WASHINGTON - A pair of tribes in Oklahoma declared support Wednesday for a proposal to build a casino off Interstate 70 east of Denver.

The statement, issued by the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, was the first official announcement of a proposal that has been discussed for weeks, and it resolved questions about whether any Indians are actually supporting the casino.

Previous accounts of the "Homecoming Project" linked the casino to reparations from the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre. On Wednesday, however, the tribes steered clear of Sand Creek.

Instead, they said they have a claim on 27 million acres of land in Colorado but would give it up in exchange for a "small" reservation where they can build a casino.


"Our tribal council supported this initiative overwhelmingly because of the hope it creates to return to a presence on our ancestral lands, participate in the economic energy of our home and earn more money to meet the basic needs of our people," James Pedro, chairman of the tribes' business committee, said in a statement.

The tribes, which share a tribal government and already operate two casinos in Oklahoma, said they will petition the Department of the Interior to settle their land and water claims in Colorado. Interior officials said they've not been contacted about the proposal.

"Much of Colorado was recognized as ancestral land by treaty with the United States prior to the forced removal of the tribes to Oklahoma by the United States," the tribes' statement said.

The casino backers' proposal highlights a huge swath of northeastern Colorado as land upon which the tribes might have a claim. It reaches from Colorado's northeastern corner to Steamboat Springs, Gunnison, Pueblo and La Junta.

"These claims, if left unresolved, will cloud title to land and water in a large portion of Colorado," said the proposal, dated September 2003.

The tribes' statement Wednesday said that the casino and "Colorado Plains Indian Cultural Center" would create 1,500 construction jobs and provide 4,000 "permanent, high-quality" jobs for Coloradans. The tribes said they would pay for the land and construction of the casino near Denver International Airport.

But Gov. Bill Owens says federal law requires tribes to get the governor's permission to create a new reservation with a casino, and he isn't giving it. Spokesman Dan Hopkins said Owens "opposes any expansion of gaming in Colorado."

Representatives of Sand Creek descendants said they still oppose linking Sand Creek - in which Colorado soldiers slaughtered at least 150 peaceful Indians in southeast Colorado - to gambling. But they're less worried if the proposal isn't linked to the massacre.

"I'm not averse to a tribe's seeking economic development opportunities," said Steve Brady, president of the Northern Cheyenne Sand Creek Descendants in Montana.

The September casino proposal says "the tribes desire to expedite resolution of the claims by congressional approval."

U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Ignacio, chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, said he still opposes the project, even if Sand Creek isn't a part of it. And he still doesn't see it as likely.

"I'm not going to support that," Campbell said. The tribes' financial backer is Council Tree Communications, run by Longmont venture capitalist Steve Hillard, an Alaska lawyer who has spent his career negotiating financial arrangements between tribes and the U.S. government.

Hillard's company has formed a partnership with Arctic Slope Regional Corp., a $1-billion-a-year Alaskan native corporation and other Alaskan native entities to create the Native American Land Group, which would do the deal.

Hillard and the other companies have financial ties to Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who is renowned for his power to push through legislation single-handedly. Council Tree has hired Stevens' brother-in-law, William Bittner, to lobby on Indian gambling issues.

Tribal leaders and Hillard have been talking since at least June about the proposal, Brady said, but are under some sort of "nondisclosure agreement." The first glimpse for the non-Indian world came last month when Susan Shown Harjo of the Morningstar Institute in Washington wrote about it in the newspaper Indian Country Today, a newspaper also published online.

Brady said he confronted Hillard angrily in June after Hillard talked to tribal officials about linking the casino to Sand Creek.

Harjo said other tribal members were not told the casino would be tied to Sand Creek. Campbell, who has worked for years on a Sand Creek Memorial, said he considers it "sacrilegious" to link the massacre and slot machines.

The September proposal claims the goal of "redress of Colorado legacy of Massacre and Genocide." But in the tribe's news release Wednesday, there was no mention of Sand Creek or genocide.

Hillard did not return phone calls.