Why he matters
Look east from almost anywhere in central Scottsdale and the tallest thing on the horizon is not in Scottsdale. It stands on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, the Akimel O’odham and Piipaash nation whose land runs along the city’s eastern edge. How that edge went from alfalfa fields to one of the busiest entertainment districts in the Valley is mostly a story of the 1990s, and Ivan Makil was the Community’s president for all of it.
He held the office for three consecutive terms, from 1990 to 2002. In that time the Community negotiated the Loop 101 across its land, opened a golf club and a casino, built a business park and brought more than 1,000 acres back under tribal ownership. His approach, which he later described as seven-generation thinking, was to weigh each deal against its effect on the people who would live with it a century on.
Where to find his era today
The district. The Talking Stick and Salt River guide covers the land along the 101 that his administration put to work.
Casino Arizona. The original 1998 gaming hall at McKellips, home to Cholla Prime Steakhouse.
The anchors. The Pavilions at Talking Stick predates him by a year; Talking Stick Resort came after him and built on what his terms started.
The freeway and the frontage
The single decision that shaped the district was where the Loop 101 would go. Talks among Scottsdale, the state and the Community over the eastern leg began in the early 1980s and stalled for years. A deal came in 1990, the year Makil took office, and he is credited with negotiating the freeway projects on Community land. The alignment kept the land around the interchanges in tribal hands, so when the freeway opened in the late 1990s, the Community, not outside developers, owned the frontage.
Everything along the corridor followed from that: the golf club in 1997, Casino Arizona in 1998, and later the resort tower, Salt River Fields and the attractions around them.
The full story
Ivan Makil is a citizen of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. As a high school student in south Phoenix he played trumpet in a blues band, then directed the church choir on Sunday mornings. When the Community created its Community Relations Office in July 1982, he was one of its first two staff members, and by the mid-1980s he was the Community’s public voice.
In 1990 he was elected president. The Community’s western edge was still mostly farmland facing a fast-growing city across Pima Road; the Scottsdale Pavilions shopping center, opened in 1989, was the first sign of what the land could become. Makil’s administration pressed the idea much further. It negotiated the Loop 101 through Community land on terms that kept the interchanges tribal, launched Talking Stick Golf Club in 1997, Casino Arizona in 1998, Chaparral Business Park and Saddleback Communications, expanded Salt River Materials Group, and set up an investment committee to manage tribal assets. It also brought more than 1,000 acres back under tribal ownership. Not all of it was popular; the deals had critics inside the Community and out, and the local press covered the fights.
Gaming needed a state framework to last. Makil chaired the campaign for Proposition 202, the 17-tribe initiative that Arizona voters approved by roughly 51% to 49% in November 2002, the year his third term ended.
After leaving office he founded Generation Seven Strategic Partners, a consulting firm named for the seven-generation idea, and lectured on tribal leadership and strategic planning, including in the University of Arizona’s Rebuilding Native Nations course series. In 2023 the Phoenix Indian Center gave him its Kent C. Ware Lifetime Achievement Award. The district he helped start is described in the resort metropolis era, and the Community’s older history is in the Hohokam canal builders and Alfretta Antone profiles.