When people say the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is a sovereign nation, they mean that the Band has jurisdiction over its members and its territories. All American Indian tribes have characteristics of sovereign nations. Because they were distinct and separate nations long before the United States was formed, they have the inherent right to determine their own destinies.

As a sovereign Indian nation, the Mille Lacs Band has the right to govern itself rather than be governed by another nation. This needs to be respected by other sovereign governments — governments have the obligation to respect the sovereignty of other sovereign governments. Sovereignty also means the Band has the right to establish its own form of government, its own types of administrative departments, and its own laws and judicial system.

An important part of being a sovereign Indian nation is the right to engage in government-to-government relationships with the federal government. The U.S. Constitution formally recognizes that treaties are the basis of the relationship between tribes and the United States, and this fact is of utmost importance to the Mille Lacs People.

In 1988, the federal government recognized that the sovereign status of Indian nations means they can operate casinos on reservation land. The Mille Lacs Band was then able to negotiate compacts, or agreements, with the state of Minnesota. These compacts allowed the Band to open Grand Casino Mille Lacs in 1991 and Grand Casino Hinckley in 1992.

The casinos are bringing much-needed revenue to the Mille Lacs Band, which struggled with poverty for many years. The Band is working to strengthen its economy so it can become self-sufficient and meet the needs of Band members. The Mille Lacs Band has fought hard to protect its rights as a sovereign nation, and it will always do so.

Over the years, the federal government’s policy toward American Indians has ranged from elimination to assimilation to separation. In each variation of federal focus, what Indians wanted was rarely considered.

For years the federal government, through its Bureau of Indian Affairs, simply told the tribes what would be done and how it would be done. Voices from the various tribal governments were blown away in the BIA breeze.

However, in 1970, President Nixon changed course and established self-determination, which handed much decision-making to the tribes, as his administration’s approach to Indian affairs. In 1975, Congress passed the Indian Self-Determination Act that gave tribes the authority to contract with the federal government to operate programs that serve tribal members. Since then the law has been amended to give tribes increased participation in the management of federal Indian programs.

Also, under the self-determination law and amendments to it, tribes exercise broader discretion over funds and designs of tribal programs in order to meet local needs. One aim of the law was to remove roadblocks in federal programs that existed prior to the self-determination act.

Enactment of the self-determination law in the middle 1970s marked the beginning of the federal government’s acknowledgment of tribal sovereign rights. The most recent example of that, of course, was the United States Supreme Court decision earlier this year upholding the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe’s hunting and fishing rights as granted in the 1837 treaty between the Band and the federal government.

At first, tribes were suspicious of this new approach. Some thought the federal government was preparing to terminate Indian programs under the guise of self-determination. Since then, however, self-determination has generally been accepted and has become the foundation for tribal governments to make decisions for Indian People that used to be made by the federal government.

As you’ve probably learned from many different sources, casinos have dramatically changed Ojibwe People’s lives. Thanks to Grand Casino Mille Lacs and Grand Casino Hinckley, the Mille Lacs Band has been able to rise out of decades of poverty and despair, and provide its members with new opportunities and better lives. Band members now have new jobs, new homes, new schools, a new clinic, and many other necessities of life that they didn’t have before.

Perhaps what’s most important to Band members, however, is that casino revenues have helped them strengthen their traditional Ojibwe culture. The Band has built ceremonial buildings and powwow grounds, and it is educating Band children about their People’s language and history.

Some people argue that casinos and Ojibwe culture do not mix — that the Ojibwe culture was never based on money. That is true. The most profound change that early European settlers brought to the Ojibwe way of life was the European economic system, which gradually led to the money-based society we live in today. Money had never been a part of the Ojibwe culture before that, because the Ojibwe People’s economic system had been based on trading goods.

Today, Ojibwe People — like most people in the world — cannot survive without being players in this money-based system. If anyone knows that, it’s the Ojibwe People themselves, who struggled for so many years because there were no jobs on their reservations.

Yet despite years of struggle, the Ojibwe People still managed to maintain their culture. The stories of their Elders sustained them. Traditional ceremonies conducted in private — because they were forbidden and severely punished by the federal government — sustained them as well. So, today, even though the Ojibwe have had to accept the importance of money in their lives, they are making sure that money never becomes more important than the preservation of the rich Ojibwe culture.