I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.
Aug. 22, 1999
By Devlyn Brooks
CASS LAKE -- The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe has fostered a good environment in which its casino gaming operations are helping to curb unemployment, according to an American Indian gaming expert.
Jacob Coin, the executive director of the National Indian Gaming Association, said Wednesday money made from Leech Lake's Palace Bingo and Casino here in Cass Lake and the Northern Lights Casino in Walker is being used for some "wonderful" things.
For instance, the Leech Lake Reservation suffered from 70 percent unemployment prior to the gaming facilities being opened in the mid-1980s. Presently, the tribe has an unemployment rate between 30-45 percent, according to tribal Secretary/Treasurer Lind Johnson. Early on the Palace Casino, which started with only bingo games, employed 40-50 people, and now Leech Lake's gaming operations employ nearly 1,000.
Coin, who has worked in the Indian gaming industry for most of the 1990s, says this type of gaming operation is typical of the 195 tribes nationwide that practice some form of gambling.
Most tribes aren't getting rich from gaming, he says, but they earn money to supplement budgets for health care, law enforcement and social programs.
"Leech Lake is doing some wonderful things with (gaming money)," Coin said. "This tribe has a very small land base, and yet they have big dreams and big responsibilities. Gaming is a big part of that."
Coin said a second benefit critics of Indian gaming often forget is the increase in economic activity in the region. Inevitably, the tribes have to purchase off-reservation goods and services, so an entire region benefits.
He said in his native Arizona , the tribes with gaming facilities spend about $150 million a year in off-reservation good and services.
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