David Treuer: Going home from casino trip

Friday, August 14, 2009  

"Indians are famous for a few things—a kind of off-brand environmentalism, Sitting Bull, broken English, and most of all for being poor. Poverty is, for many, synonymous with the very idea of Indians and Indian reservations. This thought stuck with me as we loaded up the BMW and drove back to LAX, flew back to Minneapolis, and drove north in my pickup back to Leech Lake.

Leech Lake is a big reservation—40 miles by 40 miles, peppered with lakes large and small, and broken in half by the slow, shallow course of the northern Mississippi River. We passed two of our casinos (we have three) on the drive to my house on the northwestern edge of the reservation. We don't have good steak. We don't raise our own cattle. We don't own any famous person's shoes. (Many on Leech Lake don't even own their own shoes.) My reservation will be poor for a long time. Maybe forever.

Indian gaming has changed very little on my reservation—it has generated some money for infrastructure and jobs, but not much. It has generated a lot of fighting and squabbling and severe politics. The median household income at Leech Lake is $21,000, less than half of the median U.S. household income. More than half our kids do not live with their parents. At Leech Lake, we're poor—but we've worked very hard at it and come by our poverty honestly.

And even though Indian gaming began at Leech Lake with a $147 tax bill, perhaps we contribute something a little harder to measure. When I asked people in Florida and Pechanga and Morongo what they wanted most, what they worried most about not having, they all responded: culture and language; our ways. And at Leech Lake at least we have that. Other folks from other reservations might laugh at this next comment, but when I tell people where I am from, they often raise their eyebrows in both surprise and appreciation—surprise that I come from a place so rough, and appreciation because they are sometimes awed or humbled and even a little jealous that I come from a place where our language is still spoken, a place that doesn't feel like the rest of America, even though it is, only more so. So, while I am proud of what other tribes have accomplished, I wonder whether (and hope that) they are proud of us, too."

Get the Story:
David Treuer: An American Indian's Journey in the Land of Indian Casinos (Slate 8/14)