INDIAN GAMING: Tribal Sovereignty and American Politics.

• Author: Plotz, David
• Position: Review

INDIAN GAMING: Tribal Sovereignty And American Politics By W. Dale Mason

University of Oklahoma Press, $19.95

IN THE PAST THREE YEARS, California has experienced one of the most astonishing and unnoticed political movements in U.S. history. A few thousand Indians have spent more than $100 million on lobbying, ballot initiatives, and campaign contributions to turn their quasilegal gambling industry into a fully legal one. In the process, they outfoxed a hostile governor and helped elect a sympathetic one, passed two ballot initiatives, side-stepped an unfavorable California Supreme Court decision, smashed a challenge by the Nevada gambling industry, and spent more money than any interest group has ever spent in the history of American politics.

But the tribes' triumph has been greeted with a shrug, even by most Californians. Americans have come to take for granted the Indian casinos that line the nation's highways and side roads. Gambling, supporters of this practice like to say, is the new buffalo. At the beginning of the `90s, only 14 tribes operated full-scale casinos. In 1998, 148 did. Tribal gambling has suddenly become a gigantic industry in numerous states and its profits have fueled political activism, cut tribal unemployment, improved Indians' health, and buttressed their education.

It was not a foregone conclusion that all this would happen, however, and it is not certain that it will endure. That is the message of W. Dale Masons Indian Gaming: Tribal Sovereignty and American Politics. Indian gambling--I prefer not to use Mason's "gaming" euphemism--is the latest skirmish in a 200-year triangular war between the federal government, states, and tribes over Indian sovereignty. Tribes are (sometimes) winning this round, Mason argues, because they have mastered the tools of power politics: lobbying, lawyering, and money.

Written as a doctoral dissertation, Indian Gaming examines two case studies: New Mexico, where tribes succeeded in building significant gambling operations; and Oklahoma, where they have not. Mason begins with an excellent account of how gambling fits in the ancient dispute between disciples of Andrew Jackson and John Marshall over Indian sovereignty. The Jacksonian faction asserted that tribes are subject to state authority as well as federal. Marshall's Supreme Court declared that the Constitution grants tribes a sovereignty independent of states.

For most of U.S. history, the Marshall faction won the intellectual...