There's a lot to be said about how many Native tribes, often lacking in the economic opportunities available in many non-tribal areas, have turned their economic development models towards providing services that are forbidden to provide outside of tribal land. The 1987 California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians ruling acknowledged the right of tribes to operate gambling facilities regardless of state regulations, and the Obama-era loosening of weed regulations made it easier for them to sell marijuana with less concern for non-tribal laws.
Although these policy developments were not something that most tribes actively sought out, they eventually realized that these policies gave tribal lands a monopoly on certain goods and services that people were unable to acquire elsewhere. Perhaps for the first time ever, government decisions had given tribal economies an advantage over the non-tribal economies surrounding them. This led many tribes to lean hard into their newfound policy-based comparative advantage, building up their local economies around non-Native tourism in a way that sits awkwardly with many Native activists' desire for economic sovereignty.
Tribes with well-managed tribal governments have been able to use this arrangement to great advantage. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (who this post is really about, simply because I know a lot about them) not only uses the money generated by their casino resort to fund social services, they also distribute some of the casino's earnings as cash dividends to Cherokee residents, effectively funding a basic income for the tribe with the money lost by gamblers (who are, disproportionately, white outsiders). After centuries of being robbed by surrounding white communities, there's something of a perversely poetic justice to this (even if those losing the most money at the casino are not necessarily the same segments of the white population who gained the most from Cherokee dispossession).
But it's not all good news. This arrangement also has some concerning side effects on the political economy of Native tribes. The EBCI Cherokee tribe have long opposed federal recognition of the Lumbee, another group in North Carolina who are the largest Native tribe in the US that is unrecognized by the federal government. One of the reasons that the Cherokee have turned their backs on the Lumbee's quest for recognition is because it would threaten their monopoly on gambling in North Carolina. If the Lumbee were treated as a proper tribe, they could open up their own casino, threatening the monopoly profits of the Cherokee casino. Thus, another use of the Cherokee's casino funds has been to actively lobby against another Native tribe.
The EBCI Cherokee's economic reliance on their casino has damaged any prospect of inter-tribal Native solidarity in North Carolina. From the Cherokee's perspective, they have been placed in a situation where the desires of other tribes come at the direct expense of their own tribes' desires. The tension between these two is not a natural phenomenon, but rather the product of a policy framework which leaves little choice for tribal economic development outside of cutthroat monopoly preservation. If solidarity is to live, the casino-first model must die. The question is: what replaces it?
