Last week’s hearing on the ongoing question of whether Congress will “fix” the Supreme Court’s Carcieri decision was a different take than earlier hearings, but still completely ignores the elephant in the room.
The first hearings were naked pleas to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision on the grounds that the decision was just plain incorrect. The increased complexity of administration of fee to trust acquisitions for tribes possibly affected by Carcieri and Interior was the backdrop there. Now it is jobs and economic development, truly important factors.
But what was missing, and what likely guarantees there will never be a Carcieri fix, was the big gaming tribes. It is the big gaming tribes that divide Indian country on this question, and even though there are only a dozen, maybe two, in question … and they have an effective veto on a Carcieri fix.
Forget Rhode Island’s concern about having their ridiculously expensive Supreme Court victory stripped away, or some Senators’ concerns about “reservation shopping.” Senators views can be changed, especially when political expediency requires it. But the powerful Indian gaming tribes’ interests are economic. So the hearings are incomplete at best, and maybe a sham at worst, because the real interests can stay quiet on the record.
Intertribal gaming revenue sharing anyone? But even that might not be enough.
Turtle Talk 
Well of course. By lobbying (and litigating) to keep the smaller and landless tribes out, the Big Gaming Tribes unwittingly act as enforcers of a colonial rule of divide and conquer. In the long run BGT’s own success ensures the political conditions needed to whittle away what remains of their own tribal sovereignty. When the day comes that the Feds turn on the BGTs, they’ll find no one left in Indian Country to defend them. It’s an efficient strategy: The States win the war, and they get the BGTs to do the fighting for them. Ouch.
Why is it such an “elephant in the living room”? I’ll answer my own question; because NCAI and NIGA are controlled by the money they recieve from these same tribes. For that matter, the control extends to the SCAI committee members, via political contributions and extends even to some of our advocacy organizations, who benefit from The BGTs contributions and which may put up a “sham” position knowing that it is pre-ordained to fail. It also extends to the Administrative branch which has awarded the BGT and BGT be holding “Indian Advocacy” organizations to an almost exclusive role in political appointments going very deep into various administrative agencies. Remember, the BGTs control 80% of the Indian Country Gaming wealth with perhaps a dozen tribes that control the majority of the 80%. The rest us fight over 20%. Where have I read this story before? LMAO