Word: bingo
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...Yaquis in Arizona, are trying to cash in on the quirky boom. In two weeks a new 1,600-seat hall will open on the Sandia Pueblo reservation in New Mexico, and the Baronas plan to build a $2.5 million arena with room for 2,000. "Bingo is benefiting our people," says Arthur Welmas, the Cabazons' tribal chairman. "It's giving us pride." The tribe's business manager, John Paul Nichols, is blunt. Says he: "We have ourselves a little gold mine...
...game to $200) because the Penobscots agreed in 1980 not to be treated as a sovereign reservation. Officials in Washington State, Arizona and Oklahoma are now trying to control Indian games. However, federal appellate courts ruled as recently as 1982 that if a state allows any bingo gambling-and 42 do-then it has no authority to regulate the way that Indians run bingo on their reservations...
...money and jobs are manna to many Indians. Cherokees of North Carolina have cleared $500,000 in profits from the 65,000 players who have come since 1982 to their parlor in a converted textile mill. In Florida, where the Seminoles began bingo in 1979, the 1,800-member tribe this year raked in $4.2 million from three joints. "We used to make trinkets," says Tribal Chairman James Billie, a former professional alligator wrestler, "but we didn't really have the marketing skills to make a go of that...
While the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington might not have chosen bingo as a means to the native American dream, the Reagan Administration has reacted with benign neglect. Indeed, the enthusiasts among Indians sound like Reagan Republicans. "If anyone here is not working today," claims Barona Tribal Chairman Joe Welch, "it's because they don't want...
Some tribes have handled their windfalls with surpassing prudence. The 185 Shakopee Sioux around Prior Lake, Minn., opened a 1,300-seat place just over a year ago. Already the bingo profits, $2.5 million, have paid for new medical clinics, a day care program and an 85-foot-high tepee-cum-cultural center. The Seminoles have endowed tribal scholarships, set up a credit union and amassed a large cattle herd. There is some populist pressure for cash distribution. The Baronas early this month gave members of the tribe $1,000 apiece from bingo earnings; the money might have been better...