Winnipeg's Naawi-Oodena Reserve Revives First Nations Casino Hopes

A First Nations casino in Winnipeg — an idea blocked for more than a decade — is once again a live prospect, and the reason is Naawi-Oodena. The 64-hectare urban reserve carved from the former Kapyong Barracks is the largest urban reserve in Canada, jointly held by seven Treaty 1 First Nations, and as its first commercial tenants open their doors the question of a tribally owned gaming venue on the site has returned to the provincial agenda.

Naawi-Oodena, which means "centre of the heart and community" in Anishinaabemowin, is controlled by the Brokenhead, Long Plain, Peguis, Roseau River, Sagkeeng, Sandy Bay and Swan Lake First Nations through the Treaty One development corporation. After a court battle and a 2019 agreement, the land was formally repatriated as reserve in December 2022. In June 2025, Oodena Gas & Convenience became the first business to open on the site, an early marker of the mixed-use neighbourhood — residential, commercial, cultural and recreational — that the master plan envisions.

A political door that reopened

For years the casino idea was a non-starter in Manitoba. More than a decade ago, First Nations were turned away from opening a casino in Winnipeg after the provincial government of the day argued the local market was already saturated. A subsequent pause on new gambling facilities under a Progressive Conservative government kept the door shut.

That posture has shifted. Premier Wab Kinew's NDP government lifted the earlier moratorium and has said it is open to considering a First Nations-run casino in Winnipeg, framing the question as one of economic reconciliation rather than market management. The province has stopped short of committing to a specific project, but officials have signalled that a proposal tied to Naawi-Oodena — or to other urban Indigenous economic-development zones — would be taken seriously. For a sovereignty-minded development corporation sitting on prime urban land, that is a meaningful change in the political weather.

The shift reframes the debate from whether Winnipeg's gambling market has room for another venue to whether the province will support Indigenous communities capturing gaming revenue on their own land.

Why the site matters

Location is the strongest argument in Naawi-Oodena's favour. Manitoba's existing First Nations casinos — a small network relative to neighbouring Saskatchewan — largely sit outside the province's population centre. A venue at Naawi-Oodena would place a tribally owned gaming operation inside Winnipeg itself, with direct access to the metropolitan market that drives most casino revenue in the province. That urban positioning is precisely what makes the opportunity attractive and what made previous provincial governments wary of it.

The economic logic mirrors what has worked elsewhere on the Prairies. In Saskatchewan, gaming revenue routed through a First Nations-owned operator is reinvested into Indigenous communities across the province, funding programs and building institutional capacity. Manitoba's existing framework already channels a share of gaming proceeds to First Nations, but a casino owned and operated on reserve land at Naawi-Oodena would deepen that model — moving from revenue-sharing toward direct ownership of the asset. Readers can compare the provincial approaches through our overview of Manitoba's First Nations casinos and our look at Saskatchewan's SIGA expansion.

From openness to opening

Real hurdles remain between political openness and a functioning casino. Any venue would need to fit within Manitoba's regulatory structure for gaming, which runs through provincial channels, and the Treaty One partners would have to align on governance, financing and operating arrangements for a project of significant scale. Servicing agreements with the City of Winnipeg, already in progress for the broader reserve, would have to accommodate a gaming and entertainment footprint. None of that is trivial, and none of it moves on the timelines that headlines imply.

Timing and scale are the practical variables. A gaming venue is only one component of a master-planned neighbourhood that also envisions housing, offices, cultural space and recreation, and the Treaty One partners have every incentive to sequence development so that a casino strengthens the surrounding district rather than arriving before the infrastructure to support it. That argues for a deliberate pace: land servicing, regulatory approvals and financing all have to line up, and the seven-nation ownership structure means major decisions carry a governance dimension that a single operator would not face. The upside of that same structure is legitimacy — a casino advanced by a broad coalition of Treaty 1 nations on repatriated urban land carries a political and moral weight that earlier, more piecemeal proposals lacked.

Still, the direction of travel is unmistakable. Naawi-Oodena has moved from a repatriated tract of former military land to an active, building urban reserve with its first businesses open and a supportive province at the table. The casino question that once seemed permanently closed is open again — and this time it is being asked from a position of Indigenous ownership rather than exclusion. The Winnipeg proposal fits a wider pattern of First Nations moving from revenue recipients to owners of gaming assets, a shift we examine in our analysis of how First Nations ownership is reshaping Canadian gaming. For a fuller map of tribal and First Nations properties across North America, see our casino directory.