Kenosha development could ease tribe’s social, economic woes, study finds

The Menominee Indian Tribe‘s proposed Kenosha entertainment center and casino would enable the poverty-stricken tribe to greatly improve living and work conditions on its northern Wisconsin reservation and begin remedying the economic and social ravages caused by the U.S. government’s termination of its status as a federally recognized tribe in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, according to a new analysis by the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs.

“The Bureau of Indian Affairs has acknowledged that termination was a mistake that deeply hurt the Menominee people. Our analysis shows that nearly four decades after restoration, the tribe still suffers greatly from that mistake,” says professor Dennis Dresang, director of the La Follette School’s Center for Wisconsin, State, Local and Tribal Governance and one of the study’s authors. “The federal government now has the opportunity to make up for that shattering decision by approving the Kenosha casino and helping the Menominee help itself overcome an utterly devastating period in its history.”

In the 1950s, Congress adopted a federal Indian policy of “termination” aimed at ending the treaty-created trust relationship between tribes and the United States. As a result, Congress eliminated certain tribes as political entities; deeded away their trust lands; stripped them of the ability to govern themselves; and declared their members to be non-Indians and ineligible for any programs available to Indian people. The Menominee were one of the only large tribes and the only Wisconsin tribe to suffer through this policy. After viewing the tragic effects of termination on the Menominee, Congress revoked the policy.

According to Dresang, Menominee was one of the most self-sufficient tribes in the country when the federal government terminated its tribal status in 1954. Although Menominee was restored as a federally recognized tribe in 1973, the study found the tribe continues to struggle with termination’s high costs. The tribe’s two businesses — its forestry operation and a small, outdated reservation casino that competes with several nearby tribal casinos — do not generate the income needed to rise above termination’s lasting negative impacts, Dresang said.

“Because of termination, the Menominee tribe’s needs are many, and serious,” he says. “Today, Menominee is the fourth poorest tribe in the country. Menominee County and the Menominee Reservation rank at the bottom of Wisconsin counties in employment, income, education, health outcomes, housing, property values and other areas. Additionally, termination has caused the Menominee to suffer abandonment by its own members in search of jobs and services, the closing of a hospital and clinic, the sale of telephone and electric companies, a decrease in funds for colleges and boarding schools, the sale of land because members couldn’t afford property taxes, an increase in drug and alcohol abuse, and more.”

Dresang says the Kenosha development could help reverse the effects of termination.

“Revenue from the Kenosha project would make a significant, measurable difference for the Menominee in their struggle to overcome the shattering economic and cultural after-effects of termination,” Dresang says. “Without new revenue, the ability of the Menominee to care for nearly 8,500 tribal members is severely compromised.”

The La Follette School analysis — conducted at the request of and paid for by the Menominee Tribe — has been submitted to the Bureau of Indian Affairs as part of the tribe’s application to build a casino and entertainment center at Dairyland Greyhound Park in Kenosha. The full report and a video interview with Dresang is available here. 

Dresang says the study shows the need for the Menominee to enhance education, job training and build needed infrastructure, including a school, jail, dams and housing. Additionally, the tribal health clinic should be expanded and emergency medical services and wellness and prevention programs improved. Revenue from the Kenosha casino could help move all of these projects forward, he says.

Dresang says he and researchers from the La Follette School and UW–Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty were concerned not only with Menominee’s unmet needs, but also with the tribe’s forced heavy reliance on federal funding, which has been and is vulnerable to severe cuts.

“In fiscal year 2006-07, federal funding was responsible for 56.6 percent of the tribe’s budget and was the primary funding source for such important efforts as the tribal clinic; schools and Head Start; programs addressing alcohol and drug abuse, mental health and domestic violence; and more,” Dresang says. “History has shown that federal funding can disappear very quickly. With a dwindling stream of government funding, and forestry and on-reservation casino operations that don’t generate enough, the Menominee Tribe clearly needs to create a new source of income.”

While the benefits of the Kenosha project to southeast Wisconsin and the state — including jobs, increased revenue to local schools and multibillion-dollar payments to local and state government — have been widely publicized, Dresang says that important economic impacts will be felt most on the tribe’s reservation.

The La Follette School report emphasizes the synergy between developing an off-reservation business like the Kenosha entertainment center with the reservation’s institutional strengths, in particular the College of the Menominee Nation, which, with an investment of casino revenue, could expand course offerings to include health care to provide employees for the expanded clinic. Additional classes could include forestry and tourism to train people for on-reservation ecotourism and to work in the Kenosha and reservation casinos.

A key goal of the tribe is to improve reservation life, especially by creating jobs, Dresang says.

“We estimate that the use of casino revenues to improve reservation facilities would create 265 to 275 temporary jobs, plus another 210 to 300 permanent jobs in fields for programs that casino funds could expand,” he says. “This will have the net effect of improving the quality of life on the reservation and making it a more attractive place for tribal members to live and work.”