STORIES

Provost's Corner

Scholarships

Thriving Under Pressure

Achievements

Calendar of Events

Exhibitions

Credits

Archives

Lisa Emmerich Bets on Red

In the last decades of the twentieth century, American Indian tribes developed gaming venues on their lands as an economic development strategy. Lisa Emmerich discussed the history and politics of this strategy in "Always Bet on Red: California Indian Gaming, Public Policy, and the Creation of ÔMoral' Wealth" at the anthropology forum on October 5.

Emmerich explained, "The roots of the conflicts over Indian gaming in California extend back to eighteenth and nineteenth century Russian, Spanish, Mexican, and Gold Rush gamblers who bet on California for abundance and affluence. The clear losers in this bet were the native Californians who suffered brutality and genocide. Government, at all levels, facilitated the continued disenfranchisement and exploitation of native Californians."

During the first part of the twentieth century, "Bureau of Indian Affairs personnel regularly bemoaned the status of most California Indians. Their lot was no mystery. Gold rush era land policies swindled the tribes out of their land and trapped the future generations in destitution," Emmerich said.

In the 1970s, the federal Indian Financing Act and the Native American Programs Act defined Indians as "deserving poor." Emmerich explained that this policy shift allowed Indian tribes to get economic development help. After experimenting with a number of different enterprises, "the Seminole Indians of Florida, the Stockbridge Munsee of Wisconsin, the Pequots of Connecticut, and the Cabazon Band in California opted to pursue gaming as a means to raise tribal revenue." All three quickly ran into opposition from their states, and the gaming battleground moved to the courts.

During the 1980s, "the federal courts consistently defended the rights of native peoples to operate gaming activities within tribal communities without state interference," Emmerich said. In 1988, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, setting up a regulatory agency and defining three classes of gaming. Controversy emerged around Class 3 games, the higher-stakes casino games that are most lucrative. Tribal communities must have an agreement with the state government, called a compact, in order to offer Class 3 gaming.

In California in the 1990s, Governor Wilson and Attorney General Lungren opposed Class 3 gaming, citing concerns about the social costs of gaming and the possibility of organized crime involvement. They attempted to prevent it by refusing to negotiate compacts with gaming tribes. Tribes established gaming and then dealt with the consequences in court, leading to "a sustained period of litigation between tribal communities, Wilson, and Lungren over the dimensions of Class 3 gaming and the state's refusal to participate in the compact." Emmerich explained that this litigation involved highly specialized and complex issues of constitutionality and sovereignty.

In response, California tribes formed the California Nations Indian Gaming Association (CNIGA). CNIGA gathered signatures and took their problems to the public through Propositions 5 and 1A. In doing so, they devised a public relations campaign that redefined tribal communities as needing help and gaming as the way out of poverty. "It's not about generating casino revenues, it's about creating self-sufficiency. California natives shift the focus of the public discussion over Indian gaming by embracing and publicizing their status as deserving poor," Emmerich said. They did this by referring to themselves as the First Californians. The effect of the Prop. 5 campaign was that "folks who were opposing it increasingly became identified as anti-Indian, not anti Indian-gaming."

Prop. 5 passed in 1998 and was struck down by the California Supreme Court as unconstitutional. Prop. 1A, passed in 2000, amended the California Constitution and provided much the same gaming provisions. Emmerich concluded, "Betting on themselves and their stories, California Indians persuaded state citizens to redefine gaming profits as moral wealth in service to a disadvantaged community."

Barbara Alderson