Description
Book SynopsisIn 1979, Florida Seminoles opened the first tribally operated high-stakes bingo hall in Native North America. This book presents an ethnographic account of the history and consequences of Seminole gaming. It describes casino operations, chronicles the everyday life and history of the Seminole Tribe, and shares the insights of individual Seminoles.
Trade Review“
High Stakes is a work of great ethnographic and theoretical power, written in prose of great clarity. It is also a model of sensitive and thoughtful writing with respect to American Indians, who have long been rightly suspicious of the ethnographic gaze and ethnographic representation.
High Stakes shows what ethnography can, indeed must, be and do in the twenty-first century.”—
Sherry B. Ortner, author of
Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject“
High Stakes tracks to the core of contemporary North American settler society today—the economy of value that structures expectation and possibility for indigenous peoples and the state. Here Jessica R. Cattelino examines with great ethnographic care and rigor the expectation that Indians be poor even where they have wealth, that wealth portends a diminishment of culture, and that indigeneity then stand before this process in an unrelenting and unchanging way. With a nuanced, careful, and precise ethnographic eye to and with the Seminole Tribe of Florida, this very important book proves so much otherwise.”—
Audra Simpson, Columbia University
Table of ContentsIllustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Seminole Gaming in the Sunshine State 1
1. Casino Roots 29
2. Cultural Currencies 59
3. Fungibility: The Politics of Casino Money 95
Interlude: Mateo Romero's
Indian Gaming 125
4. Rebuilding Sovereignty 127
5. Sovereign Interdependencies 161
Conclusion: Betting on the House 193
Notes 207
References 253
Index 279
