Public Relations

MinnPost: The new buffalo -- series on tribal gaming industry

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

"It is easy to understand why so many workers at the Mystic Lake Casino and Hotel complex are non-Indian. If you were a multi-millionaire – as many of the casino’s owners reportedly are – would you wait tables? Push a broom? Clean hotel rooms?

In fact, the Indian tribe that owns the casino, the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, is so small that its members couldn’t fill all of the jobs at the sprawling entertainment complex even if every man, woman and child wanted to work there.

With an annual payroll exceeding $110 million, the tribe calls itself the largest employer in Scott County, providing jobs for about 1,000 more workers than the next four employers combined. (The tribe doesn’t reveal its own membership numbers, but by most estimates it’s close to 500.)

The tribe’s late chairman, Stanley R. Crooks, told the New York Times that the tribe has a “99.2 percent unemployment rate . . . entirely voluntary.”

OK. That explains the job situation at Mystic Lake and a few other tribal-run casinos near the Twin Cities.

Up north, though, where you find the state’s most populous reservations, thousands of Indians remain unemployed even while their tribes run casinos. And they do not have the luxury of hefty casino payments to justify staying home from work. Many of their families still are desperately poor.

How does that square with a key argument made 20 years ago for establishing casinos in the first place? They were to spur economic development on and near reservations. By extension, they were to grow jobs where they were sorely needed. A related goal was to help Indians become more self-sufficient."

Get the Story:
Despite casinos, reservations still plagued by high unemployment (MinnPost 12/11)