Facebook Twitter Email
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2002

"To own a casino is to be backed up to the loading dock of the federal mint. The 50 casinos operating in California -- and more are on the way -- overflow the pockets of the 49 tribes that operate them. The gambling haul for the tribes in California this year alone should be about $5 billion -- all of it free of federal and state taxes.

Tribal advocates also maintain that their right to have casinos is justified by their status as "sovereign nations," and therefore they should be able to operate free of regulations by "other" governments, i.e., the state of California and the United States. They base that idea on the original 19th century federal description of the tribes as "domestic, dependent, sovereign nations."

However, the meaning of that definition is that the tribes and their reservations are subject to the whim of Congress. So it's fair to say that if your status is at the mercy of someone else's say-so, you might be domestic and you might be dependent, but you're definitely not sovereign.

Sovereignty in its governmental sense is New Zealand or Norway, not a small reservation reliant on local government for public services.

Pretending that tiny Indian tribes with a handful of members are sovereign nations is a logic-stretching legal artifice to justify letting those tribes operate casinos and reap other lucrative tax-free privileges. . ."

Get the Story:
Fred Dickey: Indian Casinos Open Way for Black Reparations (The Los Angeles Times 11/14)
Username: indianz, Password: indianzcom