MEDFORD, Ore. — After nearly a decade of planning, a southern Oregon Native American tribe’s plan for a Medford casino is denied by the federal government. The Coquille Tribe says they are shocked, confused and feel disregarded.
“We’re pretty confused, pretty frustrated, and speaking out that we want our process,” Coquille Tribal Chairman Brenda Meade said.
The Medford casino project, known as ‘The Cedars at Bear Creek,’ would have been a class two casino, that’s gaming machines and no table games, built on about 2.4 acres in south Medford. The Coos Bay-based Coquille Tribe found out late Wednesday night their application was no longer being considered, after it received a letter from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
“There was a whole lot of things in that letter too that it felt like someone threw a big pile of mud at the wall and see what hits and a lot of it was, I mean it says in there that we went through the NEPA process and we haven’t,” Meade said.
Meade says the tribe hasn’t even completed the national environmental policy act review, or NEPA, so the casino proposal was rejected prematurely.
“We really wanted to get to that finish line that allowed the public and city and local governments to have conversations with us about the project and we’ve been denied that,” Meade said.
The plan was met with a lot of opposition from the start, including Governor Kate Brown, Medford City Councilors and Jackson County Commissioners, but that hasn’t stopped the tribe from wanting to get involved in the Medford area.
“Nine Oregon tribes are the largest or second largest employers in rural Oregon in their counties that they’re doing business in. We’re a lot of the infrastructure to rural Oregon, so it’s not you have to pick one or the other. It’s that we all got to be working together,” Meade said.
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