Whole Lot of Spending MoneyHigh Stakes: Florida Seminole Gaming and Sovereignty. By Jessica R. Cattelino. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008

Autor: George Pierre Castile
Rok vydání: 2010
Předmět:
Zdroj: Current Anthropology. 51:149-150
ISSN: 1537-5382
0011-3204
DOI: 10.1086/649634
Popis: This book deals with the Seminole role in establishing Indian gaming and its impact on the tribe. In the mid-1970s, Seminole leaders exploring new sources of revenue began to encounter opposition from Florida state authorities over their smoke-shop and bingo operations. The subsequent court battles led finally to the 1987 Supreme Court decision in California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians. Although California and Florida were both PL (Public Law) 280 states, states that had taken over criminal jurisdiction on the reservations, the courts held that such states could not assert civil/regulatory authority on the reservations and that state laws dealing with gambling were regulatory. While the states could not regulate Indian gaming, the federal government, with its plenary authority over Indian affairs, could, and faced with the Cabazon decision, it quickly proceeded to do so. In 1988, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, restricting reservation gaming in a variety of ways and reinvolving states by requiring “compacts” between the states and the tribes. The Seminole took to the courts again to force such a compact when Florida resisted, but they lost in Seminole v. Florida (1996), when the Supreme Court held that states had sovereign immunity from such suits. The practical effect was limited because the state and tribe had long since come to a working arrangement, and the Seminole soon expanded from bingo to operate seven casinos. The Seminole had thus opened in the 1970s a whole new era of Indian gaming enterprise, not only for themselves but for other tribes as well. By 2008 national Indian gaming revenue was $26.7 billion, by the estimate of National Indian Gaming Commission established by the 1988 act. Cattelino suggests that her account “opens a window” on tribal gaming writ large, which is true, but it must be noted that the Seminole described in this book are in no way typical of modern Indian tribes. The new torrent of casino money is not at all evenly distributed over Indian country, most reservations being rural and located in the less populated West, far from potential customers. More than half of the 526 federally recognized tribes (322) have no gaming at all, and a handful of small tribes located near urban pools of customers take in more than half of all gambling revenues, the Seminole being among the prosperous few. The Seminole are also among the minority of gaming tribes, about a third, who distribute substantial sums of gambling revenue to individuals on a per capita basis. Where their original bingo operations generated a few thousands of dollars, Seminole tribal income is now in the hundreds of millions, and individuals receive per capita distributions roughly the equivalent of Harvard full professor’s pay, according to Florida newspaper reports. In the end, this book is essentially concerned with the impact on the 3,300 Seminole of “a whole lot of spending money,” to paraphrase the George Harrison song. In the introductory chapter Cattelino sets herself three goals. The first is to tell “the story of Seminole gaming ethnographically” (p. 2), the impact of gaming on everyday life. The second is to analyze “Seminoles’ uses and discourses of casino money . . . ways that Seminoles revalue money in the service of social reproduction” (p. 2). The third goal is “to contribute to policies and theories of sovereignty” (p. 3). Although Cattelino suggests that it can be divided into two sections—chapters 1–3 on economic questions and 4–5 on political-legal ones—the book seems to me much more integrated than that, the ethnographic images woven throughout, and the money theme constantly recurring. Whether one ultimately agrees with her Bourdieu-influenced “cultural production” analysis or her views on sovereignty, the ethnographic insights into the life of a tribe in such dramatic and rapid change make the book unique and an invaluable contribution. The second task of “revaluation” I take to be aimed at understanding the Seminole’s own attempts at making sense of the changes in their lives. What it is to be a Seminole is obviously shifting at all times, particularly when the economic basis of their lives is turned upside down: from poverty, dependence, and economic powerlessness to something quite different. Tribal social structure, particularly governance, is in flux, with predictable stresses. Indian governments have long had a tendency to factional disputes along kin lines, and these disputes increase when there is more to argue about. The picture of the tribal jet (p. 210) could serve as a symbol of the extent of the shift in “Seminoleness.” Cattelino does not resolve all of this any more than do the Seminole; doing so is a work in progress. It is her third task, the discussion of the impact of all this new money on “sovereignty” that is most complex and most problematical. The Seminole have substituted their own funds for federal money and thus vastly altered the dependency that is at the heart of much of the federal-Indian relation. The Seminole, using their own rather than others’ funds, have much increased freedom of choice in all aspects of their lives. The money also gives them considerably more political influence at both local and national levels, although the Abramoff affair suggests that there are limits to such lobbying. The Seminole are less dependent and have more freedom of action and more influence as a result of gaming, none of which, I would suggest, has altered their place in the politicallegal structure of the United States, which grants them and other Native Americans a limited right of self-governance (sovereignty), in contrast to other ethnically defined communities. Cattelino’s treatment of the Seminole’s changing
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