Bingo on reservation frowned on

Press, 30 December 1985, Page 13

Bingo on reservation frowned on

NZPA-AP Washington Bingo on Indian reservations is the wrong kind of tribal economic development because it doesn’t encourage the work ethic, according to the new head of Government programmes for American Indians.

“It tells you you don’t have to work — you can just get it by gambling,” Ross Swimmer, Assistant Interior Secretary for Indian Affairs, said in a recent interview. “Bingo sends the wrong signal.” Mr Swimmer, the former principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, said he was commenting without benefit of an indepth study. T “But the few examples I have been able to look at indicate the reservations are the principal beneficia ties of bingo, parlors.” Bingo has spread rapidly to more than 100 reservations under recent court decisions holding that states permitting bingo at all cannot. regulate reservation dfces. The Interior Wart-

ment estimates that Indian gambling projects, mostly bingo pahours, is a SUSIOO million ($l9B million) a year business. The Interior Secretary, Mr Donald Hodel, has suported bingo on the grounds that it can help reduce unemployment on reservations, which , often reaches 40 per cent and more. But Mr Hodel has opposed other Tribal-run gambling. The House of Representatives Interior Committee has approved a bill to establish a Federal commission to regulate tribal gambling. Most bingo games are run by non-Indian companies under contract to tribes. A well-known game run by the Cherokees of North Carolina sometimes offers SUSI million pots. Mr Swimmer said, however, that his sister tribe had told him it netted only SUSIM out of the first SUS3I million in gross revenue. “That’s not a good turn,” he said. / '.f.