[bicycle thug]

We have a new casino going in near me in Florence, Oregon. The opposition's core group are fixed income retirees who moved there into newly created gated communities to take advantage of the natural beauty of the area, the lack of a sales tax and because they have more spending power then where they came from.

I have followed that one closely. Close enough I took the trouble to listen in on rank and file community members at their favorite watering hole cafes in that town when they talked of this issue.

Too much of their comments were based on hatred of a class of people for my comfort, to say the least. I studied the treatment of Indians historically in these United States. What I read torments me to this day.

Casinos give badly needed capital to tribes suffering from the worst sort of dispirited poverty there is. One could argue there is better ways to help out people of cultures indigenous to here before Western culture came, but I doubt they would ever will be implemented.

We lost a treasure of very rich cultures in the slaughter of the mindset of "Manifest Destiny." Their wisdom and histories that took centuries to develop, and we are the poorer for it.

In many ways, casinos are but a bone thrown to Indians for that they lost over the last five hundred years of hegemony they were at the wrong end of.

[Chad Fairbanks]

I agree... excellent summation.

[KellyAdmirer]

I agree with that. I have my own personal Native American associations myself. I will note, though, that many "Indian" casinos are run by anything but or by people who are 1/32 Native American or whatever, and the actual benefit to the community is largely a mirage. To give those folks special breaks when the business is as profitable as it is already seems a trifle like overkill.