CBC Investigates First Nation Casino Benefits
Leading Canadian broadcaster CBC News recently aired an expose on Canada's native Indian gambling industry, revealing the disproportionate sharing of land casino revenues amongst First Nation groups in the country.
In 2000, the Canadian province of Manitoba launched a proposal
call to establish up to five First National casinos, and two years
later a group of six First Nations opened the first casino called
the Aseneskak Casino.
In its first years of operation, the Aseneskak Casino lost money,
but has become profitable over time and is currently generating
net earnings of almost $10 million per year.
In 2005, another group comprising seven First Nations opened the South Beach Casino, which is now generating earnings of just under $40 million per year.
CBC News, in its First Nations casino investigation,
revealed that while the initial gaming agreement between the
casinos and the Manitoba government specified that 27.5% of the
net income needed to be distributed equally among all 63 First
Nation Groups in Manitoba, that sharing formula has since changed.
The CBC investigation showed that those groups who do not own the
casinos get a much smaller share - if any - than those on the
inside, and that some aboriginal communities in Canada have only
ever received a one-off payment of $13,000.
Chief John Thunder of the Buffalo Point First Nation said: "I consider it a joke, a slap in the face". The money, he said, was sent back to the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.
A professor of Native Studies at the University of Lethbridge, Yale Belanger said: "I can't really say they've benefited at all. A one time $13,000 payment is insignificant on so many levels and the hope of what the casinos could become could be lost, just based on the minimal returns that they've experienced."
First Nation Casinos Defend Spending
There is a lot of bitterness over the enormous dividends received by the First Nations groups that own casinos. For example, the seven groups who own South Beach casino received $2.4 million each and are able to provide extra benefits to their members - such as extra cash at Christmas - from casino proceeds.
However, the Brokenhead Obijway Nation Chief, Debbi Chief, defended the share system. "You've got to remember, going back in history, how much work went into planning this casino," she said. "It didn't just happen 'like that'. It took years and years of planning. It wasn't just handed to us. We had to work for it."
Criticism was also leveled at the need to send the entire board of directors - 14 people in total - to a casino convention in Las Vegas at a cost of thousands of dollars each.
"It's always a learning venture for us when we come here because there's always new inventions coming up, new technology," said the board chairman, Furlon Barker, who has attended the convention multiple times in the past with the entire board.
