by Clay Akiwenzie

About the author: Clay Akiwenzie is a member of the Saugeen Ojibway tribe of the Cape Croker Reserve in Ontario, Canada.

Gaming will give tribes more money which will enable them to diversify and realize the long sought-after goal of individual tribal sovereignty. At least, that is the succession of events that proponents of Indian gaming would like us to believe. While the allure of more money in communities that generally have precious little industry, nearly no liquid assets, and extremely high unemployment is fairly easy to see, what is often missing from a thorough discussion of gaming is a clear understanding of basic issues like what sovereignty actually means, how best to achieve it, and who exactly "counts" as Indian? These sort of basic questions about the terminology used in this...