With luck, Indian gaming won't come to Alaska

It's pretty difficult to drive anywhere in America today without seeing an Indian gaming casino.  There are 38 in Washington state alone, owned and operated by 24 tribes.  In Oregon there are 12, run by 8 tribes, but in California there are 76, owned by nearly as many tribes.  As of last year, there were 478 casinos and other gambling establishments spread across 28 states representing 246 tribes; their collective gross revenue for 2015 was reported as exceeding $28 billion.

Many people assume that Indians get rich from casino gambling.  Not generally.  The annual gross revenue is less than a quarter of all gaming revenue nation-wide.  Recently, of more than 600,000 employees in Indian casinos, only 25 percent were Indians. Only tribes can own Indian gaming establishments, and while profits may be used for per capita payments to tribal members, only 72 tribes have done so; by Congressional mandate, profits must also be used for tribal government operations and economic development.  The Native American Rights Fund website notes that "gaming has not significantly impacted most Native Americans."

But where did all those casinos come from?  Most particularly, where did the money come from?  Few Indian tribes in America have the kind of assets that would fund a resort-type gambling casino.  The answer is from lenders, who must be repaid, with interest. Additionally, many casinos, while tribally owned, are operated by outside management companies.  And therein lies a tale.

Anchorage's Don Mitchell has told the tale, in his new book "Wampum: How Indian Tribes, the Mafia, and an Inattentive Congress Invented Indian Gaming and Created a $28 Billion Gambling Empire," just recently published.  Mitchell is a meticulous and remarkably thorough researcher.  His two-volume study of the history of Native land claims in Alaska are two of the most thoroughly documented and important of any books on any subject of Alaska history.  They trace in scrupulous detail the federal government's, and Alaska Natives' understanding, or lack thereof, of Native land claims in Alaska, and relations with individual Natives and Native organizations.  An attorney, he has worked on Native legal issues in Alaska since 1974, serving as vice-president and general counsel for the Alaska Federation of Natives between 1977 and 1993.  In his new book he turns his attention to the new national Indian gaming phenomenon.

[The road to Indian country in Alaska}

Gaming is an indigenous legacy; virtually all American Indian groups engaged in some type of organized games of chance, as reported by various tribes and their members, by contemporary non-indigenous observers and later anthropologists.  But the modern Indian gaming industry began with the Florida Seminole tribe opening a high-stakes bingo hall on its reservation in the 1970s, in violation of Florida law.  In 1987 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that because Indian reservations are sovereign, their land held in trust by the United States, so long as the form of gambling they're conducting is legal in the state where the reservation is located, the state cannot regulate it.

Congress soon followed with the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act which established the National Indian Gaming Commission.  That act mandates that tribes confer with state government before engaging in high-stakes gambling operations.  That's confer, not comply.  Should the state refuse to negotiate with the tribe, the Secretary of the Interior can authorize the operation, working with the state.  Many such deals have been made, nearly always resulting in state government allowing the gaming operations. The justification has been that the Indians must be allowed the opportunity for economic development, to the benefit of their tribal members.

[Tribal sovereignty is the story everyone missed on Obama visit]

Two things happened, perhaps predictably.

First, the amount of money involved proved irresistible to Mafia members and associates who were adept at loan-sharking. For them it seemed a simple matter of putting up the investment money, running the operation and giving the tribe a percentage of the profit, determined by the managers, of course.

Second, groups who may or may not have been Indians were recognized as tribes by a Congress ignorant of the consequences, or by BIA administrative action, allowing those tribes to open casinos on their reservations.

It's a sordid story, which some observers insist continues today.  And there's a remote chance it could come to Alaska.  We should hope it doesn't.

Steve Haycox is professor emeritus of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

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