The two-part series in Time magazine investigating Indian gaming set off a lot of denial and angst in Indian country. The series validates many of the things I have written since 1988 on the same issue.

It has never been a secret in Indian country that many of the tribes who are latecomers had a lot of help in gaining federal recognition. Twelve years ago I wrote about the financial assistance given to groups claiming to be Indian, whether real or imagined, by moneymen only too eager to build lucrative casinos for the new tribes once federal recognition was established.

It is also no secret that dozens of nebulous management teams appeared and signed lucrative contracts with Indian tribes to assist and to profit from their new casinos. Most tribes opted out of these contracts just as soon as they discovered that much of the profits were going to line the pockets of the management groups. Oftentimes these contracts were voided after costly legal battles.

Time magazine could have taken its investigative series much further. The writers implied that there might have been a connection between granting federal recognition to borderline tribes and the lining of pockets in the Bureau of Indian Affairs hierarchy. I believe this is an avenue that still needs to be explored. There is, after all, some sleek ex-BIAcrats sliding around Indian country.

Is it any wonder that the moneymen such as Sol Kerzner, a South African developer who will earn $400 million from the Mohegan Sun; Lim Goh Tong, a Malaysian financier who bankrolled the Foxwood Casino of the Pequots; and Lyle Berman, a champion poker player who has financed four Indian casinos with five more in the works, have reaped millions of dollars from Indian tribes?

At the very outset of Indian gaming, the BIA and the newly formed National Indian Gaming Commission allowed an Indian tribe in Minnesota to oust tribal members and redefine its own membership outside of the standards set by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The excuse offered then and now by the BIA is that this bureaucracy does not interfere in the internal affairs of Indian nations.

But only if it is not convenient to the bureau. Let's face it: The BIA has been interfering in the internal affairs of the Indian tribes since it was formed. So why then has this bureaucracy allowed so many tribes of questionable background to be given federal recognition? Did the backers of these tribes pass a few dollars under the table?

I have offered a very simple addition to the criteria used by the BIA to recognize new tribes: simply make it a rule that any new tribe cannot open a casino until 10 years after its recognition. This 10-year moratorium would make the moneymen standing in line just waiting for new tribes to be established so that they can swoop in with their deep pockets and start building casinos think twice.

Do the moneymen have the patience to wait 10 years before ripping off the new tribes?

The lack of control at the outset by the NIGC and the Department of the Interior opened many cans of worms. Time and again I have written about the porous rules and regulations that became a part of the National Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.

Consistency was not one of the rules. What is legal for one tribe in one state is illegal for another tribe in another state. Where one tribe can sign gaming compacts in one state, it is forbidden to do so in another state. The National Indian Gaming Regulatory Act is one big joke.

The Indian nations most afraid of having this heinous act reviewed and restructured are those with the most to lose -- the big gaming tribes. These tribes with the smallest numbers, some with as few as 10 members, have much more clout than say the tribes of the Great Sioux Nation with 60,000 members or the Navajo Nation with its more than 200,000 members.

Why? Because they have the most money to spread around. They can now peddle influence. As the poorer tribes of American have known for 200 years, money talks, poverty walks.

There are the very poor tribes in Nebraska, South Dakota and Arizona, some with casinos and others still trying to get state compacts to maintain a casino, which would love to see the NIGRA restructured. In Arizona, most of the tribes are raking in the money from their casinos. But the Navajo and Hopi refuse to join in this largesse.

They stay out of the gaming arena because they see it as a way to destroy their traditions, culture and spirituality.

As a matter of fact, I'm not too sure that gaming on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, one of the poorest tribes in America, wouldn't be discontinued if the question was put on the ballot today.

I believe the Indian gaming tribes of America need to form an organization to police its own. This would have to be an organization where the larger but poorer tribes would have an equal vote -- one not based on how much money they have in the bank.

There is a lot that needs to be cleaned up in Indian gaming. Before those boo-birds waste their time carping at Time magazine for bringing up certain unpleasant things, they should first admit that what the magazine had to say contained a lot of truth.

#########################################################
Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, is editor and publisher of the weekly Lakota Journal. He is author of "The Aboriginal Sin" and "Notes from Indian Country" volumes I and II. He can be reached at editor@lakotajournal.com or at P.O. Box 3080, Rapid City, S.D. 57709.

 © Copyright Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan 

Today, almost every facet of our Indian way of life is in turmoil. We are Indians in distress. Our existence is now in question and we are on the verge of vanishing as a race of people.

Historically, nations and Indian nations have up and vanished from the face of the Earth. Indian nations are now and have been for some time on the endangered list of national extinction. We are heading toward a nation of knick-knack Indians. Porcelain-like figurines soon to be gathering dust on the shelves of every family in America.

There was a time when we dared to be different as Indian people. I'm afraid that time is coming to a close and that difference we all talked about is no longer there. The gap of differences is closing all around us and many Indian people will never be able to feel what that difference was like.

Assimilation has a debilitating, suffocating hold on us that continues to turn our Indian way of life upside down. We are in the mode of self-termination. We are right at the very crossroads of where the United States federal government always wanted us to be: "Give those Indians enough rope and they'll soon hang themselves." Indians - if this is a wake-up call, then take heed.

Unless we are willing to change the present imagery that we're giving off to ourselves and the rest of the world, we will continue to self-destruct.

There is no room for present-day individualism. Individual tribes or bands looking after their own welfare need to start seeing the bigger picture. Their success can easily be the demise of other Indians. Dependency for all the right reasons can be a great thing. We need to get back to becoming once again a people with a sense of closeness and belonging. We need to become dependent on family and community and tribes and bands need to become dependent on Indian nations.

As Indian people throughout Indian Country, we need to make a commitment to protect those differences that separate us from other people in the world. We need to start being Indian.

RON DePERRY, Red Cliff Anishinabe, Bayfield, Wis. 
 
©The Pioneer 2003