By Renee Gasch

The floor at Oneida Bingo and Casino in Green Bay is a blur of flashing neon, techno-colored carpeting, bells ringing, tokens clanging against metal and polished roulette wheels whizzing around.

At the card tables, things come into focus. The young and the old, the black and the white and Native Americans and European Americans all stare intently at the cards hitting the green felt. They take little notice of the color of the person sitting next to them. They are more concerned with the orange and white tokens they finger nervously and how much green it will mean is in their pockets at the end of the night.

Around a different bargaining table, the stakes are substantially higher, but the results no less tense. The issue at hand is the gaming compacts between the state and tribal governments arranged by Gov. Jim Doyle in spring 2003. The deal allowed tribal casinos to add more table games and determine their own betting limits and operation times. In exchange, the tribes promise to put a lot more green back into the state budget.

“The tribes have made an enormous contribution to getting our state budget in balance – to the tune of about $209 million,” Doyle Spokesman Dan Leistikow says. “Every dollar we collect from the tribes is a dollar we don’t have to tax or take from education or health care or basic services.”

But not everyone in the Wisconsin Legislature agrees with Doyle’s decision. The Republican Party strongly objected to the lack of legislative oversight of the deal. Law currently permits the governor to negotiate compacts without the approval of the Legislature. Republicans are also concerned about the unforeseeable deadline of the deal.

“We don’t do things forever, ever,” State Senator Bob Welch, R-Redgranite says. Welch twice proposed a bill to gain legislative oversight of the compact. Both bills were vetoed by Doyle, a Democrat.

“I don’t understand it; we didn’t understand it from day one. [Doyle] refuses to talk to us about it. He is very dismissive to any of our concerns,” Welch says.

The Republicans took their complaints to the next level. Assembly Speaker John Gard and Senate Majority Leader Mary Panzer filed a lawsuit against Doyle to question the constitutionality of both the compact and Wisconsin gambling in general.

On the Defense Again

For Native Americans, the case has brought back sour memories of the spear fishing controversy in the early 1980s, when they were forced to go to court to defend their treaty rights to hunt and gather. Protestors argued that tribes were taking all of the prime game fish out of the lakes before the regular rod and reel fishing season began.

“I see spear fishing as a prime example,” Representative Terry Musser, R-Black River Falls, says. “It’s a lack of understanding and a lack of education on both sides – not knowing what the other side is doing and not being aware of the rights of the other side.”

Musser is chair of the State Tribal Relations Committee, which includes representatives from the 11 Wisconsin tribes and the Legislature and works to facilitate discussion between state and tribal governments.

The Question of Race

Twenty years later, Native American rights are the topic in the courts again. It has many questioning whether the colors of the people at the bargaining table are coming into play.

In summer 2003, the Republican Party included a controversial ad opposing the compact on its Web site. The ad depicted a white character fleeing from a rotating tomahawk with a voice over saying, “Taxpayers are getting scalped.”

The tribes immediately demanded the cartoon be removed and the party make an apology. In a letter to the tribes, party Chairman Rick Graber apologized for offending them and stated the party only intended to make a political point about Doyle.

“I guess we weren’t shocked that it was done,” Potawatomi spokesman Tom Krajewski says. “What was even more troubling was the reluctance on the part of the Republican Party to admit that it was an error.”

Doyle’s office saw the ad as a low-blow attempt to make a political statement.

“We’ve seen some really unfortunate and ugly attacks made against the tribes who have really stepped forward when the state needed them,” Leistikow says. “[The character] is just one example of the kind of campaign and attacks that we’ve seen against the tribes which have been made for political purposes.”

The ad was not representative of all the Republicans, however.

“I think it was awful. The tribes rightly asked for an apology,” Welch says. “We never intended to make this a debate about [Native American] sovereignty. We were debating gambling and the oversight of the Legislature.”

Sovereignty as a History

Despite the intentions, however, the tribes feel on the defense once again. Gaming has been an essential part of their sovereignty and economic success since the U.S. Congress nearly unanimously ruled in 1987 that tribal governments had the sovereign right to regulate gambling in states that have lotteries.

Oneida Nation Public Relations Director Bobbi Webster says that Native American gaming has worked unlike any other economic plan in the past 100 years. It has raised Native Americans from one of the poorest groups in Wisconsin to one that pumps millions of dollars into the Wisconsin economy each year, she says.

In its gaming operations, Oneida employs about 1,300 people, about half of which are non-Native American, and disperses a weekly payroll of about $1.7 million, according to Webster. Some of this money is spent in their co-operative grocery store or at the few gas stations on the Oneida reservation, but the vast majority goes back into Fox Valley communities, she explains.

On a state level, the tribes employ more than 34,000 jobs, 70 percent of which are non-Native American, according to Musser.

Krajewski believes it is the economic success of Wisconsin tribes that has contributed to resentment of Native Americans in the state.

“It’s not so much racism as it is American culture today. There’s a perception–not reality–that they are richer than you and me. There are people in Wisconsin who hate Indians because they think they’re rich,” Krajewski says.

But Krajewski remains optimistic. He says he has observed a tremendous increase in interaction between tribal members and Wisconsin locals since the casinos opened in the early 1990s.

“There have been more conversations between Native Americans and white people – they took place over a blackjack table, and that’s fine,” he says.

But both tribal and state representatives feel it will be a while before people fully understand Native American culture. Until then, the tribes will continue defending their rights in court.

“The sad part of it is that nobody realizes where these tribes came from and there’s no appreciation of the tenacity and hard work,” Webster says. “Our graveyards are full of warriors, and I mean not just the from the days of cowboys and Indians. I’m talking people who have gone to courts and fought for us.”