Tribes’ Gamble on Gaming Pays Off in Economic Development

Two winters ago, housing was so tight on the reservation that some families were living in their cars.

But life has changed for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla.

This summer, 59 American Indian families will move into two-story, four-bedroom houses that will rival those of any suburban subdivision. There will be vinyl siding and carports, landscaped yards and dishwashers.

What a difference a few slot machines can make.

Since opening the Wildhorse Gaming Resort in 1994, the eastern Oregon tribes have posted profits of $5 million a year.

The tribes, once known primarily for their supporting role in the Wild West pageantry of the Pendleton Round-Up rodeo, are using their gambling profits to leverage grants and loans for housing, a golf course, a cultural center and other projects. Since 1992, the tribes’ budget has grown from $7 million to $27 million.

“We weren’t able to go downtown and get a $3-million loan from any bank three years ago,” tribal chairman Don Sampson said. “Now we can. We are chiseling away at that poverty we had in the past.”

These, then, are the fruits of gambling for the Umatillas--an answer to “60 Minutes” commentator Andy Rooney, who asked earlier this year: “Why don’t the Indian casinos making hundreds of millions of tax-free dollars help their own people?”

The Indians would say that is exactly what they are doing. And they would point to the Wildhorse Gaming Resort in the windblown high desert of eastern Oregon, typical, they say, of what gambling has meant to native peoples since Congress enacted the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988.

Since then, 140 of the 557 federally recognized tribes have developed state-approved gambling operations.

“Generally, it’s viewed as the new buffalo,” said Rick Hill, chairman of the National Indian Gaming Assn. “It’s putting food on the table. It’s giving people the ability to establish credit, buy homes, buy cars and have a better quality of life for their children.”

From 1990 to 1995, the number of Indians in Minnesota getting Aid to Families With Dependent Children dropped 58%--a change that coincided with Indian casinos becoming the state’s ninth-largest employer, according to the state’s Indian Gaming Assn.

Bob Whelan, a Portland economist hired by the Oregon Lottery to study the state’s six Indian casinos, found they are very different from those in Atlantic City and Nevada.

“These aren’t casinos run for profit,” Whelan said. “These are casinos basically run for developing economic-development dollars.”

And those dollars can be very important to the tribes that earn them, many of which have struggled with poverty for generations, said Tom Greaves, a professor of anthropology at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa.

“Small tribes typically have most of their cash and employment administered by federal agencies and have rather little control over many aspects of their lives,” Greaves said. “Casino money, within the tribe’s compact constraints, is theirs to spend. There is a certain aspect of liberation to this.”

When the first settlers struggled over the Blue Mountains on the Oregon Trail in 1843, there were 8,000 members of the Umatilla, Cayuse and Walla Walla tribes. They ranged over 6.4 million acres they called Nix-yow-way--now eastern Oregon and Washington.

By 1855, their numbers diminished by disease and war, the tribes signed a treaty giving up most of their lands. Now their reservation covers just 172,000 acres, and they have just 3,000 members.

The Wildhorse casino is more than 200 miles from the bulk of Oregon’s 3 million people, but it draws well from the traffic on the new Oregon Trail--Interstate 84--as well as nearby Walla Walla, Wash.

The casino’s 340 jobs and $6 million payroll have helped cut unemployment on the reservation from 34% to 24% in the last year. Members of the Umatilla tribes fill 36% of the jobs, other Indians 27% and non-Indians 37%.

Umatilla tribal member Tom Pierre was working for the railroad, driving as far as 200 miles to work, when he quit to take a job at Wildhorse. He started as a security guard, became a blackjack dealer and is now a pit boss.

“I made more money working for the railroad, but I enjoy this more because I get to stay home,” Pierre said as the flashing lights and electronic beeps of the slot machines bounced around him.

A member of the tribal housing council, he used his $500 share of gambling profits last year to buy a king-size bed. Other years, he has used the money for siding or new windows for his house, which was built by his wife’s grandfather.

Most tribes recognize that gambling won’t last forever, so they invest their profits in building diversified economies that will pay off for generations, Hill said.

The Oneida Tribe outside Green Bay, Wis., built an electronics plant and is getting into wireless communications with the help of gambling profits, said spokesman Jeff House. After three years, the tribe has stopped making $225 annual payments to its 13,000 members. The feeling is that jobs are worth more than handouts.

“There’re no Donald Trumps here,” House said. “We’re providing jobs, not only for our own people, but non-Oneidas as well.”

The Umatilla tribes are building a golf course and RV park that will combine with the hotel, casino and truck stop they already operate to broaden tourist attractions in the area.

They also are building the Tamustalick Cultural Center, another tourist draw that will preserve tribal culture while telling the Indians’ side of the story of the Oregon Trail.

For too long, the reservation was an exit ramp--not a destination, as Sampson, the chairman of the Umatillas, can attest.

When he was young, his family followed the pea harvest. Later, the government sent his father to Chicago to learn to run printing presses. Unable to find a job in his new trade near the reservation, he took his family to Portland, 220 miles away.

With help from the tribes, Sampson went to college and came back to the reservation as a fish biologist, helping restore salmon runs that had died out in the Umatilla River.

Now, more tribal members are moving back to the reservation.

“The thing is, our people have some hope, and they are able to work and they are able to seek that American dream everybody else has had, maybe to our exclusion,” Sampson said.

“They are proud of the community we are developing here. They are proud we have our own businesses. They are proud they can go to work and pay for their kids to go to school, buy a car and know they are still a member of the tribe. They still have their culture and their heritage.”