Indian War Cry: Bingo!

By KURT ANDERSEN

Very few reservations about a coast-to-coast gambling boom

As they leave Los Angeles, the rush-hour drivers heading for the town of Banning (pop. 14,000) 85 miles away are indistinguishable from the great herd of Interstate 10 commuters, all driving toward the desert with the setting sun in their rear-view mirrors. But by the San Gorgonio Pass, most of the working stiffs are home, and the chartered buses and four-door sedans start bunching up. By the time they reach the 32,000-acre Morongo Indian reservation, the hundreds of small-time gamblers form a ragtag convoy. Their destination is Indian Village Bingo, a new gambling hall with 1,400 seats that has teemed with players every night since it opened in April.

The conventional drowsy drone of the Indian-run bingo game is not so different from that played in church basements and lodge halls all over California and the U.S. But it is certainly more lucrative: Indian reservations like the Morongos' are not subject to most civil regulatory laws--including the California provision that limits bingo jackpots to a measly $250. Thus Indian Village Bingo offers an average total nightly payoff of $20,000 and a jackpot that last week reached $48,000. Thirty-five of the Morongo Indians have been provided jobs; near by, the Barona tribe's bingo game has earned $300,000 in nine months.

Such tales have spread fast among the country's 1.4 million Indians, most of whom are poor, many destitute. At least 50 of the 167 reservation tribes, from the 8,000 Cherokees in North Carolina to the 1,200 Yaquis in Arizona, are trying to cash in on the quirky boom. In two weeks a new 1,600-seat hall will open on the Sandia Pueblo reservation in New Mexico, and the Baronas plan to build a $2.5 million arena with room for 2,000. "Bingo is benefiting our people," says Arthur Welmas, the Cabazons' tribal chairman. "It's giving us pride." The tribe's business manager, John Paul Nichols, is blunt. Says he: "We have ourselves a little gold mine."

Among the first Indian entrepreneurs to tap the lode were Maine's Penobscots, in 1976. Their reservation games were modest, run only on Sundays. The last was just before Thanksgiving: Maine authorities have managed to cut the high-stakes jackpots (from up to $5,000 a game to $200) because the Penobscots agreed in 1980 not to be treated as a sovereign reservation. Officials in Washington State, Arizona and Oklahoma are now trying to control Indian games. However, federal appellate courts ruled as recently as 1982 that if a state allows any bingo gambling--and 42 do--then it has no authority to regulate the way that Indians run bingo on their reservations.

The money and jobs are manna to many Indians. Cherokees of North Carolina have cleared $500,000 in profits from the 65,000 players who have come since 1982 to their parlor in a converted textile mill. In Florida, where the Seminoles began bingo in 1979, the 1,800-member tribe this year raked in $4.2 million from three joints. "We used to make trinkets," says Tribal Chairman James Billie, a former professional alligator wrestler, "but we didn't really have the marketing skills to make a go of that."

While the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington might not have chosen bingo as a means to the native American dream, the Reagan Administration has reacted with benign neglect. Indeed, the enthusiasts among Indians sound like Reagan Republicans. "If anyone here is not working today," claims Barona Tribal Chairman Joe Welch, "it's because they don't want to."

Some tribes have handled their windfalls with surpassing prudence. The 185 Shakopee Sioux around Prior Lake, Minn., opened a 1,300-seat place just over a year ago. Already the bingo profits, $2.5 million, have paid for new medical clinics, a day care program and an 85-foot-high tepee-cum-cultural center. The Seminoles have endowed tribal scholarships, set up a credit union and amassed a large cattle herd. There is some populist pressure for cash distribution. The Baronas early this month gave members of the tribe $1,000 apiece from bingo earnings; the money might have been better spent on repairing their reservation water system.

Tribes generally hire outside firms, some less than blue chip, to help run their bingo gaming. The usual fee is 45% of profits. There are some extravagantly bad deals: some Morongos, for instance, were given microwave ovens and video games, but get only 5% of any profits over $500,000. A bill introduced in Congress by Arizona Democrat Morris Udall would require BIA scrutiny of all Indian bingo-management deals.

Some opposition is simply competitive. In Maine, says Penobscot Tribal Governor Timothy Love, state officials "looked the other way until the Elks, the V.F.W and the Knights of Columbus all started ranting and raving about us." Not far from the Barona reservation in California, Lemon Grove V.F.W. Officer W. Happy Blake says his bingo take has withered by 75%. "I'm still holding on, but just barely."

American Indians have been holding on, just barely, for a century. The U.S., meanwhile, has not helped them toward self-reliance, but practically encouraged a Government dependence that the bingo businesses, here and there, are helping tribes to break. Tim Giago, who publishes the Lakota Times, an Indian newspaper, is understandably ambivalent about the cinder-block-and-tin palaces springing up on reservations. "We've got to find a means to survive," he says, "but I don't see our young people making any great strides working in casinos. This is O.K. as a stopgap, but why should we have to resort to this?"

--By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Don Winbush/Chicago and Richard Woodbury/Los Angeles, with other bureaus

With reporting by Don Winbush/Chicago, Richard Woodbury/Los Angeles