G2E: On Indigenous Peoples Day, Tribal Leaders Discuss Gaming’s Impact

LAS VEGAS – The gap solar day of the 2022 Global Gaming Expo (G2E) coincided with Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a holiday noted past Native Americans and acknowledged inward several states. So, it was only if seize that Monday’s keynote session of the annual group discussion examined the wallop that play has had on tribal communities across the country.

Ernie Stevens, the chairman of the Amerindic Gaming Association, led a treatment with former Centennial State US Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians Chairman Thomas Reid Milanovich, and political consultant Charles Hardin Holley Captain James Cook Macarro that touched upon gaming and their reflections on the holiday.

Stevens noted that the tribal gaming nations hold rebounded from the COVID-19 pandemic to employing at least 300,000 workers. That’s the same list of employees before the tribal casinos had to closed downward inward Mar 2020. With that many jobs, tribal gaming is the 11th largest employer inward the country.

“Right upward on that point with Amazon and Walmart and the eternal sleep of those folks,” Stevens said. “Good pay, good benefits, and a safe environment to work. This comeback is a resounding assertion of the visual sensation and attack to the pandemic taken by tribal leadership.”

Gaming Gives Tribes a Voice

Milanovich said that casino gaming, which Calif. voters approved inward 2000, has given his folk the power to operate its authorities and offer wellness guardianship and housing to its members.

It’s also presumption the Palm Beach folk something else, he said. A voice. For example, the tribe’s gaming trading operations have produced revenue needful to follow up on a sound fight inward the courts to protect its irrigate rights.

It gives us the ability to protect our born(p) resources, to protect our culture,” said Milanovich. “It gives us the ability to hire unspoiled teams inward DC that canful assist communicate to the United States government what our intentions are. That wasn’t e'er possible beforehand.”

Macarro said that gaming has helped tribes in various ways. For her tribe, the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe, gaming has allowed families to remain on indigene bring down that she described as third water, one-third, and third forests and retain its tribal heritage

Her husband is Gospel According to Mark Macarro, who serves as chairman of the Pechanga Band of Indians inward California. She said that the tribe has reaped rewards from what was for the first time considered to live a “horrible” relocation to now comely ane of the largest tribal gaming operators inwards the country.

“It has really catapulted us in slipway that i live my grandparents couldn’t regular hold imagined rear and Red Lake,” she said.

Campbell Calls Gaming a Success

Campbell was a CO representative in 1988 when Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), which gave tribal nations in to the highest degree states the power to follow gaming. He helped catch the banker's bill passed inward the House after it was ab initio approved inward the Senate.

While he acknowledged that gaming hasn’t helped all tribes, he said it relieve has been a huge success for Native Americans.

“None of us that were mired inwards it could hold of all time thought it was going to be, someday, a multi-billion dollar sign a year business, hiring tens of thousands, inwards fact, hundreds of thousands of employees, both Native American and non-Indian too, and aid so many communities,” he said.

Tribal gaming produced revenues of $100 jillion in its firstly year and grew to $11 1000000000000 by the last of the lowest century. Last year, yet as the state emerged from the pandemic, tribal gaming operations generated $39 billion.