Native American Gambling Research Paper

Gambling Away the Future: the Economic and Social Impacts of Native American Gaming

The tale of Christopher Columbus sailing the Atlantic Ocean in the late 1400s and “discovering” the Americas is a widely repeated fallacy that is often taught to students throughout lower level education. However, one often overlooked detail is the fact that Columbus didn’t actually discover anything; North America was already inhabited by natives who had lives there for thousands of years prior. When Europeans came over to inhabit this new continent, they continuously pushed back the natives until they were nearly decimated. Today, most tribes have been wiped out, and the few that are left are confined to reservations, or small pockets located across the

The act allowed Native American tribes to offer various types of gambling that are legal in the state in which they are located. The specifics for each type of gambling are detailed in compacts between the states and each tribe. Since then, more than two-thirds of the tribes in the country have partaken in the establishment of nearly 400 casinos. In 2006, Indian gaming alone generated $25 billion, with evidence suggesting the investment of gaming dollars into a broad array of social, economic and governmental programs (National Indian Gaming Association, 2009). Overall, these casinos appear to have a symbiotic relationship with their respective state government and an overall positive effect on the people in their

For one, gaming affects education. In a study done by two University of Oklahoma professors, differences are reported between gaming and non-gaming schools on science, math, and reading tests in 2006-07. Students at the schools associated with gaming outperformed their counterparts in four out of five instances. The gaming group showed more than a 2.73% favorable gap with the non-gaming group in regards to the reading test and an even greater disparity of 5.66% over the non-gaming group on the math proficiency test (Conner & Taggert 2009). This study comes from the Indigenous Policy Journal, a journal that deals primarily with Native American culture and society. This means that it is a powerful and legitimate source. The differences reported are far from trivial, and suggest that students from gaming nations test better than students from non-gaming nations, an important detail as American Indian and other historically underrepresented groups attempt to close the test score and achievement gap that persists across the education