$12.7 billion in gross revenue in 2001, the last year for which the National Indian Gaming Commission has official figures. Profits from gaming "have enabled tribes to build new schools where children previously attended classes in substandard trallers, and have brought jobs and the revenues to diversify suffering reservation economies," said Tex Hall, president of the National Congress of American Indians. Yet tribes on more than 100 of the 312 U.S. Indian reservations continue to spurn gaming or have been balked in their attempts to acquire It. And along with gaming tribes' financial success has come strong criticism from skeptical non-Indians. Some say all Indians have become wealthy and don't give a big enough share to nearby non-Indian communities. Others suspect that most proceeds are siphoned off by clever outsiders who cheat unsophisticated Native Americans. Still others charge that most profits flow to a few tribal leaders while their followers remain mired in poverty. Abuses do exist. But the big picture is different, a Cox Newspapers analysis of census data shows. Tribes with casinos-the most lucrative form of gaming-are improving average members' lives much faster than nongambling tribes. The analysis compared 138 reservations that had casinos by 1996 with 165 reservations that had no gambling at all by then. Census data from 1990 and 2000 shows that over the decade: -Per-capita income rose by more than 50 percent on the casino reservations, but less than 17 percent on the nongambling reservations. - Unemployment rates dropped by 17 percent on the casino reservations, but less than 9 percent on the non-gambling reservations. The casino reservations' edge in unemployment would have been even greater had it not been for the higher number of adults competing for their newly created jobs. Population increased 18 percent on the casino reservations during the 1990s, but remained unchanged on the non-gambling |