| This dissertation examines the relationship between tribal casinos and Florida Seminoles' efforts to maintain themselves as a culturally and politically distinct people. In 1979, Seminoles opened the first tribally operated high stakes bingo hall in Native America, launching a gaming revolution that has built tribes' political and economic power even as it exposes them to scrutiny in American law, politics, and culture. Examining indigenous economy, politico-legal sovereignty, and cultural production, I argue that tribal gaming emerged from and reinforced Seminole assertions of tribal sovereignty and cultural distinctiveness.; Gaming is the most recent stage in a long history of Seminole economic development. First, I show how Seminoles historically have produced cultural distinctiveness through economic regimes often considered assimilative, including cattle ranching, commercial crafts, alligator wrestling, and smoke shops. I then redirect the question of whether casinos erode Seminole culture by documenting how Seminoles link casino revenues to social reproduction and nation-building.; Seminoles pursue their sovereignty in part by directing casino revenues toward governmental autonomy, for example in housing and education. Yet in the second section I show how sovereignty also takes hold in relations of interdependence among political communities, for example in legal entanglements, natural resource management, and intertribal diplomacy. I explore indigenous peoples' overlapping citizenship across the levels of tribe, civil society, and nation-state, especially in political participation, U.S. military service, and the Miss Seminole pageant. At a time when multinational corporations, international governmental regimes, and mass migrations have decentered the sovereignty of nation-states, I develop a social theory of sovereignty by moving outward from the everyday practices of indigeneity.; Indigenous economic and political processes are inextricably tied to cultural distinctiveness. Seminoles have directed casinos revenues to newly bureaucratized and expanded cultural programs, including the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, youth cultural education, and language preservation. In doing so, they engage in a nation-building project whereby they both assert cultural difference and claim a place within broader American and Native American cultural landscapes. These processes highlight the centrality of cultural representation to the conditions of indigeneity, and they reveal tensions between multiculturalism and tribal sovereignty as bases for U.S. rights claims. |
