Native American Press/Ojibwe News

‘Planetary power’

December 13, 2002
Roman Sigana, an old friend who passed to the Happy Hunting Ground all too soon last year, spoke English as a forcibly-imposed second language and had no compunctions about revising ‘the English’ to fit his own understanding of the world.

Roman would sometimes walk into Press/ON’s Bemidji office with a sheaf of documents, objecting vigorously to the ‘planetary power’ asserted by the U.S. Congress over Indian people.

The article in this week’s edition of Time Magazine, “Look who’s cashing in at Indian Casinos,” made me think of Roman and Congressional plenary power over Indian affairs, or as Roman used to call it, ‘planetary power.” I can’t help but think that here is another sad example of Congress’ attempts to “solve the Indian problem.”

It’s not always clear whether we end up being victims or beneficiaries of Congressional attempts to solve the Indian problem through high-stakes Indian gambling. Indian people have already survived attempts at genocide, forced removal, reorganization, re-education, relocation, becoming farmers, becoming industrialists, forcible assimilation and then sometimes-coerced “return” to canned pan-Indian “traditional culture.”

We found Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele’s article in Time well-written, informative, and so far it appears to be well-researched. Time’s researchers even called Press/ON for information.

However, there isn’t much new in this first of a two-part series in Time magazine. For years, Press/ON has printed stories and letters to the editor on almost a weekly basis about the problems arising from Indian gambling: lack of equity, destruction of our culture and turning us into problem gamblers, rising crime rates and other social costs and the governmental problems inevitable when unaccountable tribal governments are also running high-stakes casinos and spending huge amounts of money on both legal lobbying and below-the-radar political pressure.

We have always said that more than 90% of Indians do not benefit from “Indian gambling,” and in fact there are many politicians and certain lawyers who benefit from gambling funds more than most Indian people do.

As the Time article notes, “Congress created the National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC) to be the Federal Government’s principal oversight-and-enforcement agency for Indian gaming—and then guaranteed that it could do neither. With a budget capped at $8 million, the agency has 63 employees to monitor the $12.7 billion all-cash business in more than 300 casinos and small gaming establishments nationwide. The New Jersey Casino Control Commission, by contrast, has a $59 million budget and a staff of 720 to monitor 12 casinos in Atlantic City that produce one-third the revenue. The NIGC has yet to discover a single major case of corruption – despite numerous complaints from tribe members.”

Back in July 2, 1993, I wrote an editorial entitled “Indian gaming—unregulated and unaccountable,” in which I detailed many of the problems discussed in the Time magazine article. Gambling money has greased over many of the problems: it’s hard to see any meaningful improvement since 1993. Although there are more jobs on some reservations the vast majority are being held by non-Indians, and the social conditions on most reservations are worse today than they were before Indian gambling. The increases in revenue have been eaten up by the problems that gambling creates.

In September 2000, economists Earl L. Grinols, David B. Mustard, and Cynthia Hunt Dilley published an article entitled “Casinos, crime, and community costs.” According to Grinols, Mustard, and Hunt, a critical review of the literature “indicates that the costs of casinos are at least 1.9 times greater than the benefits,” and that in counties with casinos as well as in counties adjacent to casinos, crime rate increases of at least 8% are directly attributable to the casinos. We have seen rising crime on reservations as one of the many adverse effects of casinos, along with increasing drug abuse, violence, gang activity, and deterioration of our communities as our people gamble away too much time and money in the casinos.

Now, we are also seeing a phenomenon of the second stage of Indian gambling in Minnesota. The tribes who are located in outstate Minnesota are trying to compete with casinos closer to metropolitan populations, and have incurred or are in the process of incurring enormous debts for expansion of rural Indian casinos into destination-type resorts. The three largest tribes in Minnesota are all dealing with casino-expansion debts, and over the next few years we are going to be confronted with even worsening social problems because of unemployment and lack of funding for critical programs and tribal funds get siphoned off to service the debts.

We are looking forward to Part II of Time magazine’s series on Indian gambling, and hoping that they expand their coverage of crucial issues that affect Indian country due to Congress’ new exercise of planetary power.

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