Connecticut | Opinion

Harold Monteau: Most tribes yet to succeed under Indian gaming

Thursday, July 15, 2010

"The “Indian Country Heartland” has yet to realize the intended benefits of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act\ (IGRA), and probably never will, due to the circumstance of being located in some of the most isolated areas of the country which simply do not have the population to support substantial gaming. It is really tragic to see billions in Indian Gaming dollars going to states under the legal mythology of “revenue sharing”. This revenue sharing should have gone to the tribes in the Heartland that have yet to see substantial gaming, Yet under the legal invention of revenue sharing, the poorest tribes are still being asked by states to share their meager profits. Revenue sharing is simply a tax that was allowed because the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe wanted to appease the State of Connecticut so they gave up 25% of slot revenue to the State, notwithstanding the prohibition against such taxation in the IGRA. It resulted in a multi-billion annual windfall for Connecticut when the Mohegan Tribe agreed to similar terms. This is money that will never be re-circulated in Indian Country. Only the California Tribes were savvy enough to include “revenue sharing for non-gaming tribes” in their Tribal-State Gaming Compact, but this amounts only to a small fraction of what the State of California extracts from the tribes under the revenue sharing legal invention.

I’m not advocating that Congress do away with “revenue sharing” with the states because, as a lawyer, I know it was a legal construct by the Department of Interior Solicitor’s Office to “buy peace” between the Mashantucket Pequot’s and the State of Connecticut. It has, however, been used by the states to extort money from Indian Country even from the poorest of Indian Tribes that are trying to scrape out some revenues from small gaming operations that would fit in one of the conference rooms at Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun. (I can’t even say they would fill a ballroom at one of these venues.) What I would advocate is an amendment to the IGRA which would require the states to circulate these dollars back into the Indian Economies by dedicating it to Health Care, Education, Housing and Care of Elders and Children in those areas of Indian Country that don’t have substantial gaming or none at all. This would include Urban Indian Centers that serve a huge population of ex patriot tribal people who either by choice or by the misguided Federal Policy of “Relocation” have ended up in urban settings, sometimes with three generations existing in poverty. These are sometimes the poorest of the poor Indians and suffer some of the worst generational cycles of poverty, unemployment, alcoholism, drug addiction, loss of parental rights and incarceration of any segment of the Native American population. I know because I helped repatriate Chippewa Cree children taken from parents that were born to parents who were born to grandparents who had been re-located to urban centers in states ranging from California to Michigan."

Get the Story:
Harold Monteau: TOUGH TIMES AT MASHANTUCKET (Pechanga.net 7/14)

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