Interview: Gambling on the reservations: what's really at stake?

Casinos on native american lands are giving many tribes a needed infusion of money, hope, and independence. By making a federal issue out of Indian gaming, are major players in the gambling industry - like Donald Trump - trying to stack the deck against them? Here a grandmother tribal leader, and head of one of the most successful indian casinos in the country puts her cards on the table

Luck may again be on the side of the Native Americans. Over the past few years, more than 70 casinos have been opened on Indian reservations by a fraction of this country's 543 federally recognized tribes, creating a $7-billion-a-year industry known as Indian gaming. As members of a quasi-sovereign nation set up by treaties that failed to protect their lands and ghettoized them over a hundred years ago, these tribes - many suffering from unemployment rates in excess of 50 percent, illiteracy, and living conditions worse than those found in the worst inner cities before the arrival of the casinos - seem to have discovered a way for history to repay them; and for that they have again become the center of a national battle that is as old as history, or U.S. history, itself. At stake for the Indian people is the question of sovereignty - whether the federal government will continue to recognize their right to operate casinos on tribal lands without federal or state interference. At stake for their opponents, most visibly Donald Trump, is another kind of sovereignty.

Although Indian gaming accounts for only about 4.5 percent of national gambling revenues, some Indian reservations are located in strategic areas near cities like New York and Los Angeles, which supply Atlantic City and Las Vegas with most of their customers. Thus far, few support Trump's claim, made in a House subcommittee hearing last October, that without state or federal regulation, Indian gaming is being infiltrated by the Mob and will become, in his words, "the biggest crime problem in this country's history." Calling Trump's bluff, various Indian representatives attended the Capitol Hill hearings to testify in support of Indian gaming. Among them was Marge Anderson, chief of the Mille Lacs band of the Ojibwa tribe in northern Minnesota and head of one of the country's most successful Indian casinos. We spoke to here about what Indian gaming means to her people.

Mark Marvel: Marge, casinos have been operating on reservations for several years now. Why do you think that Indian gaming has suddenly become such a controversial national issue?

Marge Anderson: Because the Indian people have been successful at it. And every time we've had anything of value, there's always been that larger society that's willing to take it away again. But I think that most of the opposition is coming from a small group of people, like the Donald Trumps. You know, for him the free enterprise system was great when there was no competition, when he had a monopoly on gambling.

MM: I watched the House subcommittee hearings in which Trump testified against Indian gaming. I thought a lot of his testimony - particularly when he said that the people who run the Indian gaming operations "don't look like Indians to me and they don't look like Indians to Indians" - seemed racist.

MA: We took some of our elders and schoolchildren to those hearings, and our elders were really hurt by what Trump had to say. He should be ashamed. I mean, the money he makes from his casinos goes into his pockets. He buys yachts; we build schools. We've already built two schools with our revenues from gaming. We've improved our infrastructure, wastewater treatment plant, ceremonial buildings, community centers. We now have a state-of-the-art health clinic, roads, much-needed housing - because the profits we make from gaming go right back into our community to upgrade the life of our people, to bring back their self-esteem, their self-sufficiency, and their self-determination.

MM: By basing so much of their economic recovery on this one thing, do you think the Indian people may be gambling away their future?

MA: No. This is the only economic development that's ever worked in Indian country. Period. And without gaming, we were losing our culture, we were losing our language. Now that we have the revenues to provide the schools, we are bringing our culture and our language into the schools. Besides, we've paid our dues. We've had all our lands taken away, promises that were never kept. So now it's gaming or nothing. We wouldn't survive without this return of the buffalo. But we do know that it's not going to last forever. Every year we've got to fight state legislators, governors, individuals like Donald Trump. So we are trying to diversify.

MM:I remember when I went out west a few years ago, people told me not to visit the Indian reservations because they were too depressing. Is this "return of the buffalo" giving Native American children a new kind of hope for the future?

MA: Before the casino, I used to tell the kids, "Go get your education and then come back and help your people." But for what? They couldn't come back to help because there were no jobs. Today, I tell them: "Now you can be anything you want to be, because we have the casino. We have the clinic - you can be a nurse or a doctor. We have the schools - you can be a teacher, an attorney. You can be what you want to be, because now we can provide the scholarships for you to continue your education."

MM: We've been talking about Indian gaming, and how it's affecting your people, but the first thing that made me want to do this interview was you. Tell me about yourself.

MA: Well, I was born on the reservation, went to school here, got married, and moved away because there were no jobs. My husband and I lived in Minneapolis for about eighteen years and raised out family there. Then I moved back to the reservation - my husband stayed in Minneapolis because there were still very few jobs here. A year after I returned, a position in tribal government opened up and people approached me and I said no, because I'm not into politics. But they talked me into it and I won the election. After we built our casino we went from 45 percent unemployment on our reservation to zero - and since then I've gone undefeated. In the next two years my term will end. But I don't think I'm gonna give this up. My children have all grown up; my grandchildren have all grown up. Now, I guess, it's just in my blood.