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4/27/03 Life without casino isn't easy for Alabama-Coushatta Indians

By ANDREW MOLLISON, Cox News Service

ALABAMA-COUSHATTA RESERVATION- For eight exciting months, the 1,000 members of the AlabamaCoushatta Tribe sampled the gambling bonanza that they had shunned during the 1990s.

Between Nov. 24, 2001, and July 25, 2002, an average of 3,500 gamblers a day played the 349 slot machines in the log-walled gift shop that the Alabama-Coushatta had converted into an entertainment center.

The tribe cleared "over a million dollars a month," said tribal council chairman Kevin Battise. The total profits exceeded the $10 million the tribe obtained last year from its only other major source of revenue, royalties from the dwindling production of its seven remaining oil and gas wells.

The casino had to be closed abruptly last July, after a federal judge ruled that the sovereign tribe had no right to operate a casino without permission from the sovereign state of Texas. The tribe is appealing.

The setback was especially hard on the 460 tribe members, including 114 with diabetes, living on the reservation 16 miles east of the nearest town, Livingston. Like American Indians on most rural reservations without gambling, their life never has been easy.

The economic expansion of the 1990s bypassed the Alabama-Coushattas. Tourists lost interest in its aging attractions: the Indian Village, the train that huffed its way through the Big Thicket National Preserve, the traditional dances, the fast food at the Inn of the Twelve Clans. All the ventures provided seasonal jobs, but lost money for years before the tribal council shut them down.

above the national rate, according to the Census Bureau. The real jobless rate among working-age adults was 46 percent, said Battise, who also counts stay-at-home parents and grandparents, people who ignore census forms and people too discouraged to look for work.

Median family income on the reservation was $30,000 in 1999, far below the national median of $50,046. The 23 percent poverty rate was more than 10 points above the U.S. average.

The septic systems in 8 percent of the houses have failed. Twelve percent lack phones, even though local phone service is available for as little as a dollar a month.

But at a meeting of the whole tribe in 1994, the members voted 70 to 30 percent against opening a casino. "People were worrying that it might bring in the Mafia, that there'd be prostitutes and drug dealers all up and down the road," said Sharon Miller, the tribe's public relations director.

For five years they watched as more tribes across the nation opted for casinos, and tribal gambling revenue grew to be twice the size of the federal govemment's Indian budget.

"We had a chance to see the new housing and roads and jobs on other reservations that did have gaming, but didn't have any of those horrid side effects," Miller said.

By 1999, sentiment within the tribe had reversed. By 70 to 30 percent, the members authorized their council to pursue gaming. The gaming hall opened the Saturday after Thanksgiving in 2001, but was shut down three weeks after the following Fourth of July.

The 287 casino employees, who included 75 tribal members, received three more months of wages and benefits. Then the tribe laid off all but six, who maintain the empty center, pay lingering bills and plan for a possible revival of gaming.

"A few found jobs, and some already had other jobs," said council member Cheryl Downing. "But from what I hear and see, about seven out of 10 people that we laid off still haven't found work."

While the casino was open, the 170-person staff of the tribal government had added another 50 employees, mostly members. They still have their new jobs. But that is almost sure to change, predicted tribal administrator James

$12.7 bilion 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 trailers, and have brought jobs and the revenues to diversity 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 spur 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