For the modern Native, today is a good day to gamble

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Remember the good old days when the media's perception of Native people leaned towards a rather tragic or noble image, one of an alcoholic, land claim protester who could ride a horse bareback while smudging an abandoned car on their front lawn with sweetgrass?

I remember those days fondly because, as a Native person, I had the luxury, even the pleasure of rising above those stereotypes and proudly declaring to a prejudiced world "I am not an alcoholic. I do not have a land claim. And I cannot ride a horse, bareback or with a saddle." One had to be grateful for small victories.

My brethren and I always struggled to become more than just shallow images on international television, so we proudly denounced pop culture's inaccurate impression of us as we drank our lattes. In many ways, it seems the perception and misperception of Native people (and other cultures) developed parallel to the creation of mass media. Several hundred years ago a book was put together consisting of letters written by Jesuits and sent back to Europe, detailing the life of Canada's Indigenous people. It was called Relations. It's on my shelf right next to W.P. Kinsella's Born Indian. Then came movies and television and there went the neighborhood.

On that more modern level, many of my friends are Native actors and they constantly deal with preconceived notions they are often asked to play. They would tell me of the "three question rule" they often have to face at auditions: One-Do you speak a Native language?' It was never, 'Do you speak your Native language?' Most didn't care if a Cree spoke Haida or an Oneida spoke Inuktutuk, as long as it was a Native language.

Two-'Befitting a noble warrior proudly surveying the limitless prairies, what do you look like without your shirt?' Native actresses tended to find that one especially annoying. And three- 'Can you ride a horse?' Since almost 70 per cent of Native people live, or were brought up in, an urban environment, that one was always the hardest to fake. Still, most say they can. It's a matter of pride and there's a certain hope something on a genetic level will kick in.

Most seem to forget horses were introduced to North America only 400 years ago and have been part of certain Aboriginal cultures for maybe 300 of those years. And many Aboriginal cultures never had much of a use for horses, preferring to travel via rivers and lakes or other traditional ways. Technically, Caucasians have more of a genetic history with horses than Native people.

So every time I'm in a bar, as a political statement I find myself asking every non-Native woman I meet if they can speak their Indigenous language, what they look like without their shirt, and if they can ride a horse. Turn about is fair play.

In the blink of an eye, however, there has arisen on the horizon a new Indian stereotype, one that has now become the most prominent perception our Americans neighbors now have of Native people. I am talking about the connection between Casinos and Indians.

Recently, on episodes of The West Wing, Family Guy, Son Of The Beach, and even The Simpsons to name just a few, the only reference to the First Nations of this continent in the entire season (probably several seasons) was in some context with casinos.

In the April 8th edition of People magazine, there's an article entitled Native Son: Harvard-educated entrepreneur Lance Morgan takes a gamble-and his Winnebago tribe hits the jackpot. If you wade through the subliminal sub-text, you might be able to figure out what the article is about. Similarly, in the April 21 Family Circus cartoon, about to participate in a familiar children's game, Billy is telling his cowboy-dressed younger brother P.J., "You be the cowboy, I'll be the Indian. I have a casino." I should mention Billy is dressed in a stylish tuxedo.

A few days ago, on a nostalgic whim, I leafed through a magazine I once enjoyed as a child, Mad Magazine. In a section called Unconscious Racism ws a line that read "you see a Native American and you automatically assume he's got a piece of a casino somewhere." Last month I was in California where a friend admitted that most Californians didn't know there were still Native people living in the state until they started opening casinos a couple decades ago.

Casino Indians seem to be the new cliche in the media, one that has thrown most of the dark-skinned original inhabitants of this land for a loop. Before we were proud to distance ourselves from those previous assumptions, those of poor, oppressed images that were beneath us because of the demeaning impression. To add insult to injury, many of my Native actor friends had finally gotten their angry, drunk, mystical Indian audition pieces down pat. Now, ironically, the tables have turned and everybody expects us to be rich and successful. It was a short hop from blockading a road to setting up a casino, from buckskin to a three-piece suit, from a canoe to a Lincoln. Somewhere in that process, we seemed to have missed the middle class station. You see the dilemma.

Now, Native casinos are beginning to pop up here in Canada with an alarming frequency, so it's only a matter of time till Canadians start developing that impresario impression too.

Now the major twist arising from this issue is, this particular stereotype doesn't seem all that bad on the surface. A small part of me really wouldn't mind exploring this particular lifestyle. Maybe I do want a piece of a casino. So do many of my friends. Who am I to say the Americans are wrong, as long as they can back up their words? It's definitely a vertical move on the stereotype hierarchy.

One slight problem though, the casinos up here seem to disagree. They won't return my calls. I might have to move to the States. Or set up a casino in my apartment? I'm told I could possibly do this since I saw somewhere on television that it is part of our traditional, Aboriginal way of life.