Tribal Trust Land Status in Clearwater County, Minnesota

An operating example, not just a boundary line: Shooting Star Casino near Bagley

White Earth Nation already operates a real, functioning gaming facility inside Clearwater County: Shooting Star Casino, located on County Highway 27 between Ebro and Bagley. The tribe held a groundbreaking for the facility in November 2015 and opened it on August 17, 2016 -- a roughly 21,227-square-foot building with 170 slot machines. This matters for how you think about "reservation land" in Clearwater County: rather than an abstract boundary that may or may not correspond to actual tribal control on the ground, this is a specific, developed, and currently operating instance of White Earth trust land being put to active commercial use, distinct from the private, county, and state land that makes up most of the county's share of the reservation's exterior boundary.

A separate, more recent trust acquisition: the 92-acre Buschelle Site (2022)

Beyond the existing casino, the federal government took further, more recent action specific to Clearwater County: on November 17, 2022, the Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs at the Department of the Interior made a final agency determination to acquire roughly 92.18 acres in Clearwater County, known as the "Buschelle Site," into trust for the White Earth Band "for gaming and other purposes." That determination was published as an official notice in the Federal Register, as federal regulations require for any land-into-trust decision. We could not confirm from public reporting whether this 92-acre tract is physically adjacent to or an expansion of the existing Shooting Star Casino site, or whether it is a separate parcel intended for a distinct future purpose -- both are plausible, and a buyer or researcher should not assume continuity between the two without independently checking the specific legal description and location of the Buschelle Site against the existing casino property.

What this 2022 action does confirm, regardless of exactly how it relates to the existing casino, is that fee-to-trust activity for gaming purposes in Clearwater County is not a one-time, decades-old event -- it is something that has happened as recently as late 2022, and could happen again. If you're evaluating land anywhere near the existing Shooting Star Casino site or elsewhere within the reservation boundary in Clearwater County, ask both the county and White Earth Nation's Land Office whether any additional trust acquisition or expansion is pending nearby.

Don't confuse this with White Earth's much larger, unrelated Moorhead-area project

It's worth being explicit about a mix-up that's easy to make: White Earth Nation is separately pursuing a much larger, still-undecided fee-to-trust application for a proposed $176.8 million casino, hotel, and convention complex on roughly 280 acres the tribe purchased at auction in late 2024 -- but that land sits east of Moorhead, near Dilworth, in Clay County, not Clearwater County. The two situations involve the same tribe and the same general legal mechanism (fee-to-trust for gaming under 25 CFR 151 and IGRA Section 20), but they are entirely separate parcels, separate applications, and separate timelines: the Clearwater County Buschelle Site was already approved into trust back in 2022, while the Clay County Moorhead-area project remains an active, contested, and as of 2026 still-unresolved federal application. If a listing, a neighbor, or a news search brings up "White Earth casino trust land" near either county, confirm which specific project and which specific county is actually being discussed before drawing any conclusions about a parcel in Clearwater County.

What this means for your purchase

For land anywhere within or near the White Earth Reservation boundary in Clearwater County, don't assume trust status, or the lack of it, from the reservation boundary alone -- the county's own boundary overlap is real, but actual trust land within it (including the Shooting Star Casino site and the 2022 Buschelle Site acquisition) is specific and parcel-based, not zone-wide. If a parcel is anywhere near County Highway 27 between Ebro and Bagley, specifically confirm its relationship, if any, to the existing casino property and the Buschelle Site before assuming ordinary county zoning and taxation apply. For a formal determination on any specific tract, request a Title Status Report from the BIA's Midwest Regional Land Titles and Records Office, and contact White Earth Nation's own Land Office directly for land-use, access, or leasing questions on any parcel confirmed to be in trust.