From my daily interactions with non-Native individuals, I’ve found that Indian gaming and casinos are very poorly-understood. While I do not claim to be the ultimate expert on this topic, I hope to bring some clarity for readers. Several of my family members were instrumental in the establishment of Cliff Castle Casino, which is owned and operated by my tribe, the Yavapai-Apache Nation. In the late 1990s, I worked in customer service on the casino floor. Those were the “old days,” when the casino did not have a standalone building and consisted of a few hundred slot machines and several tables for card games packed into the lobby of our tribal motel. I have closely followed Cliff Castle and Indian gaming since then.
I want to first address the false claim that gambling is not a “traditional” Native American activity, and that operating a casino goes against Native American values. Gambling is present in all cultures in some form, and Native Americans are no exception. Apaches historically enjoyed games of chance, and after contact with Spaniards, we adopted Spanish-suited playing cards and card games. We made our own decks from thin pieces of animal hide and decorated the cards with Apache iconography. On the other side of the continent, French explorers in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions observed huge lacrosse games — lacrosse is Indigenous and referred to as the “Creator’s Game” — with large wagers placed on the games. In the Native American context, gambling was an accepted cultural activity that brought the community together for entertainment and bonding. Certainly, some Native Americans hold personal views that oppose gambling, but to say that it is not “traditional” is simply untrue.
Jumping forward to the mid-1900s, most tribes had very few options to develop their economies. Federal appropriations often provided what little money came into tribal communities. Some tribes developed tourism, such as the Mescalero Apache Tribe of New Mexico, which opened Ski Apache in 1963 and Inn of the Mountain Gods resort in 1975 (both remain in operation today). Other tribes opened their lands to energy resource extraction, including coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium. Outside corporations did the extracting, paying mining royalties to tribes. The environmental costs have been catastrophic. Strip-mining of the Navajo and Hopi reservations for coal irreparably damaged the land. Uranium mining at Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico contaminated the community’s water, and radioactive yellow powder was inhaled by children, the elderly, and animals. I can’t fully blame tribes desperate for economic development to turn to resource extraction, but in an Indigenous ethos that stresses care for Mother Earth and dedication to future generations, such activities seem inherently untraditional.
Under these challenging economic conditions, some tribes turned to gaming in the late 1970s and 1980s. The Seminole Tribe of Florida hosted popular bingo games six days per week, offering larger pots than non-Indian bingo parlors. The Cabezon and Morongo Bands of Mission Indians — both located near Palm Springs, California — offered high stakes bingo and poker. When California law enforcement shut these operations down, Cabezon fought it. The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, which ruled in Cabezon’s favor in 1987, stating that if gambling was not criminally prohibited in a state, then it was legal for tribes to host it on reservations. A state could not prohibit Indian gaming if there was any form of legal gambling in that state such as a lottery or scratchers.
Congress moved swiftly in 1988 to regulate Indian gaming, passing the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA). IGRA divides Indian gaming into three classes. IGRA does not cover Classes I and II (traditional games of chance and games with no house money). It does regulate Class III, which includes slot machines, blackjack, roulette, and all high stakes gaming. Under IGRA, a tribe must be federally recognized to operate Class III gaming. Gambling in some form must legally exist in the state in which the tribe is operating the casino. A tribe must negotiate a gaming compact with the state government that sets down the regulations and stipulations for their gaming operation, and the compact must be approved by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior. A tribe must also establish a tribal gaming authority to oversee gaming and have all of the necessary infrastructure for oversight of casino activities in place.
Since IGRA, some 250 tribes across 25 states have gaming operations. Financial year 2022 saw $40.9 billion in Indian gaming revenue. But gaming isn’t universal among tribes, with less than half of 574 federally recognized tribes operating casinos. Furthermore, it’s a myth that tribes are getting rich off of casinos. Many tribal casinos are modest operations, with revenues mostly used for things like housing, scholarships and education, social services, healthcare, money to start other business ventures, historic and cultural preservation programs, and sometimes per capita payments. Casinos provide thousands of jobs for tribal members.
While Indian gaming has had negative consequences, such as gambling addiction for some individuals, the positives far outweigh the negatives. In the case of the Yavapai-Apache Nation, we now have a Medical Center. We have better government facilities such as our tribal administration complex (I remember going to meetings with my grandfather in the 1980s, when our tribal council met in a trailer). We have recreation and community centers, a Cultural Resource Center, and better tribal housing. Our higher education department provides college and vocational training scholarships to tribal members. I would not have obtained a Ph.D. without such support. With all this in mind, I fully support Indian gaming. It has been overwhelmingly positive for our community. It has provided us with the resources to better care for our land, community members, and future generations.
Serving Sedona, written his week by Maurice Crandall, volunteer with Friends of the Forest, appears Wednesday in the Sedona Red Rock News.