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reservation lands. With this legal change, many Native American tribes have opened businesses—ranging from fish canneries to industrial parks that serve metropolitan areas. The Skywalk, opened by the Hualapai, which offers breathtaking views of the Grand Canyon, gives an idea of the varieties of businesses to come.
It is the casinos, though, that have attracted the most attention. In 1988, the federal government passed a law that allowed Native Americans to operate gambling establish- ments on reservations. Now over 200 tribes operate casinos. They bring in $27 billion a year, twice as much as all the casinos in Las Vegas (Werner 2007; Statistical Abstract 2011: Table 1257). The Oneida tribe of New York, which has only 1,000 members, runs a casino that nets $232,000 a year for each man, woman, and child (Peterson 2003). This huge amount, however, pales in comparison with that of the Mashantucket Pequot tribe of Connecticut. With only 700 members, the tribe brings in more than $2 million a day just from slot machines (Rivlin 2007). Incredibly, one tribe has only one member: She has her own casino (Bartlett and Steele 2002).
A highly controversial issue is separatism. Because Native Americans were independent peoples when the Europeans arrived and they never willingly joined the United States, many tribes maintain the right to remain separate from the U.S. government. The chief of the Onondaga tribe in New York, a member of the Iroquois Federation, summarized the issue this way:
For the whole history of the Iroquois, we have maintained that we are a separate nation. We have never lost a war. Our government still operates. We have refused the U.S. government’s reorganization plans for us. We have kept our language and our traditions, and when we fly to Geneva to UN meetings, we carry Hau de no sau nee passports. We made some treaties that lost some land, but that also confirmed our separate-nation status. That the U.S. denies all this doesn’t make it any less the case. (Mander 1992)
One of the most significant changes for Native Americans is pan-Indianism. This em- phasis on common elements that run through their cultures is an attempt to develop an identity that goes beyond the tribe. Pan-Indianism (“We are all Indians”) is a remarkable example of the plasticity of ethnicity. It embraces and substitutes for individual tribal iden- tities the label “Indian”—originally imposed by Spanish and Italian sailors, who thought they had reached the shores of India. As sociologist Irwin Deutscher (2002:61) put it, “The peoples who have accepted the larger definition of who they are, have, in fact, little else in common with each other than the stereotypes of the dominant group which labels them.”
Native Americans say that it is they who must determine whether they want to establish a common identity and work together as in pan-Indianism or to stress separatism and identify solely with their own tribe; to assimilate into the dominant culture or to remain apart from it; to move to cities or to remain on reservations; or to operate casinos or to engage only in traditional activities. “Such decisions must be ours,” say the Native Americans. “We are sovereign, and we will not take orders from the victors of past wars.”
Looking Toward the Future Back in 1903, sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois said, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races.” Incredi- bly, over a hundred years later, the color line remains one of the most volatile topics fac- ing the nation. From time to time, the color line takes on a different complexion, as with the war on terrorism and the corresponding discrimination directed against people of Middle Eastern descent.
In another hundred years, will yet another sociologist lament that the color of people’s skin still affects human relationships? Given our past, it seems that although racial–ethnic walls will diminish, even crumble at some points, the color line is not likely to disappear. Let’s close this chapter by looking at two issues we are currently grappling with, immigra- tion and affirmative action.
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pan-Indianism a movement that focuses on common ele- ments in the cultures of Native Americans in order to develop a cross-tribal self-identity and to work toward the welfare of all Native Americans