Positives of Indian Gaming

Indian gaming not only helps Native Americans, it also helps the United States. Native Americans have been oppressed for hundreds of years, and with Indian gaming they are starting to see prosperity. Indian gaming has helped Native Americans become more independent and helped rebuild their local communities. The United States benefits from Indian gaming because it has attributed millions of dollars of revenue to outside companies that deal with the casinos, supplied numerous jobs to non-Indians, and has acquired billions of tax dollars. Indian gaming helps everyone in the United States and should not be limited or stopped by its oppressors. Indian gaming has endured and fought many battles to become legal in the United States. The concept of Indian gaming began with low stakes bingo on reservation land. Throughout the 1970s, dozens of tribes were using bingo to help their community (Pevar 319). Many tribes encountered legal battles within the states they were hosting profitable bingo halls. Such was the case for the Oneida in 1975, located in New York, which held a bingo fund raiser for the local fire department (Cuillier 202). The state claimed the game was illegal because the prizes offered by the tribe were over the limit of New York law (Cuillier 202). The Oneida argued that their status as a sovereign nation kept them from such limitations. Another case spurred up in Florida, alongside the Oneida case and both were under Supreme Court review. The Seminole Nation had established their own high-stakes bingo game in retrospect to the Oneida’s claim of sovereignty and they were shut down by the Florida state (Cuillier 203). The Seminole sued under the same premise as the Oneida. They argued that as a sovereign nation they were not regulated by state law. In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that the states cannot have power of this situation and reaffirmed the right of sovereignty (Cuillier 203). This decision made dozens of other tribes to establish their own