Not All That Funny…

Actually, this story is only funny within a very limited context. For some time now we’ve been watching various Native American tribes launching casino operations in and around the United States, all of which seem to have been successful in drawing huge amounts of revenue from surrounding non-Native communities. The actual benefit to rank-and-file members of the tribes from these ventures is a matter of considerable dispute. There appear to be examples of tribal gaming operations that really do bring incredible benefits to the members of the tribe, paying for vital public facilities, education, and medical care, as well as providing much-needed employment in economically depressed areas; there also appear to be cases where only a few tribal leaders will see any real benefit, or even cases where all of the profits will be siphoned off by the casino’s financial backers and/or organized crime (to the extent that there’s any difference between those categories). In other words, these projects work out more or less the same as gambling facilities run by non-natives…

Since such projects are generally very lucrative (for somebody, at least) and since it is very difficult to obtain permission from state and Federal authorities to build a gambling facility if you are not a Native American tribe, many people have joked in recent years about somehow gaining tribal citizenship and/or getting their house declared “Indian Land” so that they can open a casino on the property and rake in the profits. It’s important to note that these are jests made at the expense of our Federal government, and by extension at the expense of those elements of the non-Native population who are naïve enough to believe that they can profit by visiting a casino; no sane person would be likely to blame the tribes themselves for finding a commercial application for America’s most abundant natural resource, e.g. stupidity…

All of these trends appear to have reached their logical conclusion this week in a case in California being reported the Associated Press on the local television station. It seems that a band of Native Americans living on the Buena Vista Rancheria have just received clearance to construct their own casino facility, following the dismissal of a Federal lawsuit brought by the county in which they intend to site the facility to block the project. Local residents in the community just east of Stockton, California had either been worried about traffic, crime, and environmental damage or bigoted against Indians, depending on which side of the case you’d care to take. Given the weakness of California’s economy, construction of a 130,000 square foot facility and the addition of 800 new jobs to the local market seem like a good thing. What makes the project unusual is that the tribe in question consists of just one family; a mother and her children…

That’s right, folks, the Me-Wuk Indians are, in fact, a single family, and just as in the terms of the joke, they have succeeded in turning their Native American status into a license to make money. Of course, they’re not putting it into their house; they will have a proper casino location. And they’re not even trying to handle the construction or operation of the facility on their own; they’re bringing in investment money and professional management personnel to assist. Still, it does make you wonder how many other small bands of Native Americans, poor in population but rich in entrepreneurial spirit and sheer chutzpah, may be planning similar projects even as we speak. I’d be willing to venture a few dollars that it’s a non-zero number – and that some of them will succeed…

So the next time your neighbor tells you that he’s going to declare his house “Indian Land” and open a casino, you might want to make sure he’s joking before you laugh…