“Reservation shopping” used to be Us versus Them language, as the private sector sought to hold back tribal casinos. Now it’s been added to the arsenal of tribe-on-tribe verbal violence. Writes the New York Times, “casino-owning Indian tribes have emerged as some of the most powerful and dogged opponents of new Indian casinos.”
Groups like the North Fork Band of Mono Indians, in California, or the Menominee Tribe, in Wisconsin, live in conditions of grinding poverty. Between successful lobbying and a sympathetic administration in the White House, they’re making the most headway in years in terms of getting off-reservation land taken into trust for eventual casino development. That chaps casino-owning tribes like the Chukchansi Indians something fierce. The latter has a strong Wall Street ally in Brigade Capital Management. They’re not going to let the Mono Indians horn in on their Fresno-area market without a fight. In fact, they’re taking it to the voters with a November ballot question. With 60-odd casinos generating $7 billion a year in profits, this is a high-stakes game for California’s 109 indigenous tribes.
(It’s not a California-only phenomenon either. An epic struggle continues to evolve [devolve?] between several Phoenix-area bands.)
One tribal lobbyist goes so far as to use tribes as bogeymen against one another, evoking the spectacle of tribal casinos next to Disneyland. And Steven Light, co-director of the University of North Dakota’s Institute for the Study of Tribal Gaming Law & Policy predicts that if the Chukchansi prevail at the ballot box, “it will be a definitive statement from the people of California that enough is enough and they don’t want the continued expansion of tribal gaming.”
Definitive? I wouldn’t bet on it.
Tribal casinos are getting some good press today. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has found a link between casino-enabled tribes and lower rates of childhood obesity. Employing “cross-sectional anthropometric measurements,” tribes in California were surveyed and “researchers reported a 0.19% decrease in overweight or obesity for every slot machine per capita gained.” Annual income was also shown to grow $541 per capita per slot added. Endocrine Today writes, “researchers concede that additional research is needed to identify the mechanisms underlying the association,” although it’s pretty clear-cut that poverty isn’t conducive to good health.
There was some pro forma tut-tutting: “They found that, although casinos may increase income and lower BMI, they also bring with them a range of other issues.” Of how many industries might that not be said? Personally, I’d rather live down the street from a casino (well, I sort of do) than near a petroleum refinery or a steel mill. Of course, with 48% of respondents being classified as overweight or obese, it goes without saying that more still needs to be done.
What a relief. Sabotage has been ruled out in the sinking of Wayne Newton‘s yacht. Considering the number of people to whom Newton is in hock, I doubt they’d scuttle a fungible asset.
