COUNTY TO HELP INDIANS
FIND A CASINO SITE

By Dan Rattiner

For years, political leaders on every level of Long Island have fought the Shinnecock Indian Nation's plan to build a casino on wooded waterfront property they own in Hampton Bays, just to the northwest of the Shinnecock Canal. It was felt such a casino would have a huge impact on traffic and lifestyle. It needed not to happen.

That was then. This is now. The County of Suffolk, this past week, proposed to create a gaming casino task force committee within the county government to work with the Indian Nation to find a suitable location for such a facility.

The changes that have taken place to make this happen are threefold.

One is that the approval of the Shinnecocks as a registered Federal Indian tribe, now seems imminent. For 100 years, the tribe has been recognized by the State of New York, but not by the Federal government. And you need to be recognized by the Feds to run a casino. Until now, recognition seemed far way, perhaps as much as 20 years. Now, a court order - the Shinnecocks applied for federal recognition in the 1970s - has put this measure on the fast track. A decision is expected within a year and a half.

The second thing that has happened is that the authorities and the Indians are just tired of fighting with one another over this. If a casino happens, there will have to be lots of infrastructure changes surrounding it, which will be the responsibility of the authorities, and for that to happen the best way, cooperation is better than confrontation.

The third thing is that the Shinnecocks have come to see that Hampton Bays is probably the wrong place for a casino. A more logical place for it would seem to be the old Grumman Airport facility, now owned by the Town of Riverhead, in a vast, but isolated, area in Calverton, and which is already has projects that include industry, resorts and even a giant, indoor year-round ski mountain scheduled.

The residents of the Indian Nation, located on a reservation within Southampton Town, are still living near poverty levels. They want to find a solution to their economic situation while maintaining their tribal ways. And a casino would solve that. A County Task Force could help ease the way to finding this solution. We applaud the County for making this effort.

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