Most of the adults on the reservation can remember when people made their living fishing for salmon in Puget Sound. And now we're employing at least 1,100 people at the casino, and we give all of them a health plan. We still have so many programs to put into place. But a lot of the tribes out there are just starving. There are tribes that do not have any opportunity.
Location is everything.
We're right along the freeway. In counties that have reservations with casinos, the poverty rate declined only slightly between 1989 and 1995, from 17.7 percent to 15.5 percent, the AP analysis found. Counties with reservations with no gambling saw their poverty rate remain steady at slightly more than 18 percent. Nationally, the poverty rate hovered at near 13 percent during the period. The AP analysis indicates casino gambling has slowed, though not reversed, the growth of tribal members on public assistance.