Welcome Back

I took the above pic this afternoon of Kiowa Business Committee members, L-R; Richard Kauahquo, Committeeman; Earnest Redbird, Committeeman; Donald Tofpi, Chairman; Dr. Ted Lonewolf, Vice-Chairman; and Dave Geimausaddle, Committeeman, approximately one mile west of Verden, OK.

We were returning from an earlier meeting at Chickasha and stopped to survey Kiowa owned property where we are planning to open a new tribal casino. The property contains 80 acres and is bisected by highways US 62/SH 9, a major thoroughfare thru S.W. Oklahoma. Our priority remains with the Carnegie casino but the opening of the Verden facility could happen shortly thereafter.

Most of the KBC attended the annual Oklahoma Indian Gaming Association conference in Tulsa last week where we met with National Indian Gaming Commission Chairman Philip Hogan and we were able to question him regarding our submission of amendments to our Kiowa Gaming Ordinance. He acknowledged receipt of our submission and NIGC forwarded a copy of his signed approval to us yesterday. We were also able to participate in several conference workshops on subjects relevent to our performance of oversight and controls of our tribal gaming.

Other meetings and subjects covered since our return from Tulsa were:

• 8 Tribes Consortium meet at our Kiowa Casino regarding IHS issues.


• A well attended Water Rights workshop at Cameron University in Lawton co-sponsored by the Kiowa and Comanche Tribes and presented by members of the O.U. School of Law.


• A meeting with Indian City General Manager Kevin Wahkinney regarding administrative procedures and reporting.


• Chairman Tofpi met with the IHS Director yesterday in Oklahoma City regarding our Lawton, Anadarko, and Carnegie IHS facilities and services.


• A meeting this morning with Legal Counsel for the Kiowa Tribe and Panther Partners regarding Arbitration/Settlement issues.

My wife Allie and I, with daughter Alison, recently returned from a two week vacation in Allie's home area of the Northwest and I spent a portion of our trip researching possible video locales for a project i've been working on since a year prior to my service on the KBC. The end product will be a high-def video documetary of Kiowa history, told by the Kiowas themselves. I will present some imagery and a brief project description in a subsequent posting to this blog, so, stay tuned.