Tribes contrast gambling wealth, brutal poverty

By Greg Lakes, editor
Headwaters News
May 8, 2002

Gambling tends to overshadow other reservation issues, at least in daily headlines, and one obvious reason is the amount of money at stake.

The current hot spot is Arizona, where Gov. Jane Hull's pact with gambling tribes is still being thrashed by critics and the Legislature. Hull negotiated the agreement after a federal judge ruled the previous pact illegal. The terms would continue casino-style gambling on reservations and increase the number of slot machines allowed at urban casinos, and the 17 tribes would pay a collective $83 million a year to the state.

Arizona dog and horse racetrack owners lobbied hard to squelch the deal, fearing the 10-year terms would allow Indian casinos to siphon off their customers and their profits. Both sides rallied hundreds of people for a Senate hearing in early April, and the governor herself testified, in part, to dispute an ugly ad campaign aimed at her by the racetrack lobby.

In mid-April, a Senate committee killed the bill in what Hull said was a cheap parliamentary shot. It was quickly resurrected and on Monday, it passed the Senate, although the fight is expected to continue in the House.

The Coeur d'Alene and Nez Perce tribes in northern Idaho also struck a deal with their governor only to see it defeated in the Legislature. Tribal leaders want to clarify a state law on the legality of the machines that have yielded millions, and they drafted an initiative for the November ballot that would also allow expansion of existing operations.

The tribes spent $665,000 from gambling proceeds to launch the petition drive, and the campaign is expected to cost $4 million to $8 million.

Talks on a gambling pact for Wyoming's Wind River Reservation failed in April, and the issue is expected to go to court-ordered mediation.

It's a stretch to extrapolate to reservations, but across Montana, there are signs that the allure of gambling may have a limit. State officials say gambling revenue doubled in the past decade but seems to be leveling off. Gambling machines are limited to establishments with a liquor license, and state officials said the market is saturated and declining -- a lesson that may or may not eventually take hold on reservations across the West.

Other tribes are pushing economic development without gambling revenue. The Hopi Tribe bought a third shopping complex in Flagstaff and 18,000 acres of ranchland in March with a $55 million federal payment. The payment is part of an agreement that leases traditional Hopi lands for long-term Navajo residents.

Montana's Blackfeet Tribe has revived plans to build a luxury resort near the east entrance to Glacier National Park, a $10 million project considered off and on for 20 years.

But underlying the lure of casino riches is a need some tribal leaders call desperate. Conditions on some reservations still resemble Third World countries, and in some aspects, are worse.

Only 48 percent of Montana Indian students who enter high school actually graduate, according to state figures, and a Blackfeet legislator said that's mainly an economic problem: Students often go to work to support their families instead of finishing school.

In Montana, Indian families are shaped by poverty: They account for 7 percent of the population but 42 percent of the welfare caseload, and they are 30 percent larger and 3.5 times more likely to be headed by a single parent than white families, according to census data.

Some of the 153 Blackfeet Reservation homes built two decades ago by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development are growing toxic mold on the walls and mushrooms in the carpet.

A study by the National American Indian Housing Council concluded that reservation housing is six times more crowded than the national average, with resulting health and emotional impacts. And the trend is toward more crowding in often substandard housing, the study said.

And in a special report, the Arizona Republic found that the death rates for Native Americans, from tuberculosis, diabetes, alcoholism, suicide and homicide, are seven times higher than for other Americans. The federal government spends half as much per tribal member as it does for health programs for non-Indians, and the average lifespan for Indians in Arizona is 55 -- less than in Bangladesh.

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