WASHINGTON — The revenue from American Indian gaming enterprises in Minnesota has grown steadily, peaking last year at $1.6 billion.
Minnesota’s 11 federally recognized tribes have all come to depend on the money gamblers lose or spend otherwise at their 19 casinos. But some tribes make a lot of money from gaming, enough to give healthy payouts to tribal members and pay for the college tuition of their young people, while other tribes are raising significantly less money from their enterprises.
“It funds our government, it makes us self-sufficient,” said Shelley Buck, tribal council vice president for the Prairie Island Indian Community, a Dakota tribe.
Buck is proud that the tribe’s Treasure Island Resort and Casino, located about 36 miles south of the Twin Cities, can book some of the biggest names in show business, including Carrie Underwood and Santana. She’s also proud that tribal enterprises, which include the second-largest hotel in the state and a golf course, employs between 1,500 and 1,700 people.
“We are an economic engine in rural areas,” Buck said of tribal gaming.
But it wasn’t always this way for the small tribe of only about 1,100 enrolled members.
[image_caption]Shelley Buck[/image_caption]
The Prairie Island Indian Community and other Minnesota tribes were among the first to sign compacts, or agreements with the state government, required under IGRA if a tribe wanted to offer table games and slots and certain other types of gambling.
Buck said she was told a story about former Minnesota Gov. Rudy Perpich, who signed most of the Minnesota’s tribal gaming compacts. She said Perpich pushed a signed agreement across the table and told tribal officials “Good luck getting anyone to come to the reservation.”
Perpich was wrong to be a skeptic, especially when it comes to tribal casinos like Treasure Island and other that are closest to the Twin Cities.
“We probably have the best compacts in the nation,” said Buck of the contracts Minnesota tribes have signed with the state. The reason, Buck said, is that the compacts don’t “sunset,” or have an end date, and they don’t require tribes to share any revenues with the state.
‘The richest tribe in history’
The Prairie Island community uses gaming revenues to run its government and provide health and elder care, other social services and education. Tribal members who maintain at least a “C” average in school are eligible for free college tuition, a benefit that helped Buck pay for her two master’s degrees, one in sports management and the other in federal Indian law.
Tribal members also receive per capita payments, known as “per caps” from the profits from its casino and other enterprises. Buck declined to say how much those payments are for, or how much in revenues gaming has generated.
But through a Freedom of Information Act request to the National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC,) a federal agency that receives annual reports from each tribe on gaming revenues, MinnPost discovered that gaming in the state grew modestly from about $1.48 billion in 2012, to $1.55 billion in 2019. It recovered from a downturn during the coronavirus pandemic to nearly $1.6 billion last year.
Saying it is privileged commercial information, NIGC failed to provide the amount of gambling revenues earned by each Minnesota tribe.
The tribe with the state’s largest gaming operations, the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, declined requests for interviews and failed to respond to questions about the economic impact of its casinos, offering only a statement.
“The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, as a federally recognized tribe, provides essential services to its members,” the tribe’s statement said. “It is also one of the largest financial contributors to tribes in Minnesota and across the country. The SMSC, like many other tribes, does not share its financial information publicly.”
However, the tribe is not shy about its charitable donations. It says on its website that it has donated more than $370 million to organizations and causes and provided other tribes with about $500 million in economic development loans.
The tribe did open up to a New York Times reporter in 2012. He wrote that the Shakopee Mdewakanton “are believed to be the richest tribe in American history as measured by individual personal wealth.”
The story said that each adult, according to court records in a divorce case and a tribal member, received a monthly payment of around $84,000, or $1.08 million a year in 2012. And the tribe’s revenue from gaming at its Mystic Lake Casino Hotel, Little Six Casino, and from its other enterprises is believed to have increased since then.
Like the Prairie Island tribe, the Shakopee Mdewakanton has few members, 779 as of the 2020 U.S. Census.
Other Minnesota tribes have many more enrolled members and much more modest gaming operation and revenues.
“(Gaming) has been great for some tribes, but not all of them,” Buck said.
Location, location, location
The tribes whose reservations are in the north of the state, or otherwise farther away from the Twin Cities, are as dependent on gaming revenues as the wealthier tribes, even though they receive far less gambling money.
And while some tribes, including the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, provide regular “per caps” others, including the White Earth Nation do not.
[image_caption]Dale Greene[/image_caption]
Michelle Paquin, tribal legal adviser to the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, said gaming is just one “revenue stream” along with fishing and logging, that helps fund tribal services. She said visitors to the tribe’s gaming operations “tend to be vacationers,” not steady customers like those who visit the casinos nearer the Twin Cities on a repeated, regular basis.
“We don’t have a base to draw from,” Paquin said.
Instead of giving tribal members “per caps” the gambling money is used for social services for members of her 10,000-member tribe.
“We siphon off the profits to fund our public services,” Paquin said.
Robert Deschamps, chairman of the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, said his tribe’s gaming operations provide the largest employment in rural Cook County.
But he said the tribe’s gaming revenues are still down about 25% from pre-pandemic levels, a result of the closure of the Canadian border which locked out a lot of the casino’s customers.
Deschamps said gaming revenues support nearly all tribal ventures, including an elder center, schools and water and waste services.
He said the federal government’s trust obligations – a requirement to provide services required to protect and enhance tribal lands, resources, and self-government, as well as raise the standard of living and social well-being of the Indian people – only provides about 37 cents on the dollar when it comes to tribal expenditures.
The biggest downside to American Indian tribes of the federal government’s trust obligation is that it gave Congress the authority to place tribal land and other property under the control of federal agencies to the extent that virtually everything a tribe may wish to do with its land must be approved by the federal government.
Looking for more gaming revenues
Despite the dip in his tribe’s gaming revenues, Deschamps said the American Indian gaming industry is “absolutely and economic driver for the state.” While the state cannot tax gaming revenues, casinos provide jobs that generate payroll taxes and purchase goods and services from vendors that also pay state taxes.
According to the National Indian Gaming Commission, revenues from the nation’s gaming tribes have risen steadily, from $14.7 billion in 2012 to $40.9 billion in 2022, eclipsing the take of commercial casinos.
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But there is increased competition for gambling dollars, especially from internet gambling and sports betting. According to the American Gaming Association, the growth in total gaming revenue this year was fueled by online gaming – especially online sports betting – while land-based gaming was relatively flat.
Minnesota’s tribes are eager to benefit from the growing online sports betting business. But an attempt at reaching a compromise that would give tribes near exclusivity on sports betting failed this year when state legislators and the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association could not come to terms over a sports betting compact.
Deschamps said the state’s tribes are not giving up. “We are working on it with the state,” he said.
Yet some are concerned about the economic dependence Minnesota tribes have on gambling. And Greene said Native Americans should consider the moral consequences of gaming.
“We’ve had compulsive addiction pressed upon us,” he said of historical efforts to “pacify” Native Americans with liquor and drugs like laudanum. “I would think we would have a better moral and ethical viewpoint of compulsive addiction.”
Yet Greene said gaming had provided some benefit to the reservations.
“At least we are getting something for the loss or our land and resources,” he said.
Thank you Ms. Radelat. Very nice article. Straight forward reporting….with facts( or at least numbers.) Timely considering the tax revenue of marijuana , and the revenue Gov. Perpich signed away.
When Minnesota signed the compacts (under the Clinton administration) the feds prohibited states from including either a termination date or revenue sharing beyond recovering the cost of regulation. The Bush administration changed the regulations to permit both. Gov. Perpich did not “sign away” the revenue–it was not an option at the time.
U.S. history’s most extreme example of living well being the best revenge.
There’s a definite ideological difference between the Sioux tribes and the Ojibwe when it comes to divvying up the profits. While the Ojibwe up north don’t hand out individual “per caps,” opting instead to spend the money on “the community” and it’s services to the tribal members, the Sioux fund their tribal expenses through the feds’ contribution and through revenue from their other businesses and distribute the casino profits to individual members. I have friends from both the Shakopee Mdewakanton and from the Prairie Island tribes who make about $1.1 million a year (per member) in “per caps.” It dipped to about $800,000 during the pandemic but they’re on their way back to normal.
Not everyone agrees with this arrangement because a generation or two later many of their kids lack motivation to do anything with their lives, have never learned the value of hard work or the value of a dollar. Higher education? Who needs it? But it’s too late to change it as people have organized their lives around this standard of living. I personally would prefer the payments to individuals versus the collective, but I would train my kids to be responsible with their money.
But it’s true that not all tribes are getting rich from this. My tribe is in Sisseton, South Dakota and their casinos out there in the wilderness (Dakota Connection, Dakota Magic) barely make a living. My “per cap” is a $150 monthly gift card from Walmart. Seriously. I did get a full-ride college scholarship from them though.
I should have said “for” Walmart, not from Walmart.
Dennis … because you identify as NA ….. my question is unrelated to the article or to your comments but, this thought occured to me as I read your comments. I have read and heard that the Ojibway, through wars/ battles, drove the Sioux from northern Minnesota and, mostly, into the Dakotas. As a result of that, do the Sioux people and the Ojibway people ‘get along’ without hard feelings toward each other? I would think there would be the same animosity and, perhaps, bitterness, between the two tribes as there is, and for the same reasons, between NA’s and White people …. whose ancestors took their land.
Yeah, there’s still some of that. I have two artist friends, one Sioux, the other Ojibwe, who grudgingly get along only because of me I suspect. heh. It’s kind of like Irish Catholics and protestants.
Oh, and I don’t “identify as NA.” My mother was full-blood Sioux and my father was full-blood Irish. I “identify” as bi-racial. I check that little box that says “two or more races.”
“My ‘per cap’ is a $150 monthly gift card from Walmart.”
Don’t spend it all in one place.
Oh, wait . . .
Dennis, you need to get a life. The tribes were here long before you and me appeared on the horizon. The courts have spoken: the tribal nations have sovereignty and there’s not a lot of interference you or anyone else can inject upon them. Let’s allow the Indian Nation rulers to determine how and to what extent they can form their future. These questions are very grey — there aren’t many black and white ones, but left alone, the Indian Nations will create societal norms that they can live with and that align with their native roots.
Huh?
I’ll repeat that “huh?”
Nice article Ana, thank you; and also Dennis for the add’l information.
Dennis T does point out the inequities of how MN Indian tribes spend their massive profits. I have never heard of Don F’s allegation of a federal law restricting the contracts. The Shakopee tribes individual dollars is excessive and has led to personal problems and conflicts using local government services like fire, police, roads, etc…from not paying state taxes yet getting free car plates. Remember the road blockade by the city of Prior Lake?
Years ago in Barnes & Noble in Woodbury I listened to the head judge from Shakopee debate human rights and other issues with the author of The Second Civil War. One thing really surprised me- the large number of American Indians from that tribe that were really upset about lack of human rights for anyone on tribal land, the lack of a community center, need for social programs for their children, etc… Their examples were shocking including accidents with no health coverage- one woman testified about a pregnancy from a casino manager with no benefits.
Another thing that was clear is that no one has many rights on an Indian Casino in MN- it is not like the rest of the state. It appears the official tribal structure needs some revisions to include tribal input.
Finally, when you treat people differently, it is hard not to notice. Getting a million $ per year is also shocking. Do they share that with tribes like the Red Lake? I hope so. I assume the state gives American Indians no money as they are a different nation- only the feds give them money?
“The Shakopee tribes individual dollars is excessive . . .”
Excessive by whose lights? I’m not a fan of casino gambling, but it looks to me like it’s successful because people voluntarily make the trek and drop millions of dollars, expecting little (if any) return.
“Do they share that with tribes like the Red Lake?”
Is that same question asked of wealthy white people? Are the rich guys from north of Richmond expected to share their wealth with the folks in the backwoods (many of whom work to make sure the rich guys get richer)?
Which leads to the question of “Should Minnesota and Federal government be providing more funding, or the present level of funding, for NA people, in order to solve some of their problems, or should NA government (including other tribes) provide more funding for other NA people?
The closest reservation to me here in NW Montana is the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes, just south of Flathead Lake. They took a different tact, and while there is a small casino on the reservation, it is modest for sure. What those tribes did was invest in the community, they have a well regarded Community College, and they decided to maintain farming/ranching the land and invest in industry. Seems to be working, the poverty rate is low (compared to other reservations, and when you drive through there are signs of prosperity and not abject poverty.
I don’t drive by often, but when I do, that casino is usually pretty empty.
The natives are on a roll, no doubt about it, opposing any and everything natural resource related, protecting the water, you know, and buying off State legislators, persuading them to amend State law making electronic pull tabs illegal, even though revenue from the pull tabs benefits nearly every charity in the State.
I would suggest RB Holbrook re- read my comment as he missed the whole idea.
Residents or aka American Indians that own Prior Lake Casino have few human rights, no community center, manager impregnates employee then fires her with no benefits, …. that system is in America and it is broken. It has zero to do with their skin tone. They live in the United States. Yes, I would expect beige people & ALL skin tones to share with all people who need it no matter skin tone. Red Lake Reservation needs money so naturally you would ask millionaires in their family to help- with money or with time. They share a unique bond and think it would be great to support each other’s values.
The judicial system is broken. The debate and the book highlight 3 serious options: treat American Indians like a foreign country (passports & all), or continue to treat them like children needing help, or respect their culture as we do now with the Amish and allow them to become in this case Minnesotans and US citizens. The current system is clearly broken and hot helping American Indians.
Alan Holden does make a point. The MN Indians have a monopoly on gambling and want to keep the internet gambling for them as well. Not sharing does not sound like an American Indian value. MN legislators of various colors are afraid of them and that has been obvious in gambling discussions. Think about why.
Again – why are wealthy Native people being singled out as those who have some special obligation to share?
I am well aware of the denials of rights and justice on reservations. That is a side issue.
Again, you missed the point. I believe all Americans need to give back in some way shape or form to their country. When any group gets special treatment they are under more scrutiny. If you take public dollars, that goes with it as it should. This has ZERO to do with skin tone and everything to do with helping your community and country. I believe we ALL have an obligation to share with our community and our country. Some can do more and some can do less. This forum focused on one community- American Indians. I believe the more transparent we are the better we are.
On a negative note, I do find it troubling that our MN legislature is afraid of the American Indian community and wants to keep their monopoly on gambling money when the internet is involved. Earlier writers have noted the bizarre “for life monopoly” Perpich put into law with Indian casinos. I don’t see that system working nor do I think expanding a monopoly is healthy for our state or any state in our country.
We are all taxed according to our wealth …. with both our sales taxes, income taxes and property taxes. Those who are wealthier pay more taxes in order to help provide for others with less or those who are in need … generally. As I understand your comments, I believe you are saying that wealthier NA people and tribes be ‘taxed’ (use more of their money) at a higher rate in order for other NA people, with needs, to receive more.
Toni,
One idea or possibility in MN is for American Indians to use the MN Income tax they don’t pay to help each other’s tribes or their own tribe with community centers, community colleges, assist with home repairs or purchases, and other supportive “structures.” If you pay 7% MN tax for example, American Indians could pay 7% to their community or other American Indian communities to help each other. They share a definite bond I would say. It is one idea only. Their tribe could set this up.
Many weird and wrong ideas in the comments, from the usual sources. Native Americans have all the same rights as any US citizen under the constitution and bill of rights. Besides Bois Forte and Red Lake, tribal land in MN is also under state of Minnesota criminal and civil jurisdiction, since 1953. If Mystic Lake casino workers are victims of crime which is not dealt with, it is due to localized law enforcement apathy, corruption or malfeasance, not that workers magically lose their rights as US and Minnesota citizens when they set foot into a building owned by a tribe.