Indian Gaming Regulatory Act

It's tied to resources and money.

And we see this new phenomenon in the last 30 or 40 years of tribes who, with the rise of gaming, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, there's a lot of wealth that's been generated in certain corners of Indian country, especially here in California.

And the phenomenon that's arisen out of that is the drive to maximize profits concentrate wealth in as few hands as possible the way that you do that is by limiting as many members as you can so those in power you know run the levers to make that happen so this is tied up with political power inside tribal nations and tribal governments.

And so we are at the point now where we see over 100 tribes that have engaged in this practice of disenrolling, and that has increased the wealth of those who remain.

So while we could argue that the Seneca's have enough autonomy that they don't have to be holding to outside laws, but the contractors we hire do.

One of the threats, one of the reasons that the gaming law, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, the only benefit that really came to native people was that the vendors stopped being scared away by the potential of having the states come after them.

Once there was a legal framework that didn't serve us, it did more to serve the vendors and the contractors and all those people we did business with because now they no longer were in jeopardy.

We were never in jeopardy.

We've been to the Supreme Court twice.

We were part of the Cabazon decision back in the late '80s, early '90s that led to the creation of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.

And then again, we returned as one of the five intervening tribes for the Brackeen case, which was all about ICWA.

And so we, we understand exactly how big and fearsome that kind of setting can be.

Sure.

Indian gaming falls under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, and that typically means, in a very short, simple version, that tribes need to negotiate with states and have a whole lot of rules and regulations around how they can offer gaming, even on tribal lands.

While there is that sovereignty component and tribes are sovereign, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act still governs what they can do there because sovereign tribal lands are still held in trust with the federal government.

Decisions are still made in tandem with the federal government, very usually.

Meanwhile, Kalshi is being regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or Trade Commission, which is... not taking much of an interest, to put it as gently as I can.

Exactly.

The foundational premise of a tribal gaming compact, especially under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, relies entirely on that geographic protection.

The state essentially agrees not to authorize competing commercial casinos in the area, which ensures the tribes maintain their market share.

The state gets tax revenue.