This is an insight into my experience in Indian Gaming, so far. The difficult parts are hard to convey, as it involves many stories about racial discrimination and marginalization.
The emotional results of political retaliation and manipulation have certainly taken a toll. They called me “a kid”, but would use any idea of mine as their own.
Rough Draft: Indian Gaming Memoir
Introduction – Indian Gaming as a Lived System
I came back to the reservation in 1988 because someone told me there was work.
At the time, it wasn’t a casino—just a bingo hall. A large metal building full of folding chairs, the constant smell of cigarette smoke hanging in the air, and the feeling that something new was trying to be born. That same year, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. I didn’t know the law by name yet. I just knew our people were tired of asking for help and ready to build something of our own.
The phone call wasn’t ceremonial. It wasn’t political. It was practical.
Can you come home? We need people we trust.
So I came home.
What we believed then was simple: Indian Gaming would stabilize housing, create jobs, and give tribal members control over our future. And for a while, it did. We were poor, overworked, and proud. There were no job descriptions, no professional hierarchies, no corporate charts—just problems that needed solving and people willing to do the work. I worked wherever I was needed: housing, compliance, gaming operations, governance. We thought the hardest part would be getting started.
We were wrong.
The hardest part came later—after the buildings went up, after payroll stabilized, after the professionals arrived with their credentials, their policies, and their quiet authority. That was when the work began to change. And so did the rules about who was allowed to do it.
This book is not an argument against Indian Gaming. It is a record of what happened after it succeeded.
Indian Gaming generated significant revenue for the Hannahville Indian Community. It expanded tribal government operations, funded housing, healthcare, infrastructure, and social programs, and brought outside dollars into a rural region that had long been ignored. On paper, it worked. But over time, the benefits of that success stopped flowing evenly back to tribal members. Governance structures hardened. Employment standards shifted. Decision‑making authority moved further and further away from the people the system was supposed to serve.
What emerged was an agency problem—a condition where those entrusted to manage resources begin serving institutional interests rather than the beneficiaries themselves. In this case, control over gaming proceeds, employment opportunities, and long‑term planning drifted away from tribal membership and toward administrative, corporate, and often non‑tribal actors. The system didn’t collapse. It functioned—just not for everyone.
I was not an outside critic watching this happen. I was inside it.
I worked to restore a defunct housing authority, resolve decades‑old federal compliance failures, and reopen access to millions of dollars in housing and infrastructure funding. I sat on boards, chaired gaming operations, negotiated with federal and state agencies, and helped build programs that still exist today. I also learned—slowly and painfully—what happens to people who insist that policy serve its stated purpose instead of institutional convenience.
This account documents both sides of Indian Gaming: its promise and its cost.
It records how housing policy, employment law, tribal preference, and federal and state oversight intersected with gaming revenues to create barriers for tribal members seeking meaningful work, exempt positions, or entrepreneurial opportunity. It documents patterns of exclusion, retaliation, and displacement experienced by those who challenged these systems or attempted to enforce tribal law as written. And it traces the personal consequences of those failures—housing insecurity, job loss, addiction, family disruption, and long‑term harm to quality of life—not as isolated experiences, but as predictable outcomes of structural decisions.
This is not a grievance file. It is institutional memory.
Tribal governments are often described as sovereign, self‑determining entities. In practice, they operate within layered systems of federal law, state influence, corporate governance, and professional management. When those systems lose accountability to tribal membership, the harm does not always look dramatic. More often, it looks bureaucratic. Quiet. Procedural. Clean on paper.
This book treats Indian Gaming not as an abstract economic model, but as a lived system—one that shapes who gets hired, who gets heard, who advances, and who is slowly pushed aside. It is written for tribal members, future leaders, policymakers, advocates, and researchers who want to understand how good intentions can be redirected, how institutions remember those who challenge them, and why accountability matters long after the ribbon‑cutting ceremonies are over.
I did not come home to fight my own government. I came home to build something that worked.
What follows is the story of how it did—and what it cost to say so.
Historical Note
The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA)
The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) was enacted by the United States Congress on October 17, 1988, as Public Law 100‑497. It did not appear out of nowhere. It was Congress’s response to a legal and political conflict that had already reached the U.S. Supreme Court and could no longer be ignored.
In 1987, the Supreme Court ruled in California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians that states could not regulate gaming on tribal lands if those same forms of gaming were permitted anywhere within the state. The decision affirmed tribal sovereignty but left gaming largely unregulated at the federal level. States objected. Congress responded. IGRA was the compromise.
At its core, IGRA had three stated purposes:
- To provide a statutory basis for gaming as a means of promoting tribal economic development, self‑sufficiency, and strong tribal governments.
- To ensure that Indian tribes remained the primary beneficiaries of gaming operations.
- To shield tribal gaming from organized crime and corrupting influences through regulation and oversight.
To accomplish this, IGRA created a federal regulatory framework that divided tribal gaming into three classes, each with different levels of oversight:
- Class I gaming includes traditional and ceremonial games and social games with minimal prizes. These remain under the exclusive jurisdiction of the tribe.
- Class II gaming includes bingo and certain non‑banked card games. These are regulated primarily by tribes, with oversight by the National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC).
- Class III gaming includes casino‑style gaming such as slot machines and banking card games. Class III gaming requires a Tribal‑State Compact, approved by the Department of the Interior, in addition to federal oversight.
IGRA also established the National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC), an independent federal agency within the Department of the Interior, charged with approving tribal gaming ordinances, reviewing management contracts, enforcing compliance, and ensuring that tribes retained what the statute calls a “sole proprietary interest” in their gaming operations.
That phrase—sole proprietary interest—is critical. Under IGRA, tribes are required to remain the owners and primary decision‑makers in gaming enterprises. Net revenues may be used only for specific purposes: funding tribal government operations and programs, promoting tribal economic development, supporting the general welfare of tribal members, making charitable donations, or funding local government services.
IGRA did not dictate how tribes must structure their internal governments, boards, or employment systems. It assumed that strong tribal governments, accountable to their own members, would carry out the law’s intent. In practice, this left significant discretion in how gaming enterprises were managed, who exercised authority, and how benefits were distributed.
For many tribes, IGRA worked exactly as intended. Gaming revenues transformed communities that had endured generations of poverty and neglect. Housing improved. Infrastructure expanded. Tribal governments grew in capacity and influence.
But IGRA also created new pressures.
Gaming enterprises became complex, high‑revenue operations operating at the intersection of tribal sovereignty, federal oversight, and state negotiation. Professional management, legal compliance, and corporate structures followed. Over time, the question was no longer whether tribes had the legal right to game, but who inside the system actually exercised control—and who benefitted from it.
This book does not dispute IGRA’s purpose or legitimacy. It examines what happens when the distance between statutory intent and institutional practice grows wide enough to change outcomes on the ground.
The pages that follow are not about abstract law. They are about how IGRA functioned as a lived system—inside offices, boardrooms, housing programs, and workplaces—and what it meant for the tribal members whose lives were supposed to be improved by its success.
Part I – Coming Home (Hope, Belonging, Purpose)
Chapter 1 – The Call Back
Coming Home
I came back to the reservation in 1988 because someone told me there was work.
That was all it took then. Not a vision statement. Not a promise of advancement. Just a phone call—plain, unceremonious, and urgent.
Can you come home? We need people we trust.
At the time, the place I was returning to wasn’t a casino. It was a bingo hall: a large metal building filled with folding chairs, long tables, and the constant haze of cigarette smoke. The coffee was always burnt. The lights never quite reached the corners. But beneath the smoke and the noise, there was something else moving—something unfinished, something trying to take shape.
That same year, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. I didn’t know its name then. Most of us didn’t. We only knew that for the first time in a long while, the future didn’t feel entirely closed. Our people were tired of asking for help. Tired of waiting. Tired of being told what we couldn’t do. Gaming felt like a way to build something of our own—on our land, by our rules, for our people.
So I came home.
In those early days, no one asked about titles. There were no job descriptions, no organizational charts, no consultants arriving with binders and credentials. There were only problems, and whoever was willing to take responsibility for them. I worked wherever I was needed—housing, compliance, governance, gaming operations. Sometimes all at once. Everyone wore multiple hats because there were not enough heads to go around.
We were poor. We were overworked. And we were proud.
We believed Indian Gaming would stabilize housing, create jobs, and give tribal members real control over our future. For a while, it did. Payroll began to steady. Programs expanded. People who had spent their lives scraping by could finally imagine something different for their children. We weren’t naïve—we knew money changed things—but we believed the hardest part was getting started.
We were wrong.
The hardest part came later.
It came after the buildings went up. After the bingo hall gave way to something larger. After the revenue stabilized and the professionals arrived—armed with résumés, credentials, policies, and quiet authority. That was when the work began to change. And so did the rules about who was allowed to do it.
This book is not an argument against Indian Gaming.
It is a record of what happened after it succeeded.
Indian Gaming brought real money into the Hannahville Indian Community. It funded housing, healthcare, infrastructure, and tribal government operations. On paper, it worked. But over time, the benefits of that success stopped flowing evenly back to tribal members. Governance hardened. Employment standards shifted. Decision‑making authority moved further and further away from the people the system was meant to serve.
What emerged was an agency problem—though I didn’t have a name for it at the time. Those entrusted to manage resources began serving institutional interests rather than the community itself. Control over gaming revenues, employment pathways, and long‑term planning drifted toward administrative, corporate, and often non‑tribal actors. The system didn’t collapse. It functioned.
Just not for everyone.
I wasn’t watching this from the outside. I was inside it.
I worked to revive a dormant housing authority, restore federal compliance that had been ignored for decades, and reopen access to millions of dollars in housing and infrastructure funding. I chaired boards, negotiated with state and federal agencies, and helped build systems that still exist today. I also learned—slowly and painfully—what happens to people who insist that policy serve its stated purpose instead of institutional convenience.
This is not a grievance file.
It is institutional memory.
Tribal governments are often described as sovereign and self‑determining. In practice, they operate inside layered systems of federal law, state oversight, corporate governance, and professional management. When those systems lose accountability to tribal membership, the harm does not usually look dramatic. More often, it looks procedural. Clean. Defensible. Bureaucratic.
It looks like reclassification instead of removal.
Like “fit” instead of exclusion.
Like compliance replacing care.
And it leaves damage that rarely appears in reports: housing insecurity, job loss, displacement, addiction, family fracture, and long‑term harm to quality of life—not as accidents, but as predictable outcomes of structural decisions.
I did not come home to fight my own government.
I came home to build something that worked.
What follows is the story of how it did—and what it cost to say so.
Chapter 2 – No Job Descriptions Yet
In the beginning, nobody asked what my title was.
Titles came later—after money, after lawyers, after org charts. Back then, what mattered was whether you showed up and whether you finished what you started. If something needed doing and you didn’t do it, everyone knew. If you did it well, everyone knew that too. There was no place to hide.
I worked wherever I was needed. Housing one day. Compliance the next. Gaming operations when something went wrong. Governance when a board needed someone who would actually read the paperwork. Sometimes I did all of it in the same week. Sometimes in the same day.
There were no job descriptions yet because there were no jobs as we understand them now. There were only responsibilities. Some of them inherited. Some of them avoided. Some of them dropped into your lap because you happened to be standing there when the question was asked.
The reservation didn’t run on specialization. It ran on familiarity.
You knew who had the keys. You knew whose uncle had built the place. You knew who would answer the phone after midnight and who wouldn’t. Work moved through relationships, not memos. Decisions were made in hallways, kitchens, parking lots, and meetings that went late because everyone there still had to go to work afterward.
We were building something while living inside it.
The bingo hall was still the center of gravity. Smoke hung in the air no matter how many fans you ran. Folding chairs scraped the floor. Coffee sat too long on hot plates. Money came in slowly at first—enough to keep the lights on, enough to convince people it might work, not enough to feel safe.
Safety wasn’t the point anyway.
What mattered was momentum. Once people believed the doors would stay open, they showed up. Once they showed up, payroll mattered. Once payroll mattered, systems followed. And once systems followed, someone had to make sure they didn’t collapse under their own weight.
That was how I found myself in housing.
The housing authority had been dormant, half‑functional, or broken—depending on who you asked. Files were incomplete. Compliance issues stretched back years. Federal rules didn’t care about context. They cared about checkboxes. Miss enough of them, and the money stopped.
When the money stopped, everything stopped.
So we started fixing what we could with what we had. Paperwork first. Meetings next. Board members tracked down after late casino shifts. Signatures collected wherever people could be found. Nobody was getting paid extra for this. Nobody was getting thanked. But everyone understood what was at stake.
What we didn’t have yet was distance.
There was no separation between decision‑makers and consequences. If a program failed, it failed in front of you. If a policy hurt someone, you saw them at the store, at the clinic, at the school. You couldn’t call it an abstraction. You couldn’t outsource responsibility.
We thought the hardest part would be building something from nothing.
We were wrong.
The hardest part would come later—when success made distance possible.
Chapter 3 – What Indian Gaming Was Supposed to Do
Indian Gaming was never supposed to make us rich.
That part gets forgotten now, buried under balance sheets and expansion plans, but it mattered in the beginning. The goal wasn’t luxury. It wasn’t prestige. It wasn’t competing with Las Vegas. The goal was stability—plain, unglamorous stability—in places that had never been allowed to have it.
Indian Gaming was supposed to put roofs over people’s heads that didn’t leak. It was supposed to keep the lights on without begging. It was supposed to mean that if you worked hard, you could stay. That your kids didn’t have to leave to survive.
Housing was always at the center of that promise.
For generations, housing on the reservation had been treated like an afterthought—patched together, underfunded, regulated from far away by people who never had to live with the consequences. Indian Gaming was supposed to change that. Not overnight. Not magically. But steadily.
Employment was the other half.
Indian Gaming was supposed to create jobs tribal members could actually hold—not just entry‑level work, but roles with responsibility, authority, and a future. Tribal preference wasn’t a slogan. It was the principle that the people who lived there should be the first to benefit from what was built there.
Governance tied it all together.
Gaming revenue was supposed to strengthen tribal governments so they could serve their people better—not replace them, not overshadow them, not turn inward. Boards existed to manage risk, not to insulate decision‑makers from accountability. Authority was supposed to flow upward from the membership, not downward from management.
For a while, that promise held.
Money came in slowly enough that no one mistook it for entitlement. Every dollar had a job. Every decision had a face attached to it. If you voted to fund something, you saw it built—or not built. If you cut something, you lived with the fallout.
Success didn’t feel abstract yet.
Then success changed the scale of everything.
As revenues increased, so did complexity. As complexity increased, so did the need for specialist accountants, attorneys, consultants, managers. Each one came with credentials and language that felt increasingly foreign to the people who had built the system in the first place.
That shift wasn’t inevitable.
But it was tempting.
Chapter 4 – Left to Anwer Phone
In the early days of the move of the casino operations to the Highway that ran through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Between 1990 and 1992, the Gaming Board became a huge part of the gaming operations. The seven-member board operated from the tin trailer double wide connected by a hallway. The general meeting area for the tribal council, boards, committees, and executive meetings was all held in a room located across from the chairman’s office.
There were several offices that took calls for mental health counseling, child welfare, and federal and state program offices. All incoming verbal contact was still landline-driven for daily phone operations. One operator was employed to monitor all incoming calls.
Usually, all the offices were full and very lively most days. The phones were managed by the tribal government’s tribal secretary.
When more regulatory issues arose, there was plenty of hesitancy to implement rules, written or unwritten.
I began my leadership by becoming the Chairman of the Bingo/Casino Board. Eventually, we formalized on paper and renamed the board, the Gaming Board of Directors.
Soon, phone calls and requests for help began pouring in. As the “housing director”, I needed an assistant, as casino operations became a major issue to contend with, as a tribal representative.
Slot machines brought instant success, but the tribal government had put the cart before the horse, as we did on many projects.
The phone calls came in regularly as major business players from Escanaba were not pleased that the tribal government had opened a new casino with slot machines to employ its tribal members.
When phone calls and local pressure became overwhelming, the administrative staff would not be available. The secretary would not be able to help because they were having employment problems. I ended up fielding and answering phone calls on a daily basis. Phone calls the local electric company became so routine, I memorized the number quickly.
Unknown to myself, I had taken on the roles of many and began to “wear to many hats”. It created personal growth issues.
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