A man recognized as a national expert on Indian gaming and law, Donald Craig Mitchell, has written Wampum, subtitled: How Indian Tribes, the Mafia, and an Inattentive Congress Invented Indian Gaming and Created a $28 Billion Gambling Empire.
An Anchorage attorney who for many years represented Indian interests in Washington D.C. but who now warns against allowing Indian gaming to spread to his native state by allowing native lands there to be put into trust, Mitchell writes how the doctrine of inherent tribal sovereignty came to be enshrined in federal law.
The concept, he writes, was basically the invention of a government lawyer on loan to the Department of the Interior, who wrote the concept into a handbook which was published in 1938 as the “Handbook of Federal Indian Law.” Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was a fan. He made a ruling referring to the handbook.
Thus, writes Mitchell, the concept became embedded in the law without an act of Congress.
Part of Mitchell’s book chronicles how some unscrupulous members Congress have assisted in creating Indian reservations where none existed before and tribes for people who may or may not have had Indian blood.
Reviewer Chuck Gray, of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner writes, “Wampum isn’t a mindless, fun read. Neither is it a textbook. Mitchell deserves appreciation for shedding light for the first time on a subject that’s a blight on America. Rewards to resident Indians are as low as $20 per year at Pine Ridge in South Dakota and up to as much as $12,000 per month in Florida. It depends on how many are in the tribe and how near the casino is to a metropolitan area.”
