Gambling on reserves: Wheel of fortune or risky business?

Pages 8 and 9

The economic reality for the Lake Manitoba Band is bleak and all too familiar:

95 per cent unemployment, heavy reliance on welfare, substandard living conditions and no resources.

Prospects for the 1,000 band members are as dismal as the flat and rock-studded fields that yield few opportunities for farming or livestock. The only harvest in the area, about 200 kilometres north of Winnipeg, is despair.

"There's nothing to do," band member Florence McLean sadly laments. "We have no drop-in centre, no nothing. It's just dead."

Her 30-year-old daughter committed suicide last year, a tragedy she attributes to the hopelessness on the reserve.

"People that age and younger have nothing to do."

Her band and others hoping to turn their luck around are prepared to take a gamble on casinos.

They look enviously at U.S. reservations that have hit the jackpot with Las Vegas-style gaming operations that provide employment and money for economic development - with the federal and state government's blessing - and they want a roll of the dice.

To McLean, who attended a recent conference in Vancouver and on-reserve gambling to scout for ideas, Native casinos are no crapshoot.

"It's our chance to be self-sufficient," she says. "Life is going to be better for us."

Gambling the road to riches

The optimism is echoed across Canada. On-reserve gambling is being heralded by some as the "return of the buffalo."

And judging from the operators of Indian-run casinos in the U.S. and other advocates of Indian casinos who made presentations at the two-day conference, the road to riches through Native gambling is paved with gold and free of potholes.

But critics warn of the possibility of fraud, increased petty crimes or the arrival of organized crime, replacing the dependency on welfare with the dependence on gambling and trading Native traditions for a life in the service industry.

Natives seem willing to swap the devil they know for the devil they don't.

"There's nothing like being degraded by being on welfare," says McLean.

Provinces say 'No' to casinos

However, in Canada, unlike the U.S., where the Supreme Court in 1987 upheld Indians' right to control their own casinos to allow them to pursue self-sufficiency, the issue of whether the operation of blackjack tables and roulette wheels is an inherent aboriginal rights is up in the air.

Natives say yes; the provinces, within whose jurisdiction gaming falls, say no.

And the courts have yet to decide.

And unlike the wrangling over the nebulous aboriginal right to self-government debates during constitutional negotiations last year, the issue of sovereignty is more immediate and more tangible: There's millions of dollars to make.

Or as Myron Sparklingeyes of the Goodfish Reserve near Lac La Biche, Alta.,

who would like to see gambling on his island says: "You wouldn't want to assert it (sovereignty) if there was something to assert if for."

Gaming means big bucks:

The industry is lucrative. For instance, 20 electronic slot machines legally installed through a gaming agreement with the province by the Opaskwayak Cree Nation on its reserve near The Pas, Man., last year made them at least $50,000. Ten per cent of revenues from the machines are paid to the province.

But at least one Manitoba band resents the 10-per-cent cut, which it says amounts to a tax, and provincial restrictions, such as the limit of 40 slots on reserves. The issue threatens to come to a head on the Roseau River Reserve in Manitoba, near the U.S. border.

The band already runs legal bingos and sells break-open Nevada-style tickets through Native gaming agreements the province negotiated with it and about 15 other bands.

The agreements are the first of their kind in Canada and allow Manitoba to regulate gambling on the reserves, as it does elsewhere, including the running of a European-style casino with 250 electronic slot machines and black jack tables at the opulent Hotel Fort Garry in Winnipeg. The province last year mad more than $70

million from gambling, including lotteries.

Government told to butt out

But the Roseau River Reserve wants to assert its right as a nation to run and operate a casino. And it claims the province has no jurisdiction on its land.

"We as a First Nation are as capable of running credible, good operations and

also being able to legislate our own laws," band member Carl Roberts said.

The 1,300 band members are tired of watching bus loads of Manitobans from neighboring towns drive by on their way to Minnesota, where 13 Indian-run casinos grossed about $170 million in 1991, providing almost full employment in some areas and money for economic development.

The Roseau River band already operates 30 electronic slot machines, which the province considers illegal because they were brought in outside of the gaming agreement, and is planning this month to bring in a hundred more, as well as black jack tables.

"They (the government) are not increasing casinos in Manitoba at this time," says Chuck Koppang, manager of the Native gaming division of the Manitoba Lotteries Foundation.

The province is threatening to seize any illegal equipment and charge the buyers

or suppliers. Band members are warning they will defend themselves, publicly but not violently.

"Are they going to shoot our children?" asks Roberts. "Are they going to come

in with arms? Are they going to make political prisoners out of our people?

Manitoba's attorney general has said the province is not planning a violent confrontation but will take action.

Roberts, who says Native gaming is not so much about sovereignty as it is about his band's survival, wonders what is behind the province's insistence on maintaining exclusive control over gambling.

"Is it economics or politics?"

Manitoba says neither.

Government says involvement essential

The province's Native gaming agreements do not attempt to solve issues of jurisdiction dispute - that's for the federal government to decide, says Koppang. The agrements are intended to allow bands to make money from gaming in the meantime,

he says.

And government involvement in gambling is essential, he adds.

"As gaming is a cash business, there are many opportunities for participants to 'skim' revenues...(therefore) the foundation sees a continuing role for its staff in organizational matters, staff training, audit and enforcement," Koppang told the conference.

Many bands are watching the situation in Manitoba with interest.

In B.C., where the government runs casinos and allows charities, including Native groups, to operate bingos and smaller scale gaming operations, Chief Robert Thomas says his Nanaimo band on Vancouver Island plans to open a $50-million casino, with or without the government's OK.

But the legality of on-reserve gambling is just one question bands are looking at.

Chief Thomas: "People have asked me 'Why gambling, Robert? Gambling is dirty money.' Well, I don't know of anyone in B.C. who says 'Here's $60 million to become self-sufficient in a very short period of time.'

"We have no resources left, no lumber, no fish, land claims are being held up. We can't develop without a land base," he said in an impassioned and often angry speech.

His band has seen nothing on provincial promises for social services, education or self-government, he added.

And he said he found it ironic that charities that run gambling events are concerned that Native casinos would have an unfair advantage if they didn't adhere to the province's rules.

"There's concern that there won't be a level playing field. Well, you haven't even let us into the park," he said.

And he dismisses complaints that Indians won't have to pay income taxes on money made on reserves.

"White man's big corporations get tax deferments, too," he said.

Thomas also waved off any talk of drugs, prostitution and crime.

"You allow guys to sell drugs if they can, you'll have guys selling drugs if they can."

B.C. chief defiant

A tough-talking Thomas warned the provinc it has only a limited role in the casino.

"If they think they're going to come in and dictate to us what games we can play, what hours we can open, there's going to be a bitter thing coming.

"Give us credit to run our own businesses. Just because we're Indians, does it mean we are incapable of operating things?"

But Thomas welcomes a provincial role for security checks, spot checks and accounting audits. "That adds to the credibility of our operation," he says.

"We are going to have to put in regulations and guidelines that are airtight because we will be so heavily scrutinized."

But not all bands are prepared to engage in a stare-down with provinces.

Profits to aid community

Like others, Wes Modeste of the Cowichan Band on Vancouver Island talked instead of working with provincial officials to set up gaming operations on his largely unemployed reserve.

Modeste said his 2,600-member band, known for producing heavy wool Cowhichan sweaters, was not worried about investing in an industry that produced no tangible product.

"It produces money - that's the whole idea," said the band's soft-spoken self-government co-ordinator.

"The money derived from these kinds of projects can be directed to community buildings, services, health, recreation, care of elders."

His band has no viable economic options, he says.

"Pre-contact, we were in absolute control of the resources in the vicinity. We can no longer look at that to make a living and gaming seems to be a practical industry to tap into to be reasonably sure that money could be made."

And "unlike the big Mafia families in Las Vegas who make lots of money and buy big Lincolns and big mansions, the money will go into the community."

But Francis Kavanaugh of the Whitefish Bay First Nations in northwestern Ontario says he is aware of the potential of abuse with gambling.

"I see that as a problem with some bingo players, people who hawk their TVs and VCRs to play bingo...Sooner or later they find themselves in the dumps."

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