The Negative Side of Gaming for Native Americans

While some Native Americans benefit greatly from gaming casinos that they are allowed to have on their reservation this group of Native Americans represents the minority, not the majority. Most Native Americans "live below the federal poverty level" (Coin). While the recent boom of gaming has boosted the income of some, this is not the case with most Native Americans. In fact, for those Native Americans living below the poverty line, gambling has had a negative impact on them. The success of recent gambling has led to the creation of the term "rich Indian" (Coin) and has created a stereotype that like most stereotypes, it is simply not true. One may ask, why would it be bad if people thought you were rich? Isn't being rich a good thing? In terms of government aid, it is a very bad thing. The government of many states, including California, sees that gambling has benefited some tribes, and based on that they cut spending that went to helping Native Americans. Just one example of these spending cuts is that the "state and local funding for substance abuse and alcohol prevention at Indian health clinics has been slashed from $2.8 million to $100,000, virtually wiping out the program" (Coin). Those helping the Native Americans believe they no longer need to be helped, so they are limiting their help. In terms of this cut, Native Americans need these prevention clinics and they need funding for them because suicide rates in Native Americans have spiked drastically. I wrote about this in an earlier blog post entitled "current event" and I learned that Native Americans need programs like the ones that are being cut in order to talk about problems and help find solutions to them. Many tribes simply cannot afford to fund these programs, like the Yurok tribe as "much of the Yurok reservation is without essential services such as water and electricity" (Coin). They lack basic life necessities in terms of water, so they clearly cannot afford to pay for programs to help cut substance abuse and suicide rates. The Yurok tribe is really being harmed by the success of other tribes as they are lumped in with all Native Americans, and overall there has been success of bigger tribes related to gambling. Due to the success of some tribes, the government of California wants to re-write the agreements to the"tribal-state gaming compacts agreed to in 1999" (Coin) in order to have the casinos benefit the state. To me this seems like deja vu for the Native Americans as any time in American history that they have had a chance for success the American government always wants to re-write treaties to help themselves. I simply don't see why the Native Americans should or would want to re-write this treaty when in reality many tribes still need more state funding, the last thing they need is to have their taxes raised. Coin has argued that the gambling policy has hurt many Native Americans, but I do not think this means he wants it to go away. He simply believes it has created a false stereotype of a rich Indian which in turn has harmed Native Americans who are living below the poverty line. I agree that this stereotype has been harmful, but overall the gaming business brings in a lot of money for many Native Americans, so it is helpful overall. This does not mean I believe that taxes on it should be raised or that state funding for Native Americans should be cut. I believe quite the opposite of that. They need to keep taxes low and allow the business to flourish so that the profit can trickle down to those who are experience hard times. I have seen the connection to many poor Native Americans in some of the articles I have read so far. In my short story, the main character was unable to muster enough money to travel to Phoenix Arizona to get the ashes of his father; he asked the tribe for money and all they could give him was $100. The stereotype of the rich-Indian surely did not apply here as the main character hardly had any money and the tribe was also very poor. While this was a fictional story it still represents the tough economic journey that Native Americans are experiencing. Even worse, they are thought to be rich so the government wants to limit the help they are giving to the Native Americans.


Coin, Jacob. "Most Native Americans Have Not Profited from Gaming." At Issue: Indian Gaming. Ed. Stuart A. Kallen. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2006. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Deerfield High School. 7 Feb. 2010 .