneys in the Office of the Solicitor at the Department of the Interior had determined that Alaska Native Allotments are not IGRA “Indian lands” on which IGRA “Indian tribes” may operate a commercial gambling facility.

Nevertheless, NIGC chair Avery refused to rescind the ordinance for the Central Council that she previously had approved and, with financing and management provided by Marnell Gaming, a casino management company headquartered in Las Vegas, the Central Council continued to construct the Two Coppers Casino, a jury-built 10,000 square foot building in which Marnell Gaming has installed one hundred beeping and blinking video gaming machines. On July 1 the Central Council is hosting the casino’s grand opening.

Over the past year and a half Gov. Mike Dunleavy has been as quiet as a church mouse regarding the Two Coppers Casino. 

Which seemingly is odd because when NIGC chair Avery approved an ordinance that authorized the Native Village of Eklutna to operate a commercial gambling facility on an Alaska Native Allotment in Birchwood 20 miles north of downtown Anchorage, at Gov. Dunleavy’s direction, in February 2025 Attorney General Treg Taylor filed a lawsuit that now is pending in the U.S. District Court in Anchorage in which the State of Alaska is seeking a court order that Alaska Native Allotments are not IGRA “Indian Lands” on which an IGRA “Indian Tribe” may operate a commercial gambling facility. 

Since in both instances the legal issue is the same, why the state believes it is unlawful for the Native Village of Eklutna to operate a commercial gambling facility on an Alaska Native Allotment, but the state has not objected to the Central Council doing the same is an incongruent befuddlement. 

So on July 1 if Gov. Dunleavy attends the grand opening of the Two Coppers Casino that is something the reporter the Juneau Independent or KTOO sends to cover the event should ask him to explain.

• Donald Craig Mitchell is an Anchorage attorney and author of a two-volume history of the Alaska Native land claims movement and most recently of "Tribal Sovereignty in Alaska: How It Happened, What It Means."