ATLANTA (AP) — An appeals court on Wednesday heard arguments in a long-running dispute between two federally recognized tribes over one’s construction of a casino on Alabama land that the other says is a sacred site.
The dispute involves land, known as Hickory Ground, that was home to the Muscogee Nation before removal to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears. The site is owned by Alabama’s Poarch Band of Creek Indians, a separate tribal nation that shares ancestry with the Muscogee, and that built one of its successful Wind Creek casinos on the site. The Muscogee Nation is appealing a federal judge’s decision to dismiss their lawsuit over the casino construction.
The Muscogee Nation argued that the Alabama tribal officials broke a legal promise to protect the site when they acquired it with the help of a historic preservation grant and instead excavated the remains of 57 Muscogee ancestors to build a casino.
“Hickory Ground is sacred,” Mary Kathryn Nagle, an attorney representing the Muscogee Nation told the three-judge panel. The Muscogee officials asked the appellate court to reinstate their claims that tribal and federal officials and the university that did an archeological work at the site violated The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and other federal laws.