Nearly a decade ago777sm, members of a Northern California Native American tribe, the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians, made a big bet when they bought 160 untouched acres north of San Francisco to erect a $700 million casino resort they had no approval to build.

Today it is one of three tribal casino projects mired in controversy and awaiting a go-ahead from the Interior Department. The projects, which the tribes say are allowed under an exception in federal law, have set off a fierce debate about tribal sovereignty and have turned tribes opposed to the projects against an administration that has championed Native American interests.

“The Department of the Interior has worked through a secretive, backdoor, fast-track process,” said Anthony Roberts, the chairman of another California tribe, the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, which opposes the Scotts Valley casino. “Unfortunately, Yocha Dehe’s been left out.”

Several opposing tribes have already sued to halt progress on two of the three proposed casinos. In one suit, a judge last week granted a temporary injunction that paused any plans for one of the casinos before a hearing next month. It is unclear whether the battle will be resolved before the end of the Biden administration, and what the Trump administration might do about it.

Hiroko Tabuchi traveled to Texas and Michigan and interviewed ranchers, scientists, investigators and wastewater-treatment experts for this article.

A math prodigy born to Holocaust survivors in Latvia, he had received his doctorate from, and spent his career at, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he became known for his work in a field called geometric group theory.

Scotts Valley and the two other tribes seeking casinos — Koi Nation in Sonoma County, Calif., and the Coquille Indian Tribe in southwestern Oregon — lost their land in the 1950s and 1960s when the U.S. government terminated the federal recognition of many Native American tribes. In more recent decades the government reversed course and recognized the three tribes, but their federal land was never restored.

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