Karen Diver sighed as she passed the squat, white barracks-style houses built on the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Reservation decades ago. She took a right and parked her minivan before two new housing complexes.
These buildings, tall and richly hued, earned a smile.
As chairwoman of the Fond du Lac band, Diver wrangled 15 funding sources to get them built. Gambling revenue from the band's two casinos was key, she said.
Walking around the reservation, west of Cloquet, Minn., Diver pointed out what casino revenues have meant to residents. Their own police, tribal court, clinic, school and scholarship program. In short, she said, "self-sufficiency."
That, she said, is why the band has refused to give up a protracted legal fight with Duluth over whether the city should get a slice of the Fond-du-Luth Casino's gambling revenue as outlined in long-standing agreements. An offshoot of the dispute will play out this week before the Minnesota Supreme Court.
Fond du Lac leaders "hoped that people would understand us looking out for our community with our own revenue," she said recently, in an office lined with birch bark art and photos of her sitting beside President Obama.
The band's controversial 2009 decision to stop paying the city has pitted Diver against Duluth's popular mayor, Don Ness. To passersby who yell at her on Duluth's streets, Diver vigorously breaks down the band's decision to stop paying the city — citing federal law between folksy jabs and muttered asides.
"This notion of a partnership is a fallacy," she said. "We just plain paid them, sent them checks. That's not a partnership. That's alimony."