Indian Gaming

"Forget Cinderella! Minnesota has a different rags-to-riches story, a legend that took hold 20 years ago when Indians opened the state’s first gambling casinos.

A MinnPost editor heard a variation on the story recently from an architect who’s working on a new mansion south of the Twin Cities. As this version goes, a young Dakota Indian is building a massive Tudor-style house with her share of gambling profits. The house will take its place alongside other luxurious Indian-owned homes in what has quickly become one of Minnesota’s most posh neighborhoods.

Are the stories broadly true? Did casino gambling propel Indians into enviable wealth or at least into solid middle-class prosperity? Did it give Minnesota’s Indians better lives with more control over their economies and their destinies? Did it restore cultural pride and empower their tribal governments to move effectively toward self-determination for a new generation of Indians?

More than idle curiosity drives the questions. At least 100,000 Indians live in Minnesota, and their status is an important piece of the state’s economic, social and historic fabric. So MinnPost’s editors gave Steve Date and me the summer and fall to search for answers."

Get the Story:
Has casino money improved lives on Minnesota’s Indian reservations? (MinnPost 12/10)
Minnesota timeline: How gambling came to reservations (MinnPost 12/10)