Conservative Advocate: The Indian casino racket
A lot of Americans have been baffled by the proliferation, in recent years, of gambling casinos on Indian reservations in states, or places in states, that had previously been blessedly free of that particular curse. Some states, of course, threw in their lot with the gambling interests many years ago (Nevada comes to mind), and have prospered as a result. They have also suffered the inevitable consequences of such complicity, including transformation of the resident populations and an inevitable rise in organized crime. But recently the problem has metastasized, and afflicted states that haven’t the slightest desire for casinos within their borders, whether “owned” by Indian tribes or not.
What’s going on here?
An excellent article by Jason Lee Steorts in the Aug. 8 issue of my old magazine, National Review, tells the whole story in much greater detail than is possible in a column like this one. But herewith is a briefer description of the mess.
It all began with the white man’s conquest of North America. The roughly 2 million Indians already here were simply brushed aside (or wiped out), and the United States of America was the result. Its subsequent mistreatment of the surviving Indians, who were allowed to continue, more or less, their ancient tribal ways on “reservations,” is one of the least palatable aspects of our history as a nation.
But the tribes were treated, juridically, as independent entities, and granted a sort of “limited sovereignty.” The U.S. government entered into treaties with them, agreed not to tax them or commercial enterprises established in the reservations, and exempted them from many federal and state laws.
Eventually, the tribes got into the business of running whatever gambling enterprises the local state laws permitted. But the Indians, pleading their undeniable poverty, wanted to open lucrative casinos even in states where these were banned. In 1988, Congress passed a law intended to permit tribal casinos in states where casinos were legal, but unfortunately the courts have interpreted it as allowing them even in states that prohibit them.
Now, the overall American casino industry generates $20 billion a year. In no time, a lot of savvy white investors began looking around for small groups of people with detectable Indian blood, to be organized into tribes and launched as casino operators on land allocated to them. Steorts estimates that there are now about 300 Indian casinos in the country, being operated, at least nominally, by people who could be prosecuted under state law if they weren’t Indians.
According to Steorts’ article, one lawyer, a relative of White House chief of staff Andrew Card, was paid $645,000 by a small group called the Eastern Pequots, who managed to become big enough to qualify as a “tribe” under BIA rules by merging with another group called the Paucatuck Eastern Pequots. (They both live in Connecticut, whose governor and legislature are dead-set against casinos of any type but have no power to stop the newly merged tribe.)
There is much more to the story, and Steorts’ article is all over it like a blanket. But the basic point is clear enough: Thanks to the loophole of “limited sovereignty,” the nation’s Indian tribes are going into the casino business wholesale, financed by greedy white investors and their attendant lawyers and lobbyists, who are far less interested in the welfare of Native American children than they are in the stunning profits that can be made by catering to people in casinos built on Indian land.
(William Rusher is a Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy.)