Mille Lacs Messenger
by Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer
April 16, 2003

MORAL STANDARDS

In response to Melanie Benjamin's April 9 letter to the Messenger, I would like to say that I agree with her statement that the band's casino gambling businesses provide a lot of jobs for rural area people. But so do the sales of illegal drugs. Drug dealers make a lot of money, and then they buy houses, cars, etc. and this "helps" our rural economy to "prosper".

I wonder if Melanie Benjamin ever stops to think about whether the casino business is immoral and incompatible with the Mille Lacs Band's traditional high moral standards. If she were to see band member children going without food because their parents lost all their money gambling, like I have on a number of occasions, she might start thinking more seriously about these moral issues.

Why do our country's Native Americans have to abandon their tradition of high moral standards and degrade themselves by getting involved with the casino gambling business, the casino sales of tobacco at cut-rate prices, storing nuclear waste on their reservations and, after centuries of suffering with the plague of alcoholism, the business practice of selling alcohol in many of their casinos?

With all the foreign aid that our government gives to far away countries, I would think that they could help our country's Native American communities' economics to prosper without forcing our Native Americans to degrade themselves by abandoning their traditional moral standards in order to make enough money to live comfortably.

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Melanie Benjamin is the Mille Lacs Band Of Ojibwe's Chief Executive.