As reported by: Ravalli Republic
When the Good Lord - or Great Spirit, as it may be - distributed gamblers throughout North America, he didn't do it randomly, or even fairly, from the perspective of American Indian tribes.

“A handful of big operations is where most of the money is,” Philip Hogen, chairman of the National Indian Gaming Commission in Washington, D.C., said in Polson on Wednesday.

The vast majority of big-spending casino customers lives in crowded urban areas, such as Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Detroit, Chicago and Miami.

The vast majority of Indians lives in poor rural areas, such as the Pine Ridge, Blackfeet, Fort Peck and Flathead reservations, to name a few familiar ones.

On the Flathead Reservation, the biggest town is Polson (population 4,041). Polson, despite aspirations of being a “destination resort,” is light years removed from a national megalopolis and the potentially lucrative customer base for tribal gaming operations that comes with such a location.

Hogen, an Oglala Sioux from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, underscored that disparity in customer base Wednesday during a visit to the Flathead Reservation, where he addressed the Indian Gaming Symposium.

The meeting was at the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes' KwaTaqNuk casino and resort and was sponsored by the private law firm Decker and Desjarlais of St. Ignatius. The law firm works closely with the CSKT government on gaming, housing and other issues. It was attended mostly by members of Montana tribes interested in the intricacies of gaming regulation on Montana's seven reservations.

Hogen said that in the fiscal year ending in 2001, the most recent year for such data, 39 tribal mega-casinos near metropolitan areas accounted for 66 percent of all tribal gaming revenue, or $8.4 billion out of $12.7 billion.

One casino alone, that of the Mohegan Tribe of Uncasville, Conn., collected $814.9 million in revenue from its casino in 2000, Hogen said. In 1988, the year the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed, total Indian gaming revenue was a mere $100 million a year.

Total Indian gaming revenue is expected to reach almost $15 billion this year, he said. But the disparity of revenue between tribes that enjoy proximity to urban markets and those in the nation's rural heartland is not expected to change much.

Twenty of America's 562 recognized tribal governments received about 55 percent of all Indian gaming revenue, according to the NIGC.

The opportunity for tribes in Montana to get rich quick from gambling is even poorer than in some other rural states, Hogen said, because Class III casino-style gaming is allowed throughout the state. Reservation gaming does not have the exclusivity it enjoys in some states where gambling is generally illegal, he said.

“Montana does not have the best scenario in the world for Indian tribal gaming,” Hogen said. “There's really no advantage for someone to come out to the reservation (to gamble) when you can sit in Billings (in a state-licensed casino) and do the same thing,” he said.

Nevertheless, the NIGC takes seriously its role in helping tribal economic development through gaming regulation, he said. Such regulation assures a “level playing field” between tribes who may be competing for the same customers and helps assure customers - and Congress - that the gaming is on the up and up and not controlled by organized crime.

Because tribal gaming revenue is not very big in the Great Plains' states (Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas), the National Indian Gaming Commission has not paid as much attention to the area as it might have done.

“The Great Plains area has been the stepchild in terms of NIGC's oversight and regulation. We hope to do a better job,” Hogen said.

That is one reason why he made his visit Wednesday. He said his agency's services are only a phone call away, “and I return my calls.” (The agency's office in Portland, Ore., however, is the best place to call for most tribal gaming questions in this area, he said.)

He said the agency does not want to be a heavy-handed regulator. Indeed, most regulation remains the responsibility of the tribal governments when they pass their own gaming ordinances and set up their own oversight system.

But the NIGC has the power to step in and even close down facilities, if need be - a power it recently exercised in a tribal casino in Iowa after a political shake-up called into question the legitimacy of the tribal government. The casino remains closed, despite protests and lobbying from all factions in the tribe.

“But we want to be a friendly partner, not a traffic cop,” he said.

NIGC cannot be a full partner in all aspects of tribal gaming, he acknowledged. It has no authority, for example, to help tribal governments negotiate gambling compacts with state governments. Without such compacts, a tribal government cannot offer lucrative Class III casino-style games.

“We regulate; we can't negotiate a compact with a state,” he said.