On March 18, 2009, the Star Tribune, Minnesota's best-selling state-wide daily newspaper, published the following letter to the editor of mine.

To find and read this letter to the editor on the Star Tribune website click Star Tribune.

INDIAN GAMING

The grave threat to Indian culture

I would like to express my opinion in response to the suffering that many Mdewakanton Dakota Indians are now experiencing because of their greed for casino money ("Court rules group has no claim to casinos," March 13).

The introduction of tribal casinos is more threatening to American Indian culture and sovereignty than alcohol or smallpox ever were. It is causing conflicts between tribes and state governments. What has the white man ever given American Indians that he has not, in due time, taken away because of greed?

State government officials' promises of granting and protecting the Indian monopolies on casino gambling in their respective states will be broken, leaving the tribes broke, indebted, addicted and abandoned. This will be the worst of all our government's broken promises to our country's American Indians. And only then will American Indian communities that decided to assimilate into a money-loving aspect of the white man's culture understand what a terrible mistake they made.

THOMAS DAHLHEIMER, WAHKON, MINN.;

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES ACTIVIST

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