The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 31 (2020)
Copyright © 2020 Kumiko Noguchi. All rights reserved. This work may be used, with thisnotice included, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of this work may be distributed,
electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without permission from the author.

Keeping the Indian Tribal Community Together:
Nation Building and Cultural Sovereignty in
the Indian Casino Era

Kumiko NOGUCHI*

The gut question has to do with the meaning of the tribe. Should it
continue to be a quasi-political entity? [Should] it become primarily an
economic structure? Or should it become, once again, a religious
community? The future, perhaps the immediate future, will tell.
— Vine Deloria Jr., For This Land: Writing on Religion in America
INTRODUCTION
Vine Deloria Jr., the well-known Native American intellectual proposing
this “gut question” in 1999, expected that a new discussion on self-rule ofthe tribes among the Native American communities would come soon. His
expectation came to pass when the discussion among Native American
intellectuals and leaders about tribal communities was developed as a social
theory after the advent of the “Indian casino era,” beginning in the late1980s.1
The idea of Native American community development originally emergedout of the Red Power movement starting in the 1960s (weakening in the
1970s) in which Native American activists resisted federal control, which
historically had ignored and destroyed Native American communities,
resulting in broken families, alcoholism, and poverty. The term “Red*Associate Professor, Meiji Gakuin University

133

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KUMIKO NOGUCHIPower,” is attributed to Vine Deloria Jr.2 Red Power increased the sense ofIndian pride and ushered in a new age for Native Americans to positively
self-represent based on “Indian” identity. Led by some pan-Indian activist
organizations such as the American Indian Movement, community
development in the context of the Red Power movement had a goal ofpolitical and economic self-determination for Native American people,
regardless of their tribe or whether or not they live on reservations.3
Instead of being frightened off by American government violence both intheir reservations and urban communities, participants in the movement—
Indian intellectuals, political leaders, students, and others who were
emotionally and theoretically invested—started pursuing ways that Native
Americans could develop their communities by enhancing their political,
economic, and social self-determination.4
Since then, community development pursuits have evolved alongsidechanges in what “community” means for Native Americans. Since the1970s, the Red Power movement has resulted in pan-tribal approaches tocommunity development that criticized the federally controlled tribal systemthat was created during the 1980s. Having achieved stronger economic andpolitical sovereignty in the 1990s, an increasing number of tribes started
identifying themselves as “nations.”
Nation building then became a radical political trend in community
development. As Simone Poliandri writes, “nationhood and nationalism”
have emerged as “some of the leading expressions of tribe belonging andcommunity self-determination among Native North American peoples.”5Those notions have become “connected with issues of political andeconomic sovereignty, sense of peoplehood, identity, territoriality,
citizenship, and the development and maintenance of cultural capital.”6
Shifts in “community” occurred with the change in the rule of the tribe
itself, from the tribe as a federally controlled political system to the tribe as a“nation.”7
Twenty-first-century research has described the historical and theoreticaldevelopment of current tribal nation building from a critical perspective as
well as its role in radical activism opposing federal Indian policy in thetwentieth century.8 Although tribal nation building and economic
development have been closely tied since the 1990s, the contribution of thelatter to the former has rarely been analyzed, and few works on tribal nationbuilding have taken into account the rich accumulation of studies on the
Indian gambling industry.9
How has nation building been practiced on Indian reservations since theKEEPING THE INDIAN TRIBAL COMMUNITY TOGETHER

135

1990s? What kind of community development are Native Americans
pursuing in an era of political and economic sovereignty? In an attempt toanswer these questions, in this article, I analyze how some of the so-called
gaming tribes of Central and Southern California, the Tule River, TachiYokut, Cabazon, and Pechanga, have engaged in tribal nation building.
Since the Supreme Court decision in California v. Cabazon Band of Mission
Indians in 1987, the gaming industry has become one of the most significant
ways in which tribes earn money. Tribes have started to build financial
resources through tribal businesses, including the tribal gaming industry, toinvest in the welfare of their peoples and to support other Indian and nonIndian communities, as well as for their cultural development as tribes.
Native American tribes acquired this economic sovereignty based onwestern capitalism for the first time in their history, thus strengthening tribal
self-determination culturally as well as economically.10
First, I explore the historical and theoretical background of the theory of
Native American community development from the 1960s, which eventuallycreated the idea of nation building. Second, I analyze how the gaming tribes
have embarked on nation building. In this article I challenge the post-1960s
stereotypes of Native American societies as pan-tribal racial groups,
impoverished peripheral societies, dependents on federal welfare programs,
or rich gaming Indians enjoying western capitalism. None of these explain
the essence of the Native American communities in the post–Red Power era.
Whether a tribe engages in gaming or nongaming industries, tribal economic
development has changed not only the tribal community but also themeaning of “tribe” itself into more autonomous and self-governing entities
such as “nation.”
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF NATIVE AMERICAN COMMUNITYDEVELOPMENT“Community development” is a generic term describing the processes bywhich local communities can raise their own standard of living. The process
may include the organization or establishment of institutions for social
welfare, health protection, education, agricultural improvement, or small andlarge-scale industries. The term itself began to be used in the 1930s in thecontext of colonial social welfare programs for disadvantaged people in
Africa and Asia. In the United States, the idea of community development
became pervasive in the 1960s, especially in the context of physicaldevelopment projects for the working class in urban areas and for the136

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promotion of business and management skills to uplift low-income
residents.11
The Pan-Indian Approach
Native American community development is a relatively new topic ofresearch. Native American intellectuals, who established Native American
Studies departments in colleges and universities in the early 1970s,
encouraged a connection between academia and Native American societies.
One such department started offering an introductory course titled “Native
Community Development.” The syllabus stated the course’s “goal ofunderstanding and evaluating the strategies adopted by Native American
communities to develop and implement forms of sovereignty or autonomous
self-management.”12 These methodologies were studied and shared by anincreasing number of Native and non-Native college students working withNative communities.13
The idea of community development in Native American tribal
communities had its roots in the 1960s Red Power movement in which theright to self-determination and deciding their own future became salient
after Native American tribes faced the challenge of the federal Indian
termination policy in the late 1940s and 1950s, which unilaterally removed
federal responsibility toward Native American tribes and forced them off
reservations.14 The century-old assimilation policy had treated Native
American identity as anti-American or anticivilization. As Stephen Cornell
states in The Return of the Native, the Red Power movement strengthened
pan-Indian identity.15
Tribal ApproachWith the Red Power movement, “community” came to mainly mean
“tribe,” since “tribe” gained definitive status as an agency to achieve Native
American political self-determination under the guardianship of the federal
government.
According to David Wilkins, “tribe” is an ethnological and political-legal
term. From the former perspective, a tribe may be defined as an ethnologicalgroup of indigenous people connected by biology or blood kinship, culturaland spiritual values, language, and political authority with a territorial landbase. From the political-legal perspective, a tribe is generally a “federally
recognized” group, which means that a tribe is a constructed political unit

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137

based on the centuries-old federal-Indian relationship.16
In the eighteenth century, the newly created US government entered into
treaties with Indian tribes to create a government-to-government
relationship with each tribe, thus, treating a tribe as a sovereign politicalbody. The US Constitution’s Commerce Clause (Article 1, Section 8),
widely seen as beneficially limiting states’ jurisdiction over each other,proscribed congressional jurisdiction over tribes and provided recognition oftribes as sovereign nations, albeit only as “domestic dependent nations.” As
Felix S. Cohen, an Indian law specialist in the 1930s and 1940s, and hisacademic successors emphasize: “A tribe is a nation.” This notion has been
propounded in various judicial and legal cases up until the present.17
Conflicts regarding each tribe’s status as a sovereign nation, however,
emerged in the middle of the nineteenth century. Facing increased disputes
between indigenous and nonindigenous peoples, Congress and federal
agencies regulated the tribes’ status by following certain policies, such as the
Indian Removal Act of 1830, the regulation of trade and commerce, and theestablishment of reservations. By the 1880s, the federal government’s efforts
to assimilate Indians had become quite coercive in terms of land allotment(Daws Allotment Act of 1887), boarding school education (from the 1860s
to the 1920s), control of reservation life through dispute settlement (Major
Claim Act of 1850), forced political change to a Euro-American style ofgovernment (Indian Reorganization Act of 1934), and termination of federal
responsibility for Native American tribes by relocating them fromreservations to urban areas (Public Law 280).
At the same time, the political governance of tribes was reconstructedunder federal Indian policy. Specifically, under the Indian Reorganization
Act of 1934, the federal government forced Indian tribes to adopt Westernstyle tribal government with an elected council and a constitution. The IRA
offered the elected tribal government some economic support for education,
government management, and further economic development. Under the
IRA and related legislation and policies, until the present, more than 570
tribes have created constitutions and tribal governments and been identified
as “federally recognized tribes.”18
The Red Power movement won a series of important political and legal
victories, bringing tribes the rights to political and economic selfdetermination in their contracts with the federal government (Indian
Education and Self-Determination Act of 1975), tribal supervision of childwelfare (Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978), and tribal authenticity for
Indian artifacts and exhibits (Native American Graves and Repatriation Act

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KUMIKO NOGUCHIof 1990), as well as changing the system of the Bureau of Indian Affairs,
replacing non-Indian staff with Indian staff from federally recognized tribes.
The point is that these laws supported self-determination for “federally
recognized tribes,” not “racial self-determination” (the main difference
between the Red Power movement and the African-American civil rights
movement) or “local self-determination” based on some cultural, social, or
biological identity. As a result of the Red Power movement and thefollowing federal Indian policy, the sovereignty of the “federally recognizedtribe” has been strengthened legally and politically.
These laws strengthened the IRA system. One reason for this is that thelaws applied only to federally recognized tribes. This is the main reason why
radical Native American intellectuals later accused Red Power legislation
advocates, as well as the IRA system, of supporting assimilation-based tribal
governments under the colonial system.19 The Red Power movement, even if
indirectly, resulted in the pursuit of tribal self-determination based onfederal supervision and economic support.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND OF TRIBAL NATION BUILDING
The idea of “tribal nation building” contains a criticism of federally
supervised tribal self-determination. Nation building emerged as one of theleading expressions of Native American community development during the
1990s. As a background for understanding the creation of the idea of tribal
nation building, there are several scholarly arguments about what constitutes“real” tribal development for Native people.
The first critique came from research skeptical of the authenticity offederally recognized tribes. Thomas Biolsi discloses the contradiction ofmodern tribal communities in which the IRA tribal government and the preIRA tribal political system coexisted. While the latter had been ignored byfederal Indian policy, the IRA tribal governments controlled community
development, at least politically, with federal financial support, which also
led to factionalism among tribal members. Biolsi argues that “Native
nationhood is a critical site of identity and political struggle for Indianpeoples.”20
Mohawk scholar Gerald (Taiaiake) Alfred also criticizes those tribalorganizations that have been conceptualized along the “state formation
spectrum” as a European-derived concept and a reframing of traditional
indigenous nationhood and identities. Alfred insists that these nations
replicate the statehood in Western countries in the categorization andKEEPING THE INDIAN TRIBAL COMMUNITY TOGETHER

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organization of people by government institutions based on rights generated
by legal and judicial processes, which is an assimilative attitude toward
indigenous identity.21
Legislation following the IRA, according to Deloria and Clifford M.
Lytle, led to achieving some self-government goals, with people becoming
ready to assume decision-making responsibilities. Because federally
recognized tribes remained under the recognition and monitoring of asuperior political power (US federal government), and their political status
as sovereign nations based on treaties with the federal government wereignored, tribal self-governance is still inadequate.22 Instead, as Diné scholar
Lloyd L. Lee observes of the Diné’s cultural and political selfdetermination, some tribes started discussing nation building by promoting“independence” from the dominant nation as well as from Euro-American
ideas about how to govern. “Tribe” is understood as not something that is“recognized” or “defined” by the outside society but rather as an entity that
tribal members themselves define and develop.23 Mohawk scholar Audra
Simpson states that refusing to be “recognized,” in order to avoid becoming
enfolded into the logic of the state and disappearing, can also be considereda position taken by tribal communities for future generations.24
In the 2000s, the arguments for tribal nation building covered a wide
range of historical perspectives regarding indigenous experiences of US
colonization. Simone Poliandri, in Native American Nationalism and Nation
Re-Building, describes tribal nation building as “the connection of tribal
nationhood with tribal identity, the resiliency of tribal nation-building efforts
in the face of the centennial colonial pressure, the link between historicaland contemporary nation-building efforts, and the importance of tribal
cultures in the definition of tribal nationalism and shaping of nation-building
paths.”25
Nation-building discourse incorporates criticism of the IRA system, with
its federally recognized tribal government systems, and tries to achieve
tribal development through Native autonomous decision making. The ideaof nation building was developed together with criticism of the EuroAmerican concept of governance and US colonization of Native American
communities. It emerged as a movement for decolonizing the concept ofNative autonomy and survival.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN TRIBAL NATION BUILDING
There is another important reason why the idea of nation building

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emerged in discussions in the 1990s. The 1987 Harvard Project on American
Indian Economic Development conducted a comparative study of the social,economic, and political conditions on American Indian reservations. The
HPAIED concluded, “The emergence of true self-governance in IndianCountry has fostered increasingly successful economic ventures that makeuse of regulatory sovereignty, resource control, and improved incentives andaccountability that have come from devolution of previously federal
functions to tribal governance.”26
This analysis seems surprising when we recall that the Kennedy Report(“Indian Education: A National Tragedy—A National Challenge”) called
after Senator Robert Kennedy, chair of a special subcommittee on Indian
education, and published in 1969 stated:
Fifty thousand Indian families live in unsanitary, dilapidated dwellings,
many in huts, shanties, even abandoned automobiles; The average
Indian income is $1,500, 75 percent below the national average; Theaverage age of death of the American Indian is 44 years: for all other
Americans it is 65. The infant mortality rate is twice the national
average: and thousands of Indians have migrated into cities only to findthemselves untrained for jobs and unprepared for urban life. The reportmentions these cold statistics illuminate a national tragedy and anational disgrace.27
The Kennedy Report disclosed disastrous Indian poverty and pointed outthat the federally directed tribal governments under the IRA system had
failed to produce sustained economic growth in reservations.
The Red Power movement and the following federal Indian policies in the
1970s and 1980s could not improve the poverty on reservations, as Indiansremained the poorest people in the United States until the 1990s. Randall
Akee et al. found that federal expenditures in major programs affecting
federally recognized tribes decreased dramatically in the 1980s to a
“service-eligible Indian” basis.28 The stereotyped image of Native
Americans as “welfare recipients” was emphasized in the neoliberal politicalatmosphere.29
Much has changed since the Seminole tribe in Florida opened a highstakes bingo parlor in 1979, with other tribes following the Seminole
example of opening gaming businesses on reservations. Especially after the
victory in the California v. Cabazon case (1987), in which the Supreme
Court supported the tribal right to gaming businesses on reservations

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without state intervention, an increasing number of tribes started gaming
businesses.30 In October 1988, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act allowed
only federally recognized tribes to use gaming “as a means of promoting
tribal economic development, self-sufficiency, and strong tribal
government.”31 The act led to the settlement of jurisdictional conflicts
between states and tribes and resulted in an Indian gaming business boom
beginning in the 1990s. Despite bitter opposition by state governments,
churches, and private gaming companies, 241 tribes had opened 501 casinos
in twenty-nine states by 2018. According to the National Indian Gaming
Commission, an independent federal regulatory agency created under the
Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, the Indian gaming business created $33.7
billion in revenue in 2018 and exceeded the revenue of state-controlledcommercial gaming in the United States.32
The gaming industry was clearly the first business opportunity fromwhich many Indian tribes successfully made sustainable income on thereservations. The Indian gaming business, however, did not benefit all the
gaming tribes. According to the National Indian Gaming Commission, 7
percent of gaming tribes made more than 50 percent of the total Indian
income in the gaming business.33 Those top gaming tribes tend to live on
reservations suitable for the casino business, being close to highways or big
cities.
Gaming has not been the only business manifestation of Indian tribes.
Other reservation businesses also developed. The HPAIED found thatvarious enterprises emerged in Indian Country with businesses that haveregulatory advantages of tribal exempt status from state taxes within theirreservation boundaries (e. g., smoke shops, and gas stations sellingcommodities), natural resources (timber operations and ski resorts), gems
and amenity resources (crafts and tourism). The US Department ofCommerce identified 102,000 Native-owned businesses on reservations andtribal lands in 1992. By 2002, this figure had more than doubled to
206,000.34 Around 80 percent of Indian businesses were created after 1980.
Since the late 1990s, the US media has dramatically created thestereotype of rich gaming Indians, who are suddenly handed billions ofdollars by ethically unacceptable businesses; however, most of the gamingand nongaming tribes produce limited revenue. While this stereotype does
not necessarily reflect the reality, the Indian casino era has brought increased
revenue to tribal communities via various kinds of businesses, among which,gaming industries had the largest impact on tribal communities.35
During the first decade of the Indian casino era, the real household

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incomes of Indian gaming tribes grew by 33 percent, but the householdincomes of nongaming tribe members also increased by 22 percent. Thiseconomic growth in Indian Country was not the result of a large influx offederal dollars but tribal strategies for economic development.36 It is also
true that many reservations continue to struggle with poverty and violence.
Data shows, however, that reservation businesses have rapidly increased andare increasing.
The HPAIED mentions that tribal economic and political development areinterrelated. Successful economic development is most likely to occur whentribes assert their political institutions effectively and support suchassertions with capable and appropriate institutions for self–decision
making.37 Such strategies contribute positively to community developmentin ways that capture both economic and noneconomic benefits for tribal
nation building.
When gaming revenues are used “as a means of promoting tribal
economic development, self-sufficiency, and strong tribal government,” atribe does not need to depend only on federal financial support;38 therefore,
tribal political and cultural self-determination will be developed understronger tribal leadership with their own concept of tribal governance in the
Indian casino era. HPAIED mentions that economic development supports
tribal sovereignty. So how does it affect cultural sovereignty?
CULTURAL SOVEREIGNTY AND NATION BUILDINGIn 2001, Choctaw historian and writer Devon A. Mihesuah argued that
Euro-American colonization of Native American societies had not yet
ended. Native Americans remain colonized through violence against theirculture, which has brought about the stereotypes of poverty, family
destruction, and language disappearance.39 Cultural sovereignty means thepower of self-determination to overcome the cultural violence inheritedfrom the political and economic subjugation of Native Americans.
Mihesuah’s decolonization theory corresponds to Poliandri’s definition ofcultural coherence and cultural self-determination as core purposes of tribal
nation building in the face of “centennial colonial pressure.”40 Mohawk
scholar Dean H. Smith also notes the relationship between tribal economic
development and cultural sovereignty as being “to design an economic
structure that allows the rest of the society to maintain its cultural integrity
and develop new and improved methods of living.”41 How does this affectthe nation building of gaming tribes?

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While there is rich research on the Indian gaming industry and its
influence on tribal political sovereignty, research on actual practices ofgaming tribes in the ongoing project of tribal nation building has been
severely limited because of lack of information and resources. Specifically,
tribal challenges regarding cultural sovereignty have rarely been discussed
except for some that focus on the big gaming tribes’ achievements. For
example, Mary Lawlor examined how gaming contributes to selfrepresentation through tribal museums under tribal leadership. Patsy Westalso analyzed the Seminoles’ gaming businesses and its contribution to tribal
sovereignty.42
It would not make sense to write a summary of current tribal societies
without considering political, economic, and cultural diversity. A closer lookat more than 570 federally recognized tribes shows that their ways of
pursuing cultural sovereignty are just as varied as their cultures andsocieties. In this article, I introduce four cases of challenges faced by some
California gaming tribes. By 2008, tribes built fifty-eight casinos in
California, which is a top Indian gaming state with the highest revenues
from Indian gaming nationwide. I chose these four tribes because of theirsuccesses in facing challenges related to cultural sovereignty as well as theavailability of written resources and oral interviews. These tribes have usedtheir gaming revenues to protect their own ways of family life and topreserve their cultural artifacts. Using public documents, data, and statistics
as well as interviews with tribal members, I show the strategies that these
California tribes have used in achieving cultural sovereignty in the processof tribal nation building.
Cultural Sovereignty over Child and Family Care
Political destruction and poverty have been identified as the two main
results of the federal assimilation policy in the twentieth century. These
policies led to a secondary effect on the tribal community—a decrease intribal membership. In 2010, US Census data on the Native American
population showed that 5.4 million Americans identify themselves as Native
American or Alaska Natives, either alone or in combination with one ormore other races, and this number has dramatically increased since the1950s.43 The number of enrolled members of federally recognized tribes,
however, has continually decreased since the 1950s. Of self-identified
American Indians in the United States, Bureau of Indian Affairs data shows
only 1.97 million enrolled tribe members.44

144

KUMIKO NOGUCHIOne of the reasons for the continued decrease in tribal enrollees, as
Matthew L. M. Fletcher et al. found, was the forced removal of Indianchildren from reservations as part of federal assimilation policy.45 After the
failure of boarding school education became apparent in the 1920s, federal
and state child welfare programs began arranging Indian child adoption to
non-Indian families in order to raise them following the Euro-American way
of life and philosophy. Beginning in the middle of the twentieth century,
thousands of Indian children were moved from reservations to non-Indian
homes via adoption or foster care. In 1969, surveys conducted by thenonprofit Association on American Indian Affairs indicated thatapproximately 25 to 35 percent of all Indian children were separated fromtheir families and placed in foster homes or institutions or adopted by nonIndian families.46
With this shocking number of child-removal cases, the federal and state
adoption policy for Native American children became one of the issues thatwas criticized during the Red Power movement. For example, the Women of
All Red Nations was organized by Indian female activists to resist Indian
adoptions as well as the forced sterilization of Indian women. They
discovered that, behind this adoption policy, there was an ignorance of tribal
family and community systems, which were under attack by the centurylong assimilation policy.47 For example, the Association on American IndianAffairs investigation discovered that many Indian children were sent to nonIndian foster families because their biological parents did not provide themwith their own room and bed. Also, when children were raised by theirextended family, which was considered normal in many reservations, they
were marked as being in inadequate environments and taken away to foster
families as well.48 For parents on the reservations, the adoption policy was
the same as the kidnapping of their children. The children themselves
became victims of the conflict between Native American and EuroAmerican ways of childcare and family building.
The Indians’ protests against forced removal of children resulted inepochal legislation in 1978. The 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act states thatno Indian child may be removed from his or her family without proper
notification to the concerned tribe or extended family members. It also saysthat every effort must be made to place the child with the extended family,
other tribal members, or other Indian families, in that order, before allowing
non-Native placement. Tribal courts must have ultimate jurisdiction in all
matters pertaining to child welfare services whenever possible.49 The ICWA
is one of the symbolic pieces of legislation from the Red Power era that

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supports the right of federally recognized tribes to control family welfare.
In the next decades, however, many tribes discovered it was difficult toimplement the act with only a limited amount of federal financial support.
Because of the lack of financial resources, they could not hire or train
enough specialists to support the ICWA process, such as Indian social
workers or foster families, as well as grant writers and tribal administrators
for the complicated administration and paperwork.50 This is one example ofthe fragility of tribal sovereignty premised on federal financial support.
A case involving the Tule River tribe shows how a gaming tribe used its
gaming revenue to implement the ICWA. Located in the foothills of the
Sierra Nevada mountains in Central California, with about two thousand
enrolled members, the Tule River is one of California’s gaming tribes. The
tribe uses profits from gaming for tribal welfare such as scholarships;
transportation; higher education; building convenience stores, gas stations,and elders’ centers; renovation of tribal buildings; buying back lands;
investments in new businesses such as the aero industry and restaurants; andtheir own child and family welfare program.
Charmaine McDarment, a lawyer and a member of the Tule River tribe,
was hired by the tribal government to take charge of the child and family
welfare program. As a pioneering law school graduate from this tribe, shecame back to the reservation in the early 2000s to work for the tribal
government. Under her leadership, the Tule River tribe also hired three moretribal members as program staff to work exclusively on ICWA cases.
McDarment realized that enforcement of the ICWA required a lot of
financial support for the project team, which included hiring lawyers, social
workers and social worker trainees, staff, and other administrative costs.
Because all tribes welcomed the ICWA, it made a demand on the federal
budget. Even though tribes have political sovereignty, they could notenforce the act without federal support. Since the 2000s the Tule River tribe,
therefore, started using its gaming revenues to complement limited federal
funding. In answering my interview question, McDarment said, “Having
gaming has allowed the tribe to expand its Family and Social Services
Department.”51 The tribe has more employees working with children than it
had before gaming. This led to more representation on behalf of the Tule
River tribe in the California state court system, which has jurisdiction overchild welfare cases. In 2017, the Tule River tribe opened its own tribal
courts; now, technically, all ICWA cases can be transferred from the
California state court to the Tule River tribal court.
Using its gaming revenue, Tule River helped to enforce its political and

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cultural sovereignty by preventing their children from being taken awayfrom them by federal and state adoption programs. The Tule River tribe used
its cultural self-determination to decide on the best way to care for needyfamilies and children. When asked about “the best way” to raise tribal
children, McDarment responded, “It is the communities that raise ourchildren. We tribal members all belong to the community. For example, weknow who can take care of whose children. That’s the sense of community.
It doesn’t matter who is the biological mother or father, we all know who
belongs to which community, or let’s say, extended family. We raise our kids
all together.”52
There are still many obstacles to implementing the ICWA at Tule River.
There remains a lack of tribal social workers and specialists. McDarment
mentioned that educating tribal members to use the funds for family welfare
is another challenge for the tribe in its use of gaming revenues. Hence, thegaming revenue will be used for scholarships for higher education.53
Tachi-Yokut tribe uses its gaming revenues to hire staff from outside thecommunity to organize a child-welfare department. Located close to the cityof Fresno, the Tachi casino resort has served numerous customers since1999. Tachi started to use their revenues for childcare to implement the
ICWA and other family-welfare projects, including combatting parental
alcoholism and domestic violence.54
Headquartered in their tribal government building, the Tribal Social
Service Department was organized by three nontribal experts under thesupervision of a tribal administrator. One social worker said, “Gaming
contributed to our child and family care program, not only having thebudget to hire childcare specialists, but also Tachi can afford to organize allkinds of services for child and family welfare by themselves, including
housing, medical supports, consultants for alcohol and drug users, as well as
for victims of domestic violence.”55
One of the Tachi social workers said that “the most important thing for us
is to be accepted among Tachi tribal members.” Therefore, the staff
participate in tribal ceremonies such as annual powwow and othergatherings and festivals held on the reservation so they can get to know
tribal members as much as possible. “We need to provide the Tachi children
with at least a safe environment for their daily life, such as safe places tosleep, eat, and learn, and it must be consistent, and for children to preserve
their Tachi culture,” said one staff member.56
The Tachi-Yokut and Tule River cases show how gaming moneycomplemented the lack of legislated federal support for tribal child welfare.

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Rather than applying for limited and competitive federal money, these tribes
chose to use the revenues from their tribal gaming business and strengthened
the decision-making power of the tribe’s leadership to support Indianfamilies and children. These two cases show that in the process of this
support, the tribal employees laid strong emphasis on the self-governance ofthe tribal community and culture. The program contributes to stopping theforced removal of Indian children following the Euro-American philosophyof childcare and replace it with the tribal way of child and family care. It isalso a way to maintain their population and their authority on family andcommunity. Through their economic self-sufficiency, these gaming tribes
have had an opportunity to archive their goals for cultural self-determinationin the arena of child and family welfare.
Cultural Sovereignty for Research, Collection, and Exhibition
During the federal assimilation policy from the 1890s to the 1930s, thegovernment outlawed the exercise of Indian traditions and religions. Since
the early twentieth century, federal law also defined dead Indians buried onfederal land as “archaeological resources” and converted these dead persons
into federal property. Over the years, thousands of Indian dead were taken
by anthropologists, research institutes, and universities for research
purposes.57
During the 1970s, Congress enacted the American Indian Religious
Freedom Act, which protects and preserves the right of Native Americans to
express their traditional religions, access their sacred and burial sites, anduse and possess sacred objects. Since then, Indian tribes have tried to protect
their sacred and burial sites and to repatriate human remains as well as
funerary and sacred objects. They also pushed Congress to enact legislation
supporting their efforts, which resulted in the Native American Graves
Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1990.58
The act requires federal agencies and institutions that receive federal
funding to return Native American “cultural items” to lineal descendants andculturally affiliated Indian tribes. Cultural items include human remains,
funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony
possessing cultural and historical importance to the heritage of tribes. It also
requires that federal grants be used to assist in the repatriation process. The
Secretary of the Interior may assess civil penalties on museums that fail tocomply.59
Cabazon is one of four California Indian tribes with a tribal museum—a148

KUMIKO NOGUCHI

museum owned and managed by the tribe on its reservation. Located in the
middle of the small reservation in Indio County, the Cabazon Cultural
Museum has an adobe building, which is a reminder of Spanish
colonization. The old house, which was used by a tribal chairman in the
middle of the twentieth century, was renovated as a two-story building in the
1990s. It is not a large public-style museum filled with clear glass showcases
and a fancy entrance counter with a receptionist sitting there every day. The
museum can be opened any day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., but only byappointment, and one tribal member is available as a curator, also by
appointment.60
The Cabazon started planning to open a tribal museum right after they
entered the gaming business in the early 1980s. They were not the only tribe
interested in building a museum. At first, eight other Cahuilla tribes inSouthern California were enthusiastic about opening their own tribal
museums, and they organized a consortium to share information about the
NAGPRA procedures. They soon realized that it was difficult for them toproceed with the application for NAGPRA by themselves. First, federal
museums did not support tribal requests for repatriation and did not reveal
enough information of items for tribes to investigate. Second, the Cahuillatribes, except for the Cabazon, Morongo, and Agua Caliente, which had
already gained substantial revenues from their gaming businesses, could notafford to travel to visit federal museums.61 Financial support under
NAGPRA was extremely competitive, requiring tribal delegates to prepare
complicated applications and financial needs documents as they did in
ICWA cases.62
Instead of depending on the federal budget, the Cabazon and the twoother well-off tribes used their own budgets to hire a museum director foreach tribe, cover travel costs, prepare exhibits, and construct the individual
tribal museums. Why did the Cabazon need a tribal museum for themselves
so badly in the 1990s? Judy Stapp, the curator of the museum, said, “Oncewe had money, we needed to use it for our tribal members, which was tobuild the place like a museum as a symbol of tribal sovereignty.” Stappjoyfully mentioned that, with the museum, “here became the place where
younger tribal younger members could go when they want to learn the oldstories.”63 The museum now holds annual powwows for tribal members andsurrounding communities.
In the 1960s, there was no electricity or water supply on the Cabazon
reservation, and jobs were unavailable; thus, only two families lived there. It
was after the Cabazon began their gaming business that the tribal members

KEEPING THE INDIAN TRIBAL COMMUNITY TOGETHER

149

came back. The population had increased to thirty-eight in 2010.64 The
Cabazon museum became a symbol of reuniting and self-identification fortribal members without federal interference or financial support. For tribes
like the Cabazon, the museum has functioned as an institution to bond tribal
members as a community. The Cabazon have a space to display theirculture, their membership, their identity, and their memories. The museum
has thus become a symbol of their cultural sovereignty.65
The Pechanga case provides another narrative of a gaming tribe’sachievement of cultural sovereignty. Pechanga is one of the leading tribes
using their gaming revenue for repatriation. Located in Temecula County
near the city of Riverside, the Pechanga Casino Resort has become wellknown as an entertainment venue. It produces the highest gaming sales inSouthern California.
Pechanga started to work with NAGPRA only to realize it would not workout because of the politics of the boundaries between neighboring tribes inclaiming repatriation for items and federal inability to settle these claims.
Thus, Pechanga had a unique idea, which was to buy back items directlyfrom museums, institutions, and other places all over the country. For
storage, the tribe created the Cultural Resource Center and organized aprofessional team to run the center.66
Ethnohistorian Lisa Woodward works in the Pechanga Cultural Resource
Center, mainly investigating historical documents and other information toassist with the preservation of cultural sites within the traditional tribal
territory. According to Woodward, the center has eight professional staff
members: a director of cultural resources, a cultural coordinator, anarchivist, a planning specialist, an analyst, a tribal historic preservation
officer, a curator, and an archives specialist. This team works closely with
the Pechanga tribe’s geographic information systems department and house
legal attorney, who specializes in cultural resource protection laws.67
Like other gaming tribes in California, the Pechanga have been planningto build a tribal museum. Myra Masiel-Zamora, a tribal member and curator
working for the Resource Center, said, “Our project is not for expected
visitors but for tribal members.” Like the Cabazon museum, the Pechanga
museum is expected to be an important tool for tribal members to learn,share, and memorize who they are and where they came from. This is also
the mission of the Pechanga Press, a tribally owned publisher. The Pechanga
Press has already published more than twenty books, including Pechanga
language textbooks for Pechanga children and anthropological studies
written by tribal members.68

150

KUMIKO NOGUCHIThe challenges faced by these gaming tribes display aspects of tribal
cultural sovereignty in the Indian casino era. Tribal cultural institutions suchas tribal museums or cultural resource centers and the tribal press havefunctioned as places to share tribal history and heritage among tribal
members. Because of economic self-sufficiency, these tribes have gained theopportunity to define their identity, history, and origins both for themselves
and for the public, which was rarely possible before the 1990s.
These cases involving funding of tribal museums and child-and-family
welfare provide some idea of what cultural sovereignty means for gaming
tribes in California in the process of nation building. It is the right to selfdetermine who they are and to use their own strategies to keep their tribal
heritage, history, membership, and family systems for themselves.
The results above are like those of other gaming tribes in Central andSouthern California. Gaming tribes have used their gambling revenues for
projects such as child and family care, a resource center or museum, a tribal
school, scholarships, a tribal magazine, and donations to neighboring tribal
and nontribal communities (fig. 1). It is also true that these tribes havesuccessfully run their gaming resorts because of having good locations, awell-organized tribal government, and tribal leadership. The more revenue a
Tribe
Reservation

Casino resort

Cultureprojects

Fornal mane andyear established

Pechanga

MorongoCabazon

SobobaAgua Caliente Tachi Yokut

Tule River

Pechanga Band Morongo Band Cabazon Band Soboba Band Agua Caliente Tachi Yokut Tule River Indianof Luisenoof Missionof Missionof Luiseno Band of Cahuilla
Tribe ofIndians (1882) Indians (1865) Indians (1876) Indians (1883) Indians (1876) Tribe (1934) California (1873)

Reservation population*

343

777

725

417

26,028940

1,227Year of casino estabished

2001

1983

1980

1993

1995

1994

1996

Casino employees

5,750

1,850

1,000

678

2,381

1,500

600

Square feet

200,000

148,000

100,000

75,000160,000

195,000

70,000Child and family care
department (ICWA program)●●+tribal court

●

●

●

●+tribal court

Resource center, museum,library, culture center

●

●

●

●

Tribal schools (preschool,kindegarden)●●

Scholarship for higher
education●●

Tribal magazine●●

Donation to neighboring
commuunity

●

●

●

●

●
●

●
●

●

●

●

●

●
●

●

*“2014–2018 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates,” My Tribal Area, U.S. Census Bureau,
https://www.census.gove/tribal/ (accessed on March 24, 2020)

Figure 1. Four studied gaming tribes and three gaming tribes with high gaming revenues inRiverside County, California, and their cultural projects

KEEPING THE INDIAN TRIBAL COMMUNITY TOGETHER

151

tribe has, the more opportunities it has to build tribal services andinstitutions. Cultural sovereignty based on economic success has been aresult of the lack of federal support.
CONCLUSION
Since community development received scholarly focus in the Red Powerera, which resulted in the establishment of Native American studies
programs, the Native American approach to community development has
transformed from a pan-Indian approach to a tribal nation-building approachin the Indian casino era. Tribal nation building is a challenging goal in which
each tribe decides how it should be governed without interference fromoutside interests, including political entities. Criticism of federally
controlled tribal governments and tribal economic development in the Indiancasino era has led to the challenge to tribes to do their own nation building.
Against the historical background, we can see how the tribal gaming
industry has contributed to tribal nation building, achieving tribal cultural
sovereignty. As seen in the examples of these gaming tribes, several projects
have been introduced and supported by tribal gaming revenues to develop
tribal cultural self-determination.
How the gaming income is used supports Smith’s definition of cultural
sovereignty as having an “economic structure that allows the rest of thesociety to maintain its cultural integrity and develop new and improved
methods of living.” This process has been shared by many tribes nationwide,from the Hopi tourism industry to the Apache aerospace industry to the
Puyallup’s fishery and the Navajo gaming industry in Arizona.
The Indian casino era is a period of tribal economic development that haspolitically, economically, and culturally contributed to and strengthened theself-determination of the tribe. This change has prepared the ground for a
discussion on nation building and tribal challenges as the latest community
development theory.
The research results prompt another question: Can the casino era beconsidered the era of tribal nationalism? The answer is yes, it is an aspect oflife for the gaming tribes in the twenty-first century. Tribal nation building inthis century must be understood in light of the fact that tribal sovereignty
has aided in the building of a collective tribal identity, but it has also
resulted in an attitude of excluding others (nontribal members). As anargument against the disenrollment of tribal members, through the forced
deprivation of membership to tribal members by tribal governments partly

152

KUMIKO NOGUCHI

because of the distribution of the gaming revenues, tribal nationalism has led
to political, economic, and cultural violence against Native American
individuals by tribal governments.69
Further research is needed. First, the gaming era dramatically brought
each tribe some opportunities as well as motivation for economic
development, but the results have depended on each tribe and its politicalinstitution (tribal government or tribal leaders), location, and human andnatural resources. It is also critically true that chances for tribal economic
development have created economic disparities among tribes, and those ineconomic hardship need to depend on unstable and competitive federal
funding. Because of space limitations, in this article, I have not addressed
each state’s interference in tribal nation building. Besides federal-tribal
relations, state-tribal relations also influence tribal nation building, as can beseen in US Supreme Court cases involving tribal nation building competingwith states’ autonomy. Nor have I addressed the question of whether gaming
is an appropriate tool for gaining sovereignty; that is, I have examined how
gaming revenues contribute to tribal sovereignty without discussing social
problems or ethical opinions concerning the gaming industry. In this article I
have focused on the results of the tribal gaming industry, mentioning how
gaming tribes use some parts of their revenues and how they compensate forthe lack of federal funding for their cultural sovereignty.
NOTES
The research for this article was supported by the Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI)
number 18K01177.
EPIGRAPH
Vine Deloria Jr., For This Land: Writing on Religion in America, with an
introduction by James Treat (New York: Routledge Press, 1999), 43.
1
Gelya Frank and Carole Goldberg, Defying the Odds: The Tule River Tribe’s Struggle forSovereignty in Three Centuries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 241. I
acknowledge that the tribal name is the most accurate and respectful term when referring to
specific peoples, institutions, and things. However, it would be unfeasible to spell out theindividual names of each tribe when referring to the indigenous groups of the United States ina general way. For this purpose, and due to the lack of universally accepted terms, Native,
Native American, and Indian are used interchangeably in this article along with specific tribal
names.
2
Vine Deloria Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (New York: Macmillan,

KEEPING THE INDIAN TRIBAL COMMUNITY TOGETHER

153

1969, repr. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 248.
3Charles Wilkinson, Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations (New York:W. W. Norton, 2005), 29–49.
4
Troy Johnson, Joane Nagel, and Duane Champagne, American Indian Activism: Alcatraz
to the Longest Walk (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 9–43.
5Simone Poliandri, ed., Native American Nationalism and Nation Re-Building: Past andPresent Cases (New York: State University of New York Press, 2016), 1.
6
Ibid., 217–303.
7
David Wilkins, American Indian Politics and the American Political System (Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).
8
Besides Poliandri’s Native American Nationalism and Nation Re-Building, see Brian
Hosmer and Larry Nesper, Tribal Worlds: Critical Studies in American Indian Nation
Building (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2013); Loretta Fowler, Tribal
Sovereignty and the Historical Imagination: Cheyenne-Arapaho Politics (Lincoln: Universityof Nebraska Press, 2002); and Keith James, ed., Science and Native American Communities(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001).
9
For historical background of Indian gaming Industry, see Ralph A. Rossum, The Supreme
Court and Tribal Gaming: California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians (Lawrence:
University of Kansas Press, 2011); Steven Andrew Light and Kathryn R. L. Rand, Indian
Gaming and Tribal Sovereignty: The Casino Compromise (Lawrence: University Press of
Kansas, 2005); Paul Pasquaretta, Gambling and Survival in Native North America (Tucson:
University of Arizona Press, 2003); W. Dale Mason, Indian: Tribal Sovereignty and American
Politics (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000); Angela Mullis and David Kamper,
eds., Indian Gaming: Who Wins? (UCLA Indian Studies Center, 2000). There are also somestudies about Indian gaming Industry and social change, see Kenneth N. Hansen and Tracy A.
Skopek, The New Politics of Indian Gaming: The Rise of Reservation Interest Group(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011); Alexandre Harmon, Rich Indians: Native
People and the Problem of Wealth in American History, (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2010); Jessica R. Cattelino, High Stakes: Florida Seminole Gaming andSovereignty (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); Kim Isaac Eisler, Revenge of thePequots: How a Small Native American Tribe Created the World’s Most Profitable Casino(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001).
10
Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development (HPAIED), The State of the
Native Nations: Conditions under US Politics of Self-Determination (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2008).
11
Jerry W. Robinson Jr. and Gary Paul Green, eds., Introduction to Community
Development: Theory, Practice, and Service Learning (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2010).
12
https://nas.ucdavis.edu/courses–0, accessed August 31, 2019.
13
For Native American Studies, see Clara Sue Kidwell and Alan Velie, Native American
Studies (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005).
14
Alvin Josephy Jr., Joanne Nagel, Troy Johnson, eds., Red Power: The American Indian’sFight for Freedom (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).
15
Stephen Cornell, The Return of the Native: American Indian Political Resurgence (NewYork, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Hertzberg, Hazel W., The Search for an
American Indian Identity: Modern Pan-Indian Movement (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse
University Press, 1971).
16
Wilkins, American Indian Politics, 13.
17Felix S. Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law with Reference Tables and Index(Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office,1942) .
18
Elmer Rusco, A Fateful Time: The Background and Legislative History of the Indian

154

KUMIKO NOGUCHI

Reorganization Act (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2000).
19
Gerald R. Alfred, Heeding the Voices of Our Ancestors: Kahnawake Mohawk Politics andthe Rise of Native Nationalism (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1995), 12. Alfred used his
Indian name, Taiaiake, for his next works.
20
Thomas Biolsi, “Imagined Geographies: Sovereignty, Indigenous Space, and American
Indian Struggle,” American Ethnologists 32, no. 2 (1995): 254. Also see Thomas Biolsi,
Power and Progress on the Prairie: Governing People on Rosebud Reservation(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018).
21
Taiaiake Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto, 2nd ed.
(Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2009), 12.
22Vine Deloria Jr. and Clifford M. Lytle, Nations Within: The Past and Future of American
Indian Sovereignty (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 13–15.
23
Lloyd L. Lee, “Navajo Cultural Identity: What Can the Navajo Bring to the American
Indian Identity Discussion Table?,” Wicazo Sa Review 21, no. 2: 79–103.
24
Audra Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 184.
25
Poliandri, Native American Nationalism and Nation Re-Building, 1.
26
HPAIED, State of the Native Nations, 10.
27“Indian Education: A National Tragedy–A National Challenge” (Kennedy Report), 1969
Report of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare (pursuant to Senate Resolution 80),
United State Senate, 91st 1st sess., x.
28
Randall K. Q Akee, Katherine A. Spidle, and Jonathan B. Taylor, “The Indian Gaming
Regulatory Act and Its Effects on American Indian Economic Development,” Journal of
Economic Perspectives 29, no. 3 (2015): 189.
29
HPAIED, State of the Native Nations, 243–44.
30
Rossum, Supreme Court and Tribal Gaming, 119–43.
31
Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, 25 U.S.C. Public Law 100-497-Oct. 17, 1988, 102 Stat.
2467, Sec. 2702.
32
Regarding the historical background of the Indian gaming industry, see National Indian
Gaming Commission, https://www.nigc.gov/commission/gaming–revenue–reports, accessed
February 11, 2020.
33
HPAIED, State of the Native Nations, 10.
34
Minority Business Development Agency, US Department of Commerce, The State of
Minority Business Enterprises: An Overview of the 2002 Survey of Business Owners(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, August 2006).
35
For historical background on the Indian casino era, see Noguchi Kumiko,『インディアンとカジノ： アメリカの光と影』[Indians and casinos: Dreams and reality of the United States](Chikuma: Shinsho, 2019).
36
Ibid., 9.
37
HPAIED, State of the Native Nations, 121.
38
Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, 25 U.S.C. Public Law 100-497-Oct. 17, 1988, 102 Stat.
2467, Sec. 2702.
39
Devon A. Mihesuah, American Indians: Stereotypes and Realities (Atlanta, GA: Clarity
Press, 2001).
40
Poliandri, Native American Nationalism and Nation Re-Building, 4.
41
Dean H. Smith, Modern Tribal Development: Paths to Self-Sufficiency and Cultural
Integrity in Indian Country (Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 2000), 13.
42
Mary Lawlor, Public Native America: Tribal Self-Representations in Casinos, Museums,
and Powwows (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006); Patsy West, The
Enduring Seminoles: From Alligator Wrestling to Casino Gaming (Gainesville: University

KEEPING THE INDIAN TRIBAL COMMUNITY TOGETHER

155

Press of Florida, 1998).
43
US Census Bureau, “The American Indian and Alaska Native Population: 2010,” https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-10.pdf, accessed February 11, 2020.
44
US Department of the Interior, “2013 American Indian Population and Labor Force
Report” (January 16, 2014), https://www.bia.gov/sites/bia.gov/files/assets/public/pdf/idc1024782.pdf, accessed February 11, 2020.
45
Matthew L. M. Fletcher, Wenona T Singel, and Kathryn E. Fort, eds., Facing the Future:
The Indian Child Welfare Act at 30 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2009).
46“Indian Child Welfare Program,” Hearings before the Subcommittee on Indian Affairs of
the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, US Senate, 93rd Cong., 2nd sess., April 8 and
9, 1974, 95–99.
47
Women of All Red Nations, WARN Newsletter, n.d., Reprinted in Hearing before theUnited States Commission on Civil Rights—National Indian Civil Rights Issues, vol. 2,
exhibit no. 10, Washington, DC, March 19–20, 1979, Purdue University Library, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pur1.32754060145251&view=1up&seq=5, accessed February
11, 2020.
48
Association on American Indian Affairs, “The Destruction of American Indian Families,”(New York: Association on American Indian Affairs), 1977.
49
Ibid.
50
Suzanne L. Cross, Angelique G. Day, and Emily C. Proctor, “Working on the Front Lines:
The Role of Social Work in Response to the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978,” in Fletcher,Singel, and Fort, Facing the Future, 3–12.
51
Kumiko Noguchi interview with Charmain McDarment, Tule River Indian Reservation,
California, March 14, 2019.
52
Ibid.
53
Ibid.
54
Ibid.
55
Kumiko Noguchi interview with staff of the Tribal Social Services Department, TachiYokut tribe, Santa Rosa Reservation, California, March 2019.
56
Ibid.
57
Sangita Chari and Jaime M. N. Lavallee, Accomplishing NAGPRA: Perspectives on the
Intent, Impact, and Future of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act(Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2013), 19–24.
58
Ibid., 25–45.
59
Amy Lonetree, Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National andTribal Museums (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012). Kathleen S. FineDare, Grave Injustice: The American Indian Repatriation Movement and NAGPRA (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 2002).
60
Kumiko Noguchi interview with Judy Stapp, Cabazon Cultural Museum at the Cabazon
Reservation, California, March 10, 2019.
61
Ibid.
62
Ibid. Similar criticisms against NAGPRA procedure were reported by other tribes. See C.
Timothy McKeown, “‘The Secretary Shall’”: Actual and Apparent Delegation of NAGPRA’s
Implementation Responsibilities,” in Accomplishing NAGPRA, 55–82.
63
Ibid.
64
Kumiko Noguchi interview with Joe Benitz, Cabazon Cultural Museum at the Cabazon
Reservation, March 13, 2019.
65
Kumiko Noguchi interview with Judy Stapp, Cabazon Cultural Museum at the Cabazon
Reservation, California, March 13, 2019.
66
Kumiko Noguchi interview with Lisa Woodward at the Pechanga Cultural Resource

156

KUMIKO NOGUCHI

Center, Pechanga Reservation, California, March 12, 2019.
67
Ibid.
68
Ibid.
69
David E. Wilkins and Shelly Hulse Wilkins, Dismembered (Seattle: University ofWashington Press, 2017).