One of the first successful Indian gaming ventures, the Pequots’ Foxwoods Resort Casino highlights the issue of Indian gaming in general, which provoked controversy on three fronts: philosophical, geographical, and political. The success of Foxwoods and similar ventures also attests to Native Americans’ self-reliance.
In the early 1970’s, the Mashantucket Pequot Indian Tribe seemed on its way to extinction for the third time, but twenty years later, it was the richest tribe in the country, owner of the largest gaming casino in the world. Proceeds from the Foxwoods Resort Casino, which opened in February, 1992, would provide money, housing, college tuitions, health care, and other needs of the nearly six hundred tribal members, as well as contributing more than $200 million annually to the state of Connecticut, giving grants to area groups, and enabling the tribe to contribute heavily to political parties.
In 1986, the tribal nation opened its original 40,000-square-foot, high-stakes bingo hall on its reservation in southeastern Connecticut, featuring 125 tables and three eating facilities. By 2006, the facility would grow to 1.5 million square feet, including gaming space in six distinct casinos, more than thirty-five food and beverage outlets, conference facilities, a shopping mall, a conference center, and 1,416 guest rooms in three hotels. In a nearby but separate location, the $150 million Museum of the American Indian, billed as the largest Native American center in the country, was opened in 1998.
Casinos operated by Native American nations were and still are, in general, popular but controversial. The controversy surrounding the Pequots was, like their casino and wealth, writ large. Their enterprise is both the most famous and the most criticized of the Native American rags-to-riches stories of the 1970’s and 1980’s.
Once a nation of 8,000 people, the Pequots, like other indigenous peoples, were decimated by wars and disease after the arrival in the early seventeenth century of European settlers of North America. The 600 remaining Pequots were divided between the Mohegans and the Narragansetts. Pequot sachem Robin Cassacinamon negotiated for 3,000 acres in Mashantucket, but in 1761 Connecticut reduced it to 989 acres for the some 150 members remaining. By 1856, illegal land sales by the state had reduced the reservation to 213 acres. A 1935 report lists 42 on the reservation, but in 1970 only 2 remained.
One of them was Elizabeth George Plouffe, who with her husband had written a tribal constitution in the late 1960’s and now convinced her grandson, Skip Hayward, to live on the reservation. Before Plouffe died in 1973, they started to locate and bring back other Pequots scattered from New England to New Mexico. Hayward was elected the first tribal chairman. A new constitution was written. The tribe subsisted on funds from the sale of cordwood, maple syrup, garden vegetables, a swine project, and a hydroponic greenhouse. Hayward enlisted the aid of the Native American Rights Fund and the Indian Rights Association. From 1976 to 1983, he and attorney Tom Tureen
That same year, 1983, the tribal council agreed to finance an on-reservation bingo facility. The state of Connecticut threatened to prosecute. The Pequots sued, on the basis of a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bryan v. Itasca County, that states do not have regulatory jurisdiction over Native American tribal lands, and in 1986 they won. With title to the land, a loan of $4 million was obtained and paid off in two years. Timing, location, plentiful funds, and skillful political maneuvering swiftly advanced the bingo project.
In 1988, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act
Under the 1988 act, Class III gaming—involving all manner of gaming, including slot machines—required negotiation between the tribe and the state, approval by the secretary of the interior, and a gaming ordinance approved by the new Indian Gaming Regulatory Commission
In fiscal year 2007, Connecticut received more than $200 million as its share of slot machine proceeds. The National Indian Gaming Commission
In 2007, there were 557 tribes in the United States, and more than 200 of them were conducting some form of gaming. However, only 22 had Class III licenses. Indian gaming brought in more than twice as much money as private casinos in Nevada and Atlantic City, and had grown from $5 billion in 1995 to $22.6 billion in 2005. Profits from gaming gave Native Americans money to use for political purposes and made the richest tribes strong players in their states and in the nation’s capital. Gaming has also spawned a corps of consultants eager to help in economic development ventures and to become investment counselors to these tribes.
In contrast, tribes that are not participating in gaming, because of either their geographical location or their philosophy, still depend on government funds and suffer from poverty and an average of more than 25 percent unemployment.
The story of Foxwoods illustrates a dramatic reversal of the way native peoples have been historically treated by the U.S. government. Accounts abound about the broken treaties, cavalier treatment, and continued paternalism that kept native tribes in poverty. With skill and determination, the Pequots used the political system to their advantage and amassed virtually unlimited amounts of money, which not only benefited tribal members but also ensured their continued influence in the U.S. political system, in which they are now important players rather than poor petitioners.
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Benedict, Jeff. Without Reservation: The Making of America’s Most Powerful Indian Tribe and Foxwoods, the World’s Largest Casino. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. Narrative account of the Maine Passamaquoddys’ and Penobscots’ and the Connecticut Pequots’ battle with Congress. Asserts that in the case of the Pequots, recognition standards maintained by the Bureau of Indian Affairs were not followed. Features discussion of then tribal chief Skip Hayward and attorney Tom Tureen. -
Eisler, Kim Isaac. Revenge of the Pequots: How a Small Native American Tribe Created the World’s Most Profitable Casino. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. Also centers on the character and actions of tribal chairman Richard “Skip” Hayward and attorney Tom Tureen. Includes an account involving members of Congress and Donald Trump in political machinations and heavy campaign contributions to both the Democratic and Republican parties. -
Frantz, Klaus. Indian Reservations in the United States: Territory, Sovereignty, and Socioeconomic Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Starting with a two-hundred-year historical perspective, the book compares the socioeconomic status and value systems of Native Americans with other racial groups. Treats conflicts with the states and with other tribes on issues of mining, manufacturing, services, agriculture, and forestry on reservation lands. -
Light, Steven Andrew, and Kathryn R. L. Rand. Indian Gaming and Tribal Sovereignty: The Casino Compromise. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005. A short (162-page), heavily annotated (63 pages) volume of clear, readable history, legal standing, and wide-ranging examples of tribal experience. Authors advocate for a change in the way the federal government, the states, and the tribes interact, urging that they find common ground rather than continue their adversarial relationship. -
Mason, W. Dale. Indian Gaming: Tribal Sovereignty and American Politics. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000. Views history, legal action, and federal-state-tribal relations through the lens of political science theory. -
Mullis, Angela, and David Kamper, eds. Indian Gaming: Who Wins? Los Angeles: UCLA American Indian Studies Center, 2000. Opposing essays by sixteen tribal leaders, lawyers, public policy makers, consultants, and academics who participated in a 1997 conference at UCLA, based on the assumption that economic self-determination and legal sovereignty create a paradox. -
Williams, Mary E., ed. Legalized Gambling. San Diego, Calif.: Greenhaven Press, 1999. From the Opposing Viewpoints series, the volume includes positive and negative perspectives on the social costs and benefits of gambling in terms of individuals, families, governments, and native tribes.
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