Indian Gaming and Native Identity

Abstract:     
The article presents the significant developments in the law governing Indian gaming with a view to assessing gaming’s politicization of Native identity. By addressing the stereotypes and caricatures of Native Americans and tribes that animate legal and political change in the field, the article seeks to demonstrate the essentialism of Indian gaming and the consequent effect of gaming politics on Native identity. Key among the views expressed are that Indian gaming produces real, non-theoretical gains for tribes, which in turn creates new subject positions for Native Americans, and that gaming introduces substantial non-Native influence into the process of tribal government, thereby enacting a social and political cost to tribes. The article covers in separate sections the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, Tribal-State compacting in California, and critical responses to Native identity under an identity politics rubric.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 42

Keywords: Indian gaming, Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, IGRA, tribes, identity, Native American, identity politics, casino gaming, California gaming, queer theory, postmodernism, compacts

JEL Classification: K00, L83, H77

Accepted Paper Series