Learning from Foxwoods: Visualizing the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation

Autor/in	Anthes, Bill
Titel	Learning from Foxwoods: Visualizing the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation
Quelle	In: American Indian Quarterly, 32 (2008) 2, S.204-218 (15 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0095-182X
Schlagwörter	Stellungnahme; Tribal Sovereignty; American Indians; Political Power; Tribes; Poverty; Poverty Areas; Indigenous Populations; Global Approach; American Indian Reservations; Connecticut + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? American Indian; Indianer; Politische Macht; Tribal society; Stammesgesellschaft; Armut; Sinti und Roma; Globales Denken; Indianerreservat
Abstract	Since the passage in 1988 of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which recognized the authority of Native American tribal groups to operate gaming facilities free from state and federal oversight and taxation, gambling has emerged as a major industry in Indian Country. Casinos offer poverty-stricken reservation communities confined to meager slices of marginal land unprecedented economic self-sufficiency and political power. Plains Cree artist, critic, and curator Gerald McMaster has asked, "As aboriginal people struggle to reclaim land and to hold onto their present land, do their cultural identities remain stable? When aboriginal government becomes a reality, how will the local cultural identities act as centers for nomadic subjects?" Foxwoods Casino, a vast and highly profitable gaming, resort, and entertainment complex on the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation in southwestern Connecticut, might serve as a test case for McMaster's question. Rather than being deterritorialized by mortgaging their nationhood to overseas investors, the Pequots have managed to harness the centrifugal forces of the global marketplace to shore up their own centripetal claims to a place-based identity, pouring casino profits into an impressive array of community-building projects. The Pequots have succeeded in turning precisely those economic forces that have devastated so many other rural and traditional communities to their own advantage. In this article, the author examines how the Pequots have embraced multinational corporations and the boundless international space of late capitalism to underwrite their exemption from state and local authority and shore up an expression of tribal sovereignty and the bounded space of the reservation. He analyzes how Pequot nationhood is given visual form at Foxwoods Casino and considers why and for whom such representations are staged. (Contains 22 notes.) (ERIC).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10