Wildhorse Resort: Tribal Sovereignty in Action

Just east of Pendleton sits Wildhorse Resort and Casino, owned by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The tribes, a union of the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla peoples, signed a treaty with the United States in eighteen fifty-five that ceded six point four million acres of homeland across northeastern Oregon and southeastern Washington. What remained was a reservation.

For over a century the tribal operating budget was threadbare. Then in nineteen ninety-four the casino opened, and within about sixteen years the annual budget grew from under ten million dollars to nearly one hundred ninety million. The resort also houses the Tamastslikt Cultural Institute, where the three tribes tell their own history of the Oregon Trail, which cut directly through their homeland.

Sovereignty, in this case, came with a slot floor.