Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Winter 2005
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 25, No. 4, Winter 2005, pp. 59.
Abstract
Indian gaming throughout the United States has become a forum in which much of America reveals and works out its perspectives on American Indians, historical struggle, cultural survival, gambling, reciprocity, and the matter of choice. California is in the throes of an advertising war over more, or possibly less, gambling in the state, even as new casinos are going up in New York, Florida, and many other states. The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation runs Foxwoods in Connecticut, the Shakopee Mdewakanton (Dakota) Sioux Community runs Mystic Lake in Minnesota, and there are many other extremely successful Indian gaming enterprises, such as that of the Pechanga Band of Luisefio Indians in California, survivors of an intense and sometimes near-genocidal historical destruction. Gambling and Survival in Native North America addresses these core issues and others from an interdisciplinary perspective, fleshing out much of the controversy by grounding it in a historical discussion of cultural conflict and the management of sociopolitical identity.
The first chapters, concerning the Pequots and others in New England history, mix judicious literary analysis with some of the brutal events that too often reached levels of genocide. Notwithstanding their presumed threehundred year disappearance, the Pequots' story is compelling because of their reappearance in the late twentieth century and their ultimately successful gambling enterprises. Pasquaretta also takes us through the writings and political adventures of William Apess, whose work and documented presence became key to Pequot claims over a hundred years later.
Based largely on Standing Bear's accounts, Pasquaratta offers an adept comparison of Native and white forms of gambling, focusing on the lack of drinking and negative behavior involving Dakota traditional gambling compared with the considerable debauchery common to places like Paris. Pasquaretta makes contemporary comparisons between Indian gaming casinos, involving little drinking and the near absence of highly sexualized shows, and casinos in the cultural meccas of Las Vegas and Atlantic City, complete with prostitution and large-scale substance abuse.
Comments
Copyright 2005 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln