In the early months of the pandemic, an oil-producing Native American tribe in North Dakota was looking for somewhere to invest a cut of the nearly $1.7 billion in tax revenues they’ve collected from oil drilling on their reservation over the last decade and a half. They found it in a bankruptcy auction that chopped up a large, vacant property just off the central casino-lined corridor of Las Vegas, Nevada.

And though leadership of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, known as the Three Affiliated Tribes, doesn’t have plans for the empty 8.7 acres they claimed for $12 million last July, tribal Chairman Mark Fox said they could use it to build anything from a tribally operated casino to a parking lot.