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Federal law limits tribal gambling to games that are legal in the state where the tribe is based. Alaska law allows only bingo, pull-tabs and raffles to benefit nonprofit groups.

Video gambling would take Alaska into a new category of casino-type games. Tribes could follow suit - at least in theory.

Sealaska, the Juneau-based corporation for Southeast Natives, already has made money from casino gambling. It invested $14.7 million in a casino built by the San Pasqual Indian Band in San Diego County, Calif., in 2001. It received a payment of about $22 million from the investment in January 2003, and will continue to receive a portion of the casino's earnings until 2010.

The Native corporation would consider gaming opportunities in Alaska, said Sealaska spokesman Todd Antioquia.

"We don't have any specific investments at this time, but we'll always consider opportunities, and we're watching very closely the development of legislation regarding the industry," he said.

There's a big catch to the legality of tribal casinos in Alaska.

A tribal gambling operation has to be built on "Indian land" - a legal term for land that is held by the federal government for the benefit of Native Americans.

Alaska Natives, with one exception, don't have reservation lands set aside by treaties, with Native corporations set up to hold Native lands instead.

The only clear exception is the Metlakatla reservation near Ketchikan. Presumably the Metlakatla tribe could take steps to follow the state into the video gambling business, a state official said Wednesday.

"Once beyond Metlakatla, it is a political and legal question as to what is Indian land," said Larry Persily, deputy commissioner of revenue. "This administration is wrestling with it, as past administrations have, and there is no definitive answer."

In 1995, the Legislature banned casino-type games because tribes were planning to push the legal question and start their own casinos. Such games had been legal in Alaska only for charitable "Monte Carlo" nights. But that would have been enough to open the way for tribal games, lawyers said at the time.

As for the issue of Indian land, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1998 against the concept of "Indian country," land under tribal control, in a case involving the village of Venetie. The Venetie case left open the possibility of several smaller categories of Indian land, such as federally restricted Native townships and Native allotments. Efforts by tribal governments in Barrow, Akiachak and Kenai to establish Indian-land claims were rejected as recently as last year by a lower federal court.

But the courts have not rendered a final verdict in those matters, said Heather Kendall-Miller, a lawyer for the Native American Rights Fund in Anchorage who argued the Venetie case in the Supreme Court.