Opinion

Mike Hoeft: Bingo games brought Oneida Nation together again

Friday, January 30, 2015

The Oneida Casino celebrated its 20th birthday last July. Photo from Facebook

Reporter Mike Hoeft, the author of The Bingo Queens of Oneida: How Two Moms Started Tribal Gaming in Wisconsin, explains how gaming contributed to the resurgence of the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin:

Some of our neighbors believe the reservation, just outside Green Bay, was disestablished long ago. Unemployment was high and many Oneidas moved to bigger cities such as Milwaukee to find jobs. Patty and I met in Green Bay and bought a house within the reservation boundaries. Non-Indian residents easily outnumber Indians here. The Oneidas have become a minority on their own reservation.

The Bingo Queens of Oneida: How Two Moms Started Tribal Gaming in Wisconsin

Patty served three terms on the elected tribal council, following in the footsteps of her mom, Sandy Ninham. Patty feels obliged to carry on Sandy's legacy of community service to Oneida. Her mom was one of the women who started a tribal bingo game in 1976 at the tribe's civic center simply to pay the utility bills. It was one of the first Indian bingo halls in the country.
In researching my book, I learned that Oneida Bingo not only paid the bills, but soon began to generate jobs and finance other tribal programs. Bingo helped bond Oneidas together, bridge them into alliances with the non-Oneida community and lure tribal citizens back to the reservation. Oneida expanded into casino gaming in 1992. The tribe used bingo and casino profits to buy back reservation land that had fallen into non-Indian hands. The tribe also invested in education scholarships, housing and language programs.
Still, Oneida fights to stay alive as a government. Some municipalities oppose the tribe placing reacquired parcels into federal trust because it takes land off the public tax rolls. Others object to laws that treat one group of people differently than other Americans. Treaties were made with Indians not because of their race, but because their sovereignty preceded the arrival of European settlers. The Oneidas, one of the six Iroquois nations, were the first allies of American colonists during the Revolutionary War. Their descendants survived moving from upstate New York in the early 1800s and managed to adapt to a new home in Wisconsin.