In New York state, the Seneca Nation of Indians mounted a statewide advertising campaign against a proposed state policy to end tribes’ tax-free sales of cigarettes and gasoline to non-Indians. The ads featured patriotic music and images of schoolchildren, a teacher and a Vietnam veteran.

• “It’s safe to say I wouldn’t be standing before you today if I didn’t think there was a way that we could get a policy together that works for a very broad segment of Minnesota.”
• One license will be granted to an organization with Indian Tribes located in the north of the state while the second license will go to tribes in the south.
• They say they are heartened by the recent hiring of Clint Harris as the director of the state’s lottery.
• Officials from two state departments also tried to make the reports nonpublic, saying their release would make the monitoring of Indian gambling unworkable because tribes would withhold future audit reports from the state.

Minnesota has negotiated 22 tribal-state compacts with 11 Indian tribes, resulting in the establishment of 18 casinos in the state. The class III games permitted under these compacts are blackjack and video games of chance. Three of the best Indian casinos in Minnesota can be seen on the map below. Montana also has card clubs and allows calcutta betting on sports events. MINNESOTA—Minnesota is the only state that, at least on paper, came close to having a comprehensive plan for dealing with the minimum age for gambling, and it failed.

A Journal of the Free People of Minnesota

Since then, Fishel said, state legislators have inquired about obtaining the audits. “The state is looking at a state-run casino that would be a direct competitor of these tribes.” The tribes agreed to send audits to Public Safety upon request; the department doesn’t always ask for them. Prairie Island has sent audits to Public Safety with cover letters that noted its understanding that the audits were confidential, said its attorney, Julie Fishel. He also noted that, under two court decisions, Oregon and Washington open-records laws are not preempted by federal Indian gambling confidentiality rules. The departments had said disclosing the records would make the bands less willing to provide audit information to the state.

In terms of the measures taken to control the spread of COVID-19, tribal governments have led the way in best practices. The NIGC has provided checklists for closures, required communication on gaming operation procedures, offered frequent resource briefings, and has the federal regulatory oversight of tribal gaming operations. This federal agency pre-empts the field of state regulatory authority. As mentioned above, the primary relationship between tribal governments has been with the United States federal government, not the component state governments.