QUOTE (Ravor @ Oct 31 2009, 12:04 AM)

If I remember correctly, although the Indians were allowed to have "electronic gaming" they weren't allowed to build actual casinos or play cards, ect, something about "gambling" although legal being defined by the state. Meh, although I'm a fence sitter when it comes to gaming in general I'm not a fan of people getting to play by different rules just because of their bloodline.
I'm not sure about that one, you may be right. I know Cripple Creek, Blackhawk, and, uh, that other gaming town in Colorado (drawing a blank) all lobbied to have Colorado relax the restrictions there from limited gaiming ($5 bets) to full gaming like Vegas and won. I know at least one of those casino towns in on a reservation.
QUOTE (kzt @ Oct 31 2009, 12:07 AM)

My feeling is that the tribes got screwed for a long time, and nobody is forcing people to play there. But the whole "sovereignty" bit gets abused.
It's not as bad as it used to be. At one time all an indian had to do was get to the rez and he was safe (at least until the Feds arrived), and the reservation cops wouldn't usually cooperate with the local LEOs at all. These days they're
usually more reasonable, but not always. I think they got tired of the Feds coming down on them like a ton of bricks, FBI started getting really fed up with playing referee between them like cops at a domestic dispute call.
QUOTE (Ravor @ Oct 31 2009, 12:24 AM)

True, very good point, the rezes were probably the worst thing that could have happened to the tribes. Hell, maybe even forced assemation might have been better in the long run.
There are some issues with forced assimilation, but yeah, in the
really long run it usually works out better, at least here in the U.S. because we'll let them keep their culture. On the other hand, don't forget the old government schools that tried that here way back when, you still hear the occasional horror stories from old indians about being punished for speaking thier tribal language in school, of course, the kids still lived on the reservation, so yeah, assimilation not gonna work in that case anyway. Not that I disagree with making them speak english in school, they have to be prepared to go out into 'the world' after all, just, some of the schools went WAY overboard with the punishment.
You know, I was thinking, sometimes when I hear indians talking about succession (and I have heard it), I wonder what the Navajo wind-talkers from WWII would have to say about it, nothing good I suspect. Those poor bastards went through hell for this country and were damn proud of the U.S.