Tulalips support study of Indian economies

By John K. Wiley

Associated Press

SPOKANE — Bolstered by casino revenues, American Indian tribes have improved their lot, as well as the fortunes of their non-Indian neighbors, over the past decade.

Now, some Indian leaders are calling for a study to find the "Indian gross national product" and put to rest the perception that Indian tribes are a drag on the national economy.

Others are skeptical of any efforts to quantify Indian contributions, saying that would give politicians and others another avenue for controlling tribes, wealthy and poor alike.

Reservation gambling has been the economic engine for many tribes over the past decade, Ron Allen, first vice president of the National Congress of American Indians, said in an interview this week as the Congress met in Spokane.

Just under half of the nation’s 558 recognized Indian tribes have opted for bingo halls and Nevada-style casinos, according to the National Indian Gaming Association. A 1998 study found that more than half of all Indian gaming revenues were generated by the operations of only eight tribes.

The most successful casinos are run by tribes with reservations near large cities, such as the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe’s Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut, between New York and Boston.

Many reservations stuck in out-of-the-way rural locations still have high poverty and unemployment, making many members dependent on government funding, Allen said.

"There are still a lot of problems, even in those tribes with casinos," he said.

John McCoy, a leader of the Tulalip tribe in Snohomish County, is lobbying the Indian Congress to financially support a study of Indian reservation economies.

The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University is conducting a pilot project among Oklahoma tribes, looking at the social and economic impacts gaming has had on tribes and surrounding communities. The project is one of the first of its kind, said Andrew Lee of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development.

"We think the end result will show the positive impact tribes have on the economy," McCoy said. "One of the perceptions we need to dispel is that Indian nations are a drag on the economy."

McCoy said he hopes the study can be expanded to encompass all tribes, including those whose income does not come from gaming.

It is not known how much money Indian gaming generates because tribes consider their earnings figures to be proprietary.

"That’s a massive question," said Stephen Cornell, a Udall Center for Public Policy professor at the University of Arizona. "But there’s a lot of economic activity that doesn’t have anything to do with Indian gaming."

A 1998 study in Washington state found that 27 federally recognized tribes contribute $1 billion annually to the economy and paid nearly $57 million in state and federal payroll taxes for 14,000 full-time employees, many of them non-Indians.

"Indians have never wanted to be dependent on the federal government," Allen said. "It’s the government’s way of having control over the Indian community."

Indian tribes and nations have made more economic strides in the past 25 years than in the previous 150 years, contends Lee Cook, a Red Lake Chippewa from Minnesota who is president of the Native American Preparatory School in Santa Fe, N.M.

Government anti-poverty programs of the 1960s and 1970s set the stage for tribal self-governance that prepared them for the coming of gaming enterprises, Lee said.

"The growth has been totally phenomenal, but it’s still not enough," he said.

Besides Nevada-style gambling, reservations derive income from leases and rental of their lands for mining, timber, grazing and other natural resources, such as farming and fishing. Revenues from Indian trust lands are more than $500 million a year.

"The irony is the public’s perception is that the Indian community is not contributing, when in fact, it is," Allen said. "It’s almost as if the success of a tribe is a wrong. With Indian tribes, business success is looked at in a different vein."