The charitable donations made by tribal casinos not only help community organizations but can also serve to battle negative stereotypes about Indians and help solve hyperlocal problems, such as a Grange hall needing a new kitchen or a newly formed Indian high school basketball team wanting to be admitted to a league.
Every profitable tribal casino makes at least some charitable donations, according to panelists at Tuesday’s National Indian Gaming Association workshop, but the impact of those contributions could be magnified with better publicity.
“Redistributing wealth and helping people is part of our lives,” said Donald Sampson, former executive director of the Institute of Tribal Government at Portland (Ore.) State University’s Center for Public Service. He now is president of Seventh Generation, a Portland company that helps tribes with strategic planning and tribal government operations.
Sampson was part of Tuesday morning’s panel discussion on Promoting, Marketing and Leveraging Tribal Causes and Casino Charities, moderated by Michael Johnson, assistant director of development for the Native American Rights Fund, the oldest and largest nonprofit legal organization devoted to protecting the rights of Indian tribes and individuals throughout the country.
Other panelists included Donald Ragona, director of development/Development House counsel for the Native American Rights Fund, and Michael Roberts, president and CEO of First Nations Development Institute, a nonprofit organization that last year distributed more than 1,400 grants, totaling $29.8 million, to Indian projects and organizations in 39 states.
Some tribal compacts with state governments require a percentage of gaming revenue to be donated to local services. Some casinos elect to make contributions on their own.
Tribal gaming’s image is a concern.
Roberts said that First Nations has begun a “Reclaiming Native Truth” project because of the many misperceptions that come up in discussions with non-Indians, including state and federal lawmakers and other officials.
“We’re always having to explain away this crazy mythology of Indians,” he said.
Tribal gaming has an image issue because “… people think Indians are getting rich,” he said. “They’re not hearing how much money is being given out to charitable causes.”
Large foundations provide only 10 percent of philanthropic donations nationally, Roberts said, and only about $40 million of that goes to Indian Country organizations that specifically serve Indians. He went on to say that many liberal-leaning foundations were astounded to learn that voters in rural areas that seldom receive donations tended to be strong backers of President Trump.
Sampson, who helped negotiate a compact with Oregon when he was chairman of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in the early 1990s, said the group initially agreed to donate 6 percent of net revenue to a charitable board that would distribute money throughout a multi-county area. The board included three tribe representatives, plus one representative and one county representative. After a few years, the board supplied $20 million in grants for numerous community projects, including the Grange Hall kitchen and playgrounds.
When a charter Indian school formed a basketball team, Roberts said, the local school league wouldn’t allow it to join until officials were reminded about how much the charitable board had donated for various community projects.
“It shows not only the power of our contributions but also the leverage we are able to use in small things like that,” he said.
Ragona said Indians were struggling for existence in the 1960s and ‘70s, but thousands of native-run non-profit organizations now operate in the country.
“Tribes are doing more than collecting for themselves,” he said. Most casino workers are non-native, he said, and property values in surrounding areas rise.
“The success of Indian Country means the success of everybody in and around Indian Country,” he said. “It shouldn’t mean ‘circle the wagons.’ It should mean everybody wins.”
Sampson advised casino officials to publicize the grants they make and focus on specific issues important in their area; in his case, that became environmental issues and restoration of the salmon habitat.
Then, he added, they should leverage those donations – as in his basketball team anecdote – “to get more bang for the buck.”
