Tribal Gaming: Who Wins?

Native Americans in 2011 continue to struggle to find their identity in this continent. European expansionists committed nothing short of genocide and literally gave them alcohol, disease, and high infant mortality rates, left them in the reservation to be left ignored. As a result reservations consist of the most impoverished people in the United States dealing with a list of social problems with lack of opportunities. Although there are many efforts to continue tribal traditions, Native Americans have been stripped away of most of their cultures, languages, and land. In attempt to compromise tribal sovereignty, the federal government has granted Native American tribes rights to operate casino business. Contrary to public perception, the compromise creates greater social costs against its economic benefits, resulting as barriers to self-governance and future development of tribal reservations. Despite economic profit that the casino generates for tribes, the involvement in the industry results in a bigger of problems involving unstable social and mental state of tribal members which entails increased substance abuse, domestic abuse, debt accumulation, criminal activity, and suicidal ideation, which exist as overwhelming barriers to self-governance.

Is anyone winning from Indian gaming? Like any industry, tribal gaming has both positive and negative effects. Studies identifying, measuring, and weighing tribal gaming’s economic and social impacts draw varying conclusions about the degree or intensity of its effects on tribes, states, localities, and the United States. What is most clear is that the stakes are particularly high for tribes. Tribal experiences with gaming may be a net positive, but the negative externalities of casino business that the general public is unaware of is what’s holding tribes back from proper self-governance and economic development. It is time that the United States government and its people should focus on the social issues of reservations and find solutions to fix it once and for all. How can America attempt to fix current problems when it has neglected the problems of the past with the tribes, which lays as the root of all the social problems in America? The country will never get be able to face the bright future with the neglected dark past unresolved. The shameful warfare and its results between the early European settlers and the Native Americans can never be justified, and that Americans, as a whole, need to give respect to the original founding fathers of this great land.