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  • Power in the Telling: Grand Ronde, Warm Springs, and Intertribal Relations in the Casino Era by Brook Colley
  • Jessica R. Cattelino (bio)
Power in the Telling: Grand Ronde, Warm Springs, and Intertribal Relations in the Casino Era
by Brook Colley
University of Washington Press, 2018

CASINOS HAVE CATALYZED both conflict and collaboration among Indigenous nations, from intertribal agreements and partnerships to headline-making competition. In Power in the Telling: Grand Ronde, Warm Springs, and Intertribal Relations in the Casino Era, Native American studies scholar Brook Colley wades into these sometimes-troubled waters with a clear and concise case study of gaming-related relations between Grand Ronde and Warm Springs. In the late 1990s, Warm Springs proposed an off-reservation casino on contested land near the Columbia River in Oregon. Since then, leaders told Colley, “for every ten problems solved by the income earned from this economy, nine new problems arise” (6). Tracing gaming-era intertribal relations, Colley’s core arguments are threefold: first, that both of these nations undertook gaming with the goal of serving their people, but gaming conflicts reconfigured intertribal relations in ways that impeded decolonization; second, that clashes resulted not from greed or narrow self-interest but rather from historical and structural conditions; and third, that American settler colonialism—manifest in, for example, betrayed treaties, settler violence, and federal termination policy—produced and shapes gaming-related conflicts.

This book demonstrates the importance of history for understanding gaming by showing that “a fair and accurate analysis of the tribal casino economy must take into account how ongoing projects of colonization continue to be manifest in contemporary forms” (7). At Warm Springs, the mid-1800s federal government corralled together three distinct Native peoples, and officials’ deception led to loss of lands and power. Nonetheless, the coalition government at Warm Springs held together and experienced some economic success until a decline in the timber industry forced them to pursue new economic ventures like the proposed casino expansion. On the Grand Ronde reservation in Oregon, over twenty-seven tribes and bands were pushed together during the nineteenth century. During the 1950s, the federal government terminated the Grand Ronde government and relocated many citizens. Grand Ronde restored their federal recognition in 1983, but the harmful fallout and the rebuilding continue.

Combining more than thirty oral histories with archival sources, Colley [End Page 190] convincingly argues that these historical conditions directly bear on why Warm Springs and Grande Ronde clashed. Conflict arose when Warm Springs proposed an off-reservation casino in their historic territory along the Columbia River at a location to which Grande Ronde also lays claim and that would divert clientele from Grande Ronde. Chapter 2 historicizes the predicament, emphasizing the U.S. failure to ratify treaties, and, along with chapter 3 on federal and state gaming issues, shows that conflict between Warm Springs and Grand Ronde is also a story of how settler policies and economies have impeded Indigenous sovereignty and solidarity. Chapter 4 effectively analyzes “tribal casino discourse” (140) as presented in the Oregonian newspaper and other media. While Colley’s analysis could benefit from a more explicit theory of discourse, she shows how public discourse constrains Indigenous political and economic life.

Colley makes a significant contribution in chapter 5 by recounting the long process though which Warm Springs attempted yet failed to open the off-reservation casino. Readers learn what it takes to acquire an exception to the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, mount ballot measures, and navigate a shifting state and federal political landscape. Meanwhile, Grand Ronde feared a reduction in their gaming revenues and that the effort by Warm Springs would sour public opinion and thereby generate negative consequences for other tribes. Throughout, Colley powerfully explains why pursuing off-reservation gaming cannot be dismissed as self-interested “reservation shopping.”

Frustration runs through this book, especially when Grand Ronde and Warm Springs research participants express regret and vexation at being pitted against one another. In chapter 6 Colley addresses the hard topic of intertribal conflict over casinos. Again, the author carefully explains the context, including histories of overlapping Indigenous lands, sustained efforts to avoid conflict, and the obstructive role of the state. Such disputes and struggles...

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