Buffaloed: casino cowboys take Indians for a ride.

• Author: Lueders, Bill

In 1987, when Lewis Taylor was first elected to the St. Croix Tribal Council, he had a clear goal: "to bring this tribe out of poverty." Back then, the St. Croix owned almost nothing except a few patches of land; today their casino gaming operations net upwards of $30 million a year. But in the tribal community near Hertel, Wisconsin, where Taylor lives, evidence of this new-found wealth is hard to find.

The tribal office is so sparsely furnished that it's hard to imagine the St. Croix have a dime. A pile of garbage decorates the main road, attended by a large dog that attacks passing cars. Taylor, chain-smoking, shows off a field of old Government-donated vehicles used for contract-construction jobs and touts a pitiful plan for economic development: a convenience store to "take advantage of" the tribe's partial exemption from the Federal cigarette tax.

"We're proud to no longer be dependent on handouts for survival," says Taylor, now chairman of the five-member council. Instead, the St. Croix--like dozens of other tribes that today run 220 Indian gaming operations (including an estimated eighty-eight casinos) in more than twenty states--are dependent on gambling, an activity that by its very nature promises more than it delivers. And, like many tribal players, the St. Croix are coming up short.

No one disputes that the Chippewa band has derived substantial benefit from casino operations; about half of its scattered 1,400 members (those with enough St. Croix blood) now receive $1,000 monthly distributions. But the biggest jackpot winners have been the St. Croix's partners, Roy C. Palmer and Ronald G. Brown, two white businessmen from Palatine, Illinois.

Palmer and Brown, as sole owners of the Indian-sounding Buffalo Brothers Management, Inc., have pocketed tens of millions of dollars from the St. Croix's two casinos in western Wisconsin, where they employ no staff and incur few expenses. In 1992, the pair raked in $13.8 million in profits, more than twice the $6.5 million that went to the tribe. Last year, they siphoned off at least another $13 million, and this spring they negotiated a buyout of their management contract for a reported $36 million. This is money for which Palmer and Brown need not do anything --not even go away. They continue to be involved with the St. Croix's casinos--operations known for their shoddy treatment of workers, Indian and non-Indian alike.

Worse, this unlucky alliance between the St. Croix (officially the Lake Superior Band of the St. Croix Chippewa) and the Buffalo Brothers, Palmer and Brown, has spurred corruption at the tribal, county, state, and Federal levels. Officials have been bribed, tribal elections have been influenced, critics have been threatened, harassed, and even shot at. All the while, regulators in Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., have, with one notable exception, stood by and winked. And the one regulator who spoke up was promptly fired.

"The Buffalo Brothers are a perfect example of what's going on in the country," says Clyde Bellecourt, the Minneapolis-based cofounder and national director of the American Indian Movement. "They're supposed to be working for the tribe, but that's not what's happening."

Bellecourt, who has participated in protests against the Buffalo Brothers (including, in late April, a brief occupation of the much larger casino at Turtle Lake), sees the St. Croix and other tribes as victims not just of exploitation but of circumstance: "Our people weren't prepared for this. One day we have tribal governments led by people with a sixth-grade education. The next day we wake up and boom--we've got a multi-million-dollar business in our backyard."

Most Native Americans, including St. Croix tribal members who have led the charge against the Buffalo Brothers, take a positive view of Indian gaming. This new frontier, opened by the court decisions and the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), has given tribes an unprecedented opportunity to stake a claim to economic independence.

Some have made the most of this opportunity. Wisconsin's Oneida tribe has used the proceeds from its self-managed Green Bay casino to set up a scholarship fund for tribal members. Connecticut's Mashantucket Pequot--whose Foxwoods casino, also managed by the tribe, now nets more than $1 million a day--are building a $130 million museum to preserve their heritage. The St. Croix's casinos have made a deep dent in local unemployment and welfare rates and helped band members to become self-sufficient, some for the first time in their lives.

But overall, Indian gaming--last year a $3 billion industry--has been a mixed blessing. Indians who receive gaming proceeds lose Federal assistance and see their subsidized rent shoot up. Bellecourt says he's heard stories that make him want to cry, of young Indians blowing "thousands of dollars" on limo rides. And while alcohol abuse is still the number-one problem facing Native Americans, they now also have access to cocaine and designer drugs.

"It's killing us. It's killing our people," says Bellecourt. "They never had money in their lives and they don't know what to do."

It is precisely this lack of money that made the tribes vulnerable in the...