FireKeepers and the Nottawaseppi Huron Band

Between Battle Creek and Marshall, in Emmett Township, sits one of the region’s biggest entertainment draws: FireKeepers Casino Hotel, which opened in 2009. It’s owned and run by the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi, a Native nation whose home is the Pine Creek Indian Reservation, about twenty minutes away near Athens.

The tribe’s story is one of survival. The Potawatomi were pressured out of their lands by 19th-century treaties and removal, but some families stayed, and a community has held on at Pine Creek since 1854. For most of the 20th century the reservation was small and poor; the casino changed that, funding new homes, a health center, and a community center, and turning the tribe into a major economic force. The name “FireKeepers” honors the Potawatomi’s traditional role as keepers of the fire among the allied Anishinaabe nations. Under a compact with the state, the tribe also shares a portion of the casino’s revenue with surrounding local governments and schools.