In a victory for Detroit’s casinos, a push to allow new American Indian casinos in Port Huron and Romulus was overwhelmingly defeated Wednesday in the U.S. House after a fiery debate among Michigan’s congressional delegation.

By a vote of 298-121, the House rejected a plan for land swaps for the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and the Bay Mills Indian Community that would have given them the proposed casino tracts. The deal with the state, reached in 2002, would have settled the tribes’ claims to land in the eastern Upper Peninsula that they said the federal government wrongly sold off in the mid-1800s.

Proponents of the casinos, led by U.S. Rep. John Dingell, argued that the bill would provide thousands of much-needed jobs and follow through on a land swap backed by a plethora of state officials, including Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm and her immediate predecessor, Republican John Engler.

"This is a cry for justice from the Indians which had their lands unjustly taken from them," said Dingell, a Dearborn Democrat who bellowed his arguments on the House floor.

Opponents, led by Rep. John Conyers of Detroit, called the bill an unprecedented expansion of Indian gambling far beyond the boundaries of tribal lands and questioned the validity of the land claims.

Source:http://www.casinonews.org/