That distinction belongs to the "top 40" tribes with casino revenues exceeding $100 million, says Van Norman, and those tribes have reservations (and thus casinos) close to urban areas.
Casinos are the "new buffalo," as the cliche in Indian country has it.īut the cliche obscures an important point: Not all of the 175 tribes that own a total of 232 casinos in 19 states are hitting the jackpot. Indian-owned gambling businesses ranging from bingo halls to casinos already amount to a $14.5 billion industry, according to Mark Van Norman, executive director of the American Indian Gaming Association. Many tribes are counting on casinos to deliver them from the widespread poverty that has plagued their people for generations. And in the settlement, he believed he had achieved it. His goal as a young legal services attorney had been simple: to put the Penobscots and Passamaquoddies on essentially the same economic footing as the nation's hundreds of federally recognized tribes. But Tureen had concluded that the settlement was the best deal possible in the political environment of the time, and the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribal councils had gone along with him. It curbed the Maine tribes' sovereignty on their reservations in unusual ways compared with the prerogatives of other federally recognized tribes. The deal did have a downside from the Indians' perspective. It was an extraordinary coup for Tureen, who had extracted huge gains against very long odds for the two small and impoverished tribes and in effect had breathed new life into the Indians' aspirations to survive as a distinct people.
The Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act, as the deal was called, awarded the tribes $81.5 million in federal funds and recognized the Penobscots and Passamaquoddies as Indian tribes under US law.
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