Quirky Geography<\/strong><\/h2>\nIt\u2019s not just the State of Iowa that has been pursuing the Ponca through the courts, but also the State of Nebraska.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because of the peculiar geography of Carter Lake, a two-mile tract of Iowa that lies west of the Missouri River and is surrounded entirely by Nebraska. The anomaly was created by flooding that changed the course of the river around 140 years ago.<\/p>\n
Carter Lake is in Iowa, but to all intents and purposes, it\u2019s in Nebraska. Meanwhile, the City of Council Bluffs is on the other side of the river, but also in Iowa. It joined the case because it wants to protect its existing commercial casinos, Ameristar, Harrah\u2019s, and the Horseshoe, which previously got all the footfall from the other side of the river.<\/p>\n
Collectively, the three casinos pay around $80 million in taxes to the state each year, and an additional $2 million to the city, according to The Des Moines Register.<\/em><\/p>\nPrairie Flower <\/strong><\/h2>\nThis is not the first time the Ponca have scored a big legal victory in a federal court. In 1879, the tribe\u2019s chief, Standing Bear, successfully argued that Native Americans were \u201cpersons within the meaning of the law,\u201d winning the right of habeus corpus.<\/em><\/p>\nThe Prairie Flower Casino is named for Standing Bear\u2019s daughter, who died during or shortly after the tribe\u2019s forced \u201cremoval\u201d to Oklahoma two years earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A federal appeals court has upheld the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska\u2019s legal right to have built its Prairie Flower Casino in Carter Lake, Iowa. The tribe opened the casino in November 2018, despite facing legal challenges that sought to derail the project for more than a decade. On Monday, the Eighth Circuit panel of three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":184626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,18456],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Ponca Tribe Scores in Appeals Court Vs Iowa, Nebraska in Casino Row<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n