Kansas City, Mo ? Mobile buildings that an Indian tribe plans to link together for use as a temporary casino have been moved into the city’s downtown area.

“We’re going to put slot machines in them, and, I hope, open within 60 to 90 days,” Chief Leaford Bearskin of the Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma said Wednesday as the buildings were being pulled into the area.

Last week the tribe moved 200 slot machines into the former Masonic lodge building that it owns, located across the street from the City Hall of Kansas City, Kan.

That brought an angry response from Kansas Gov. Bill Graves, who called for investigations by the state and federal government.

Since buying the old lodge building in 1996, the tribe has sought authority to use it as a casino. Last month the tribe appeared to win that authority when the U.S. Interior Department took the land and building into trust as formal Indian lands. The move qualified it for gambling use under a 1988 federal law.

But Graves and the state’s four indigenous tribes that already operate casinos have since sued the Interior Department seeking to overturn the ruling.

The outcome of that case will determine if the planned casino has a future, said Paul Filzer, a tribal lawyer.

“If the Interior Department’s notice was wrong, that this is not trust land, the tribe has no right to game on it,” he said.

But until that ruling is overturned, Bearskin said the tribe is going ahead with its plans.

“We passed our last hurdle, which clears the way for us to game on the property,” Bearskin said. “We’re going to proceed.”

Filzer said that by the end of the week he expected the tribe to present Graves with its fourth request in recent years to enter into negotiations to establish full-scale casino gambling in Wyandotte County.

Graves has refused to deal with the tribe; he claimed it had no legal land claims in Kansas that have ever survived court challenges.

But no one appears to be standing in the tribe’s way if it opens a temporary casino with limited gambling. That status allows bingo and pull-tab games, including electronic pull-tab machines that operate much like slots.

George T. Skibine, director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Office of Indian Gaming Management, said that as the situation stood, the tribe was free to decide whether to offer gambling on the land.

“The tribe can try to open the casino,” he said. “If they’re right, they can game on it. If they’re wrong, the Justice Department will take action.”

Mark Ohlemeier, spokesman for Kansas Atty. Gen. Carla Stovall, said Wednesday that the state had no plans at this point to seek a restraining order to block the tribe.

Don Brown, a spokesman for Graves, said the Governor’s Office still had no indication that the tribe could legally open a casino on the site.

“We will continue to oppose gaming activity on that site until the courts tell us otherwise,” Brown said.