Native American Casinos

“From here to where the sun sets, I will fight no more forever.”




The immortal words of Chief Joseph set the final nail into the coffin of Native American freedom. From that historic moment onwards, the proud people which once inhabited this land have been chased, hounded onto reservations and stripped categori­cally of rights and due process. Those that resisted were imprisoned or executed. The results have been at best mixed.


Until recently, the vast majority of tribes confined to reservation lands have been granted little enough federal aid that subsistence is made problematic. The traditional means of survival among the Plains Indian, hunting, fishing and gathering of herbs and other minor vegetables, was eliminated almost immediately. Into its place came the con­cept of farming, well-known to the Indians of the upper Northeast, and completely for­eign to the ways of the Western nations. The lands that had for so long provided bison and horses with grazing did not readily provide sustenance to a group of inept farmers, and the continuously shrinking size of their horse herds, reservation area and rights threatened the tribes to the edge of extinction.


With the additional pressure placed on them by a Congress eager to divest the payroll of tribal subsidizing, some tribes turned to what natural resources they had available. Indians in the Oklahoma/Texas region often had extensive oil and natural gas beds under their reservations, but many of these tribes had been bilked of the mineral rights by unscrupulous speculators which took advantage of the Indian ignorance of the rights they were signing away. A few of the wealthier tribes were able to pursue their cases and many won judgments against the speculators and the companies which oper­ated the drills. The poorer tribes could not pursue this course of action, and many watched the precious oil that could possibly have reinvigorated their economy flow into the collection vats of oil companies which had purchased the illicitly obtained rights.