Post by Moon Seeker on Jun 15, 2008 13:28:51 GMT -5
June 15, 2008
By Reuters
Most of the past four centuries have been miserable for the Mashantucket Pequot tribe. Almost annihilated by English settlers and smallpox, the survivors were enslaved and scattered. By the 1970s, the few dozen remaining members of the Native American tribe were living in poverty in trailers on a scrap of Connecticut woods, where they grew lettuce and tapped maple syrup.
Gambling has changed all that.
Now they own Foxwoods, the biggest casino in North America, and the tribe's 800 to 900 members are rich. Last month they sported fox furs and tuxedos and sipped champagne to celebrate the opening of the MGM Grand tower, a $700 million (R5.6 billion) extension to their empire.
But the tribe has found that with this success comes controversy.
Since the tribe won federal recognition in 1983, critics have questioned the authenticity of members' ancestry, saying many people turned out to be Pequots when the prospect of a casino entered the picture.
Some considered the tribe to be extinct, wiped out by the settlers and other native tribes, including the Mohegan, its traditional enemy, in the Pequot War in 1637.
Hitting back at these critics, the Mashantucket Pequot Museum opened an interesting exhibition on May 17, the day after the new tower was opened, titled Race: Are We So Different?
Museum research director Kevin McBride says: "The American public has this idea of native people that's ingrained and it's based upon a Plains tradition" with Wild West images of people "with long hair, hunting buffalo, with a teepee".
"That carries into what people expect the Pequots to look like and act like. They're struck by the fact there's a lot of diversity in terms of ethnicity."
One of the first items on display in the museum is a photograph of about 100 tribal members ranging from fair-skinned blondes and redheads to blacks and people who fit the classic native American image.
The diversity stems from the many mixed marriages with people of different ethnicities over the past 400 years.
Whatever the controversies over race, the business side has come a long way since the days of bingo halls on Indian reservations in the 1980s.
With the largest gambling floor space of any casino on the continent, Foxwoods is the biggest player in a thriving industry. Indian casinos raked in gross revenues of more than $27 billion nationwide last year.
The 30-storey MGM Grand adds 1 400 slot machines to Foxwoods' existing 7 200, as well as restaurants with celebrity chefs, a luxurious spa and a 4 000-seat theatre.
At the opening ceremony Gamal Aziz, the president of MGM Mirage, a partner in the development, said: "This is beginning more and more to look like Las Vegas."
Mashantucket Pequot members, about half of whom are under 18, receive payments from the casino profits.
Jason Guyot, who works for the MGM Grand, says the casino "has had a huge impact on revitalising our nation as a tribe".
Guyot graduated from college five years ago, with tuition funded by the tribe. He recalls his uncle working in the vegetable business that made way for a bingo hall in 1986. "Back then nobody had dreams and aspirations," he says.
Economic engine
Since the casino replaced the bingo hall in 1992, the Mashantucket Pequots have given about $2.6 billion to the state of Connecticut - 25 percent of slot revenues. Last year it paid $200 million to the state.
As a sovereign nation, the tribe is not required to pay taxes or to make public its financial reports.
Rodney Butler, the treasurer of the tribal council, says much of the profit is reinvested in the business and used to fund community services. He declines to say how much each tribe member receives in annual payments.
"It's like any other family owned business," he says. "This is a capital-intensive industry … there's not like some bank account sitting there with billions inside."
Butler grew up near the Mohegan reservation across the river from Foxwoods. "We'd come up here and visit our cousins, there was really nothing here so we would just spend time with family and have family picnics," he says.
Now the casino employs 10 000 people directly and the tribe points to studies showing it accounts for another 30 000 jobs in the region. "It brought people back to the reservation, having that economic engine," Butler says.
Joe Smith, a spokesperson for the Mohegan tribe, which owns the rival Mohegan Sun casino, says his tribe's members each receive about $28 000 a year as a share of the profits.
The Mohegans now enjoy a friendly cross-town rivalry with the Mashantucket Pequots, who he says are rumoured to get more like six-figure payments, partly because there are fewer tribe members.
Smith says the Mohegans have used casino profits to renovate a tribal burial ground and a park on the site of a Mohegan fort and to improve infrastructure. Low-cost housing and a retirement home have also been built for older tribe members.
Of the 562 federally recognised indigenous tribes, roughly 225 tribes in 28 states are engaged in gaming, according to the National Indian Gaming Association. Only about a quarter of the gaming tribes distribute per capita payments.
According to a report on the Indian gaming industry by Alan Meister, an economist with Analysis Group, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun generated combined annual gambling revenues of about $2.5 billion in 2006. That compares with $12.6 billion a year for all commercial casinos in Nevada, home of Las Vegas.
Angela Gonzalez, who teaches American Indian studies at Cornell University, says: "With Foxwoods, people tend to focus on the enormous wealth. What tribal gaming development has done is reverse this history of poverty that many tribes have confronted for years."
Nonetheless, it remains controversial. Gonzalez, a Hopi tribe member, says some argue that gambling runs counter to tribal traditions and risks making native people too materialistic.
"There's certainly a lot of mixed feelings within all native communities."
www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=565&fSetId=265&fArticleId=4454234
By Reuters
Most of the past four centuries have been miserable for the Mashantucket Pequot tribe. Almost annihilated by English settlers and smallpox, the survivors were enslaved and scattered. By the 1970s, the few dozen remaining members of the Native American tribe were living in poverty in trailers on a scrap of Connecticut woods, where they grew lettuce and tapped maple syrup.
Gambling has changed all that.
Now they own Foxwoods, the biggest casino in North America, and the tribe's 800 to 900 members are rich. Last month they sported fox furs and tuxedos and sipped champagne to celebrate the opening of the MGM Grand tower, a $700 million (R5.6 billion) extension to their empire.
But the tribe has found that with this success comes controversy.
Since the tribe won federal recognition in 1983, critics have questioned the authenticity of members' ancestry, saying many people turned out to be Pequots when the prospect of a casino entered the picture.
Some considered the tribe to be extinct, wiped out by the settlers and other native tribes, including the Mohegan, its traditional enemy, in the Pequot War in 1637.
Hitting back at these critics, the Mashantucket Pequot Museum opened an interesting exhibition on May 17, the day after the new tower was opened, titled Race: Are We So Different?
Museum research director Kevin McBride says: "The American public has this idea of native people that's ingrained and it's based upon a Plains tradition" with Wild West images of people "with long hair, hunting buffalo, with a teepee".
"That carries into what people expect the Pequots to look like and act like. They're struck by the fact there's a lot of diversity in terms of ethnicity."
One of the first items on display in the museum is a photograph of about 100 tribal members ranging from fair-skinned blondes and redheads to blacks and people who fit the classic native American image.
The diversity stems from the many mixed marriages with people of different ethnicities over the past 400 years.
Whatever the controversies over race, the business side has come a long way since the days of bingo halls on Indian reservations in the 1980s.
With the largest gambling floor space of any casino on the continent, Foxwoods is the biggest player in a thriving industry. Indian casinos raked in gross revenues of more than $27 billion nationwide last year.
The 30-storey MGM Grand adds 1 400 slot machines to Foxwoods' existing 7 200, as well as restaurants with celebrity chefs, a luxurious spa and a 4 000-seat theatre.
At the opening ceremony Gamal Aziz, the president of MGM Mirage, a partner in the development, said: "This is beginning more and more to look like Las Vegas."
Mashantucket Pequot members, about half of whom are under 18, receive payments from the casino profits.
Jason Guyot, who works for the MGM Grand, says the casino "has had a huge impact on revitalising our nation as a tribe".
Guyot graduated from college five years ago, with tuition funded by the tribe. He recalls his uncle working in the vegetable business that made way for a bingo hall in 1986. "Back then nobody had dreams and aspirations," he says.
Economic engine
Since the casino replaced the bingo hall in 1992, the Mashantucket Pequots have given about $2.6 billion to the state of Connecticut - 25 percent of slot revenues. Last year it paid $200 million to the state.
As a sovereign nation, the tribe is not required to pay taxes or to make public its financial reports.
Rodney Butler, the treasurer of the tribal council, says much of the profit is reinvested in the business and used to fund community services. He declines to say how much each tribe member receives in annual payments.
"It's like any other family owned business," he says. "This is a capital-intensive industry … there's not like some bank account sitting there with billions inside."
Butler grew up near the Mohegan reservation across the river from Foxwoods. "We'd come up here and visit our cousins, there was really nothing here so we would just spend time with family and have family picnics," he says.
Now the casino employs 10 000 people directly and the tribe points to studies showing it accounts for another 30 000 jobs in the region. "It brought people back to the reservation, having that economic engine," Butler says.
Joe Smith, a spokesperson for the Mohegan tribe, which owns the rival Mohegan Sun casino, says his tribe's members each receive about $28 000 a year as a share of the profits.
The Mohegans now enjoy a friendly cross-town rivalry with the Mashantucket Pequots, who he says are rumoured to get more like six-figure payments, partly because there are fewer tribe members.
Smith says the Mohegans have used casino profits to renovate a tribal burial ground and a park on the site of a Mohegan fort and to improve infrastructure. Low-cost housing and a retirement home have also been built for older tribe members.
Of the 562 federally recognised indigenous tribes, roughly 225 tribes in 28 states are engaged in gaming, according to the National Indian Gaming Association. Only about a quarter of the gaming tribes distribute per capita payments.
According to a report on the Indian gaming industry by Alan Meister, an economist with Analysis Group, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun generated combined annual gambling revenues of about $2.5 billion in 2006. That compares with $12.6 billion a year for all commercial casinos in Nevada, home of Las Vegas.
Angela Gonzalez, who teaches American Indian studies at Cornell University, says: "With Foxwoods, people tend to focus on the enormous wealth. What tribal gaming development has done is reverse this history of poverty that many tribes have confronted for years."
Nonetheless, it remains controversial. Gonzalez, a Hopi tribe member, says some argue that gambling runs counter to tribal traditions and risks making native people too materialistic.
"There's certainly a lot of mixed feelings within all native communities."
www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=565&fSetId=265&fArticleId=4454234