Until the mid-1970s, native
tribes encountered great difficulty building viable business ventures. That
changed in 1975, when Seminole Marcellus Osceola asked the tribal council for
permission to sell cigarettes on reservation lands—a move that puzzled council
members who knew the challenges of trying to sell products on remote lands with
few roads and fewer buildings. Osceola explained that if the reservation were
truly a sovereign government, then federal and state taxes on cigarettes would
not apply. In theory, he could buy cigarettes wholesale, and then sell them at a
slightly discounted cost to the consumer, while pocketing larger margins for
himself. The tribe agreed, and Osceola arranged to give the tribe 10 percent of
his profits. Business boomed until Broward County sheriff Bob Butterworth (who
eventually was elected Florida state attorney general) slapped an injunction on
the tribe. The tribe countersued and won.
That decision was the thin edge of the wedge. Until that
moment, sovereignty on tribal lands centered around preserving cultural
distinctiveness and managing government handouts. The Seminoles had found a more
assertive interpretation of sovereignty. Perhaps true sovereignty meant that
state-imposed taxes and other restrictions on legal activities might be
ignored—with astonishing financial results. According to historian Henry Kersey
in his book, An Assumption of
Sovereignty, smoke shops built on various Seminole lands
had paid $1.6 million to the tribe by 1980.
By then, the Seminoles had found another restriction to
disregard. At that time, bingo was the only legal form of gambling in the state
of Florida, and it carried a restriction of $50 in winnings per game. Once each
night, the local church hall or Rotary club could offer a single grand prize of
up to $200. In the fall of 1979, the Seminoles opened their own bingo hall. On
the very first night, a single game could net a winner $10,000, while the grand
prize totaled $50,000. The bingo hall proved alarmingly popular. Florida’s
demographics, swollen with new retirees, their offspring and the middle-age
empty nesters who visit them, is perfect for gambling of any sort, and an
especially good location for high-stakes bingo. The Seminoles set up bus lines
to bring in players from nearby towns and packed the halls.
Butterworth wasted no time in getting an injunction against
what he viewed as anarchy. This time, the Seminole’s legal challenge made it all
the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court refused to issue a ruling, but
sided with a lower court that gave the Seminole tribe free rein in regulating
gaming on its own lands. At that point, sovereignty stopped being a concept and
became a legal precedent. With that decision, the $23 billion industry that is
Native American gaming, a sector that makes more money annually than the
combined gambling income of Nevada, New Jersey and Mississippi, became
inevitable.
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