Case Study 2: Sovereignty, Casinos, and Self-Determination in the 21st Century

The Decision That Changed Everything

In the mid-1990s, the Tribal Council of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians faced a decision that would define the community's future more profoundly than any decision since the founding of the Qualla Boundary itself.

The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 had established the legal right of federally recognized tribes to operate gaming facilities on tribal land. Across the country, tribes were opening casinos and generating revenue that transformed communities that had been among the poorest in America. The question for the Eastern Band was simple to state and agonizing to answer: Should we build a casino?

The arguments for were compelling. The Qualla Boundary sat at the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited national park in America. Millions of people drove through Cherokee, North Carolina, every year. A casino would capture a portion of that traffic, generating revenue that could fund education, healthcare, infrastructure, and cultural preservation. The community needed the money. Unemployment was chronic. Per capita income was far below the state average. The existing tourist economy — gift shops, motels, the "Unto These Hills" drama — provided subsistence but not prosperity.

The arguments against were equally compelling, though harder to quantify. A casino would fundamentally change the character of the community. It would bring outsiders — not just tourists passing through but gamblers, developers, construction workers, and the entire service ecosystem that surrounds a major gaming operation. It would introduce gambling addiction into a community that was already vulnerable. It would create a dependence on gaming revenue that could prove as dangerous as the coal counties' dependence on a single industry. And it would, for some EBCI citizens, represent a betrayal of values — the monetization of sovereignty, the adoption of a business model rooted in exploitation of human weakness.

The Tribal Council voted to proceed. In 1997, the EBCI opened a gaming facility in Cherokee under a management agreement with Harrah's Entertainment. The facility was modest at first — essentially a large building with video gaming machines. It would grow into something much larger.

The Transformation

The numbers that followed were staggering.

Within a few years, the Cherokee casino was generating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. It expanded rapidly — adding table games, hotel rooms, restaurants, entertainment venues, a convention center. A second property, Harrah's Cherokee Valley River Casino & Hotel, opened in Murphy, North Carolina, in 2015, extending the gaming operation's reach into the southwestern corner of the state.

By the 2020s, the two casino properties combined were generating annual revenues exceeding $500 million. The gaming operation was the largest employer in western North Carolina — providing thousands of jobs to EBCI citizens and non-Indigenous residents of surrounding counties. The economic ripple effects extended far beyond the Boundary: casino visitors ate in restaurants in Bryson City and Sylva, stayed in hotels along the highway, bought gas and groceries in communities throughout the region.

For the EBCI government, gaming revenue was transformative. Before the casino, the tribal government depended on a combination of federal grants, modest tax revenue, and the limited proceeds of the tourist economy. After the casino, the EBCI had resources that enabled genuine self-governance — the ability to fund programs, build infrastructure, and provide services at a level that matched or exceeded what surrounding non-tribal communities could offer.

Education: Gaming revenue funded the construction of new school buildings, the hiring of additional teachers, the creation of scholarship programs, and the establishment of the Kituwah Academy language immersion school. Cherokee Central Schools became one of the better-resourced school systems in western North Carolina.

Healthcare: The Cherokee Indian Hospital was expanded and modernized, providing healthcare services that would otherwise have required long drives to facilities in Asheville or beyond. Behavioral health programs, substance abuse treatment, and mental health services were funded at levels that most rural communities in Appalachia could not approach.

Cultural preservation: The Kituwah Academy, the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, the preservation of sacred sites, and language documentation projects were all funded in whole or in part by gaming revenue. Without the casino, the EBCI's cultural preservation efforts would have been limited to what could be scrounged from federal grants and private donations.

Infrastructure: Roads, water systems, sewer systems, broadband internet, housing — the basic infrastructure of modern community life was built and maintained with gaming revenue.

Per capita distributions: A portion of gaming revenue was distributed directly to enrolled tribal citizens, providing a financial floor that no previous generation had enjoyed.

The Costs

The casino's benefits were real. So were its costs.

Problem gambling emerged as a significant concern. The presence of a major gaming facility on the Boundary meant that the temptation of casino gambling was always close — always accessible, always open. National research suggests that problem gambling rates are higher in communities located near casinos, and the EBCI was not exempt. The tribal government responded by funding treatment programs, establishing a gambling addiction hotline, and creating policies allowing individuals to voluntarily ban themselves from the casino. But the structural problem remained: the community's primary revenue source was an industry that profited from human weakness.

The minors' trust fund dilemma. Under the per capita distribution system, payments for enrolled citizens under eighteen were held in trust and released as a lump sum when the individual turned eighteen. By the 2010s, an eighteen-year-old EBCI citizen could receive a trust fund payout exceeding $100,000. Some used the money wisely — for college tuition, down payments on homes, business startup costs. Others did not. Stories of trust fund money lost to substance abuse, predatory relationships, and financial exploitation became part of the community's collective worry. The EBCI implemented financial literacy programs and considered reforms to the distribution schedule, but the tension between individual rights (it's their money) and community concern (some aren't ready for it) proved difficult to resolve.

Substance abuse amplification. The opioid crisis that ravaged Appalachia (Chapter 33) did not spare the Qualla Boundary. Per capita distributions, combined with the economic disruptions of casino employment — shift work, late hours, proximity to an environment designed to keep people spending money — created conditions that could amplify substance abuse problems. Tribal leaders spoke openly about the connection between casino wealth and substance abuse vulnerability, funding treatment programs and prevention efforts while acknowledging that the problem was structural, not merely individual.

Cultural tension. The casino's aesthetic — the flashing lights, the noise, the architectural spectacle designed to keep visitors engaged and spending — was difficult to reconcile with Cherokee cultural values that emphasized humility, community, and connection to the natural world. Some EBCI citizens described the casino as a necessary compromise: an enterprise that offended their values but funded the preservation of those values. Others saw it as a deeper corruption — a transformation of the community's identity from a people defined by cultural traditions to a people defined by a business operation.

Employment dynamics. While the casino created thousands of jobs, many of those jobs were the same kind of low-wage service positions — housekeeping, food service, gaming floor staff — that characterized the tourism economy throughout Appalachia. The casino created wealth at the top (revenue for the tribal government, per capita distributions for citizens) while many individual workers, including non-citizen employees, earned modest wages for demanding work.

The Sovereignty Argument

Defenders of the casino argued that the debate about its costs missed the most important point: the casino was an exercise of sovereignty.

Sovereignty means the right to make decisions about your own community. It means the right to choose your economic path, even if outsiders disapprove. It means the right to weigh costs and benefits according to your own values and priorities, not according to values imposed by people who have never lived on the Boundary and who have no stake in its future.

The Cherokee did not open a casino because they were forced to. They opened it because they chose to. They weighed the options — continued poverty versus the social costs of gaming — and made a decision. That decision was debated, contested, and voted on through the democratic institutions of the EBCI government. It was not unanimous. It was not easy. But it was theirs.

This argument carried particular weight in the context of Appalachian history. For two centuries, economic decisions affecting Appalachian communities had been made by outsiders — by coal companies, by timber barons, by railroad executives, by federal bureaucrats. The extraction pattern described throughout this textbook is defined precisely by the absence of community control over economic decisions. The casino represented the opposite: a community making its own economic decision, for its own reasons, and keeping the profits for itself.

Primary Source Excerpt — EBCI citizen, speaking at a community forum, 2012:

"People on the outside look at the casino and they see gambling. They see addiction. They see problems. You know what I see? I see my daughter at the Kituwah Academy learning to speak Cherokee. I see the new hospital. I see the college scholarships. I see the roads. I see a community that can fund its own future instead of begging the federal government for every dollar. Is the casino perfect? No. Is it ours? Yes. And that's what matters."

The National Context: Indian Gaming Across America

The EBCI's casino experience is part of a national pattern. Across the United States, tribal gaming has generated tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue, funding governmental services, creating employment, and providing economic stability for communities that federal policy had systematically impoverished.

But the distribution of gaming success has been profoundly unequal. Tribes with favorable locations — near major population centers or tourist destinations — have prospered. Tribes in remote locations, without the geographic advantages that make a casino profitable, have not. The EBCI's location at the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains — a geographic accident that placed the Qualla Boundary in the path of millions of annual visitors — is a major factor in its gaming success. Tribes located on remote plains or in distant deserts, far from any population center, have not been able to replicate that success.

This inequality has created tensions within Indian Country. Gaming-rich tribes are sometimes resented by gaming-poor tribes, and the perception that "Indians are all rich from casinos" — a stereotype that bears no relationship to the reality of most tribal communities — has undermined public support for federal programs that serve Indigenous peoples more broadly.

The Question Going Forward

The casino has been operational for nearly three decades. Its benefits are clear. Its costs are clear. The question for the Eastern Band going forward is not whether to have a casino but what comes next.

The EBCI has begun investing in economic diversification — real estate, hospitality ventures outside gaming, mixed-use development. The creation of Kituwah, LLC, as a tribally owned economic development enterprise reflects an awareness that dependence on a single revenue source is dangerous. The coal counties of Appalachia, whose dependence on a single industry left them devastated when that industry declined, provide a cautionary example that EBCI leaders have explicitly cited.

The deeper question is about identity. Is the Eastern Band a nation that happens to operate a casino? Or is it a casino that happens to be operated by a nation? The answer matters — not just philosophically but practically, because it determines what the community prioritizes when casino revenue and cultural values conflict.

The evidence suggests that the EBCI has, so far, managed to maintain the former identity rather than succumbing to the latter. The Kituwah Academy, the cultural preservation programs, the sacred site acquisitions, the language revitalization efforts — these are not the actions of a community that has traded its identity for a business model. They are the actions of a community that has used a business model to fund the preservation of its identity.

Whether that balance can be maintained — whether the casino will always remain a tool of sovereignty rather than a substitute for it — is a question that every generation of EBCI citizens will have to answer for themselves. That, too, is what sovereignty means.

Discussion Questions

1. The sovereignty argument. The case study presents the casino as an exercise of sovereignty — the right of a community to make its own economic decisions. Is this argument convincing? Are there decisions that a community might make that would undermine its own sovereignty even while exercising it?

2. The extraction parallel. This textbook has argued that dependence on a single industry — coal, timber, tourism — has been destructive for Appalachian communities. Is the EBCI's dependence on gaming revenue another version of this pattern? Or is it fundamentally different because the community controls the enterprise?

3. The minors' trust fund. How should a community handle the distribution of collective wealth to individuals? Is it paternalistic to restrict access to trust fund money? Is it irresponsible not to? What does the EBCI's experience suggest about the relationship between individual rights and community welfare?

4. Cultural values and economic decisions. Can a community fund the preservation of traditional values through an enterprise that may conflict with those values? Is this a contradiction or a pragmatic accommodation? Are there limits to what cultural preservation can justify?

5. The national comparison. The case study notes that tribal gaming success is geographically unequal — tribes near population centers prosper while remote tribes do not. What does this inequality suggest about the limits of gaming as a solution to the poverty that federal policy created in Indian Country?