Talking about Indigenous Gambling and Economic Development in Australia, the US and Canada

Abstract

This essay examines gambling as one thread of a broader fabric of economic relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. How do these relationships shape the ways gambling is promoted, experienced, regulated and talked about in Australia?; what are the implications of this for the governmentality of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians?; and how are political and cultural processes of racism and white possession involved in and reproduced through these relationships? What follows is a comparative analysis of discourses on Indigenous gambling in Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada. The aim of this comparison is to imagine alternative figures, which might inhabit the intersection of Indigeneity and gambling, to that which currently prevails in the national imagination: the Indigenous problem gambler and target of practical reconciliation policies.

Indigenous geographies II

“…Such discursive re-inscription is not limited to reconciliation and apology, but is also reinforced in discourses of vulnerability to climate change (Cameron, 2012;Haalboom and Natcher, 2012), expectations for (and denial of) entrepreneurial behaviour (Bargh, 2011a) and the biocentric demands of environmentalists in planning processes (Petheram et al, 2011). Such new or reconstructed forms of Indigenous economic engagement as Maori corporations (Bargh, 2011b), Native American casinos (Nicoll, 2009) and Indigenous conservation areas (Haalboom and Campbell, 2011;Stevens, 2010) are simultaneously progressive and ambiguous as vehicles for achieving responsible forms of belonging in uncertain times. Yet, in exploring connection, belonging and co-existence within more-thanhuman settings, Indigenous geographies foster an optimistic sense of change amid considerable diversity Johnson, 2012a, 2012b).…”

Gambling Spaces and the Racial Dialectics of Social Inclusion: A Case Study of a Remote Australian Casino

“…Yet at the same time, the casino is a site of material exploitation that redistributes resources from the poorest in society to government and sites of centralised corporate power (Young et al ., ). Unlike in the United States and Canada, where sovereign rights have enabled indigenous nations to own casinos and thereby profit from them (Cornell, ), Lasseters parent company is listed on the Singapore stock exchange and its profits accrue to its mostly foreign owners (Sim, ; cf., Nicoll, ). This syncretic combination of social inclusion and financial exploitation has produced a liminal space characterised by tension between the Aboriginal moral economy (Peterson and Taylor, ) and the cash economy of capitalism.…”

Comparative Reflections on Indigenous Gambling: Sovereignty, Race and Epistemology

“…Following the disestablishment of representative bodies for Indigenous selfdetermination from the turn of this century onward, Indigenous people in Australia have been targeted for various welfare policy experiments, which are in turn "rolled out" to other disadvantaged groups (Nicoll 2008a and. At the time of writing, a remote Aboriginal community in South Australia has been signed up to a radical welfare experiment designed to prevent individuals from spending money on gambling products, including those featuring the "Native American" iconography that was the focus of my presentation at UCLA.…”