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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2003

"[T]he cruelest hoax of casinos is on the Indian. How easily Congress threw away the principle of equal protection when it undertook to bestow “Indian gaming” on In dians and the nation with the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act!

The delusion was that sacrificing a constitutional principle would benefit Indians.

But in the event, a few real Indians and some spurious ones have gotten rich, while most Indians continue to live as poorly as they did 50 years ago, and shall 50 years from now if we go on turning their potentially rich lands into gambling ghettos.

The cause of the Indian is as worthy as that of any group seeking its rights, and worthier than most. But without private property and genuine economic opportunity, real (as opposed to contrived-for-casinos) reservations are living hells that can best he understood by black or white Americans as like living one's lifetime knowing ones children are an active case in the files of the Department of Social Services, or of knowing one's legal residency is subject to challenge by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Succinctly, the quality of life on Indian reservations today is what happens when the pream ble to the Constitution, “We, the People,” gets turned on its head, and the power to make or destroy is given over to government.

I therefore consider “Indian gaming” to be the tragic, mendacious, despicable assurance that the life of the average Indian will he no better in 2053 than it was in 1953."

Get the Story:
David A. Mittell Jr.: The Destruction Casinos Cause (The New London Day 2/21)