Jessica R. Cattelino
Weatherhead
Resident Scholar 2003-2004
High Stakes: Seminole Sovereignty in the Casino Era
Is gaming the "new buffalo" for Native
American tribes? Do casinos lead to "cultural loss" for indigenous
peoples? What is the relationship between gaming and tribal sovereignty?
In High Stakes: Seminole
Sovereignty in the Casino Era, Jessica Cattelino examines the
relationship between tribal casinos and Florida
Seminoles' efforts to maintain themselves as a culturally and politically
distinct people. By investigating the layered meanings of culture,
sovereignty, and citizenship,
Cattelino illuminates not only the experiences of contemporary
indigenous
peoples,
but also their complex relationships to American political processes
and popular culture.
Seminoles opened the first tribally operated
high stakes bingo hall in Native North America in 1979, "launching a gaming revolution
that has built American Indian tribes' political and economic power
even as it exposes them to new scrutiny in American law, politics,
and popular culture," Cattelino says. "I argue that casinos
emerged from and reinforce Seminole sovereignty and cultural distinctiveness;
they are not mere moneymakers pursued at the cost of cultural continuity."
Countering the view that gaming is against "native
values," Cattelino
examines other economic regimes pursued by Seminoles in the twentieth
century, including
cattle, smoke shops, women's commercial crafts, and men's alligator wrestling.
By "moving
outward from the everyday politics and practices of indigeneity," she
develops a new social theory of sovereignty that recognizes Seminoles'
simultaneous efforts to both realize their independence
and create economic, political, and cultural relations of interdependence.
In
this first book-length ethnography of Native American gaming, Cattelino
explores
sovereignty as a world view, not simply a legal and political status.
Affiliation at time of fellowship: Ph.D.
Candidate, Department of Anthropology, New York University
