Bob Peters, Chairman
Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi (Gun Lake Tribe)
Gun Lake Casino – Wayland, MI
gunlakecasino.com / gunlaketribe-nsn.gov
BENEFITS OF GAMING: We now have a variety of services available to our citizen community thanks to the success of our tribal enterprises, which include a casino. Some of those are health and human services, education, language and culture, elder and youth services, and tribal member benefits, which all operate as part of our government to provide valuable services to our citizens.
Our tribe also has an educational scholarship endowment, as well as internships for youth. Other benefits include down payment assistance, housing improvement, individual development accounts (IDA), principal pay down, and a water and sewer/sanitation improvement program. These programs are coupled with housing and financial wellness education for groups of citizens and individually.
One example of our impact on the local community is through our Local Revenue Sharing Board (LRSB), which received more than $2.2 million this year, and distributes these funds to several local organizations. One of those organizations is the Wayland Union School District, which recently used $425,000 of the funds from the LRSB to put in artificial turf on its soccer field. The district also uses these funds to provide iPads to students, fund a full-time security officer, reduce preschool tuition for the community, and to eliminate “pay to play” fees for sports. This is just one of the organizations we support through gaming revenues.
GOALS & INITIATIVES: We’re currently expanding our gaming enterprise to include a hotel and indoor oasis, making it a full casino resort, with the hopes of attracting more guests and increasing revenues. To support this and other future growth for the tribe, we’re in the process of building a water and wastewater treatment plant, complete with a one-million-gallon water tower. This infrastructure will help support existing enterprises such as the Gun Lake Casino, the Noonday Market and Gas Station, the government campus, and also a development corridor we are planning near the casino that could provide further retail, restaurants, entertainment and other businesses for the community.
A Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Tribal Climate Resilience Grant we received earlier this year will be used to build further energy infrastructure – a ground-based solar array that would produce 939,390 kWh annually. Our Gun Lake Investments arm also works to seek out additional enterprises for the tribe to invest in.
LEGISLATIVE: We support initiatives to protect the environment, the rights of Indigenous people and our sovereignty. We care about issues that protect the welfare of our elders and our youth. Preserving our Indigenous traditions, language and practices is also a top priority.