Yurok Need Slot Machines

What do you do for a tribe that is so poor, that they are arguably the poorest tribe in America? They live in an area of California that to most people does not even exist – and even if they knew it was there you have to have a death wish to visit it.

You have to take Bald Hills Road to get to the tribe, and it is a skinny little winding trail that many have died on trying to navigate it. One tribe drives it on a regular basis – the Yurok tribe, and they need more than just a decent road. They have repeatedly asked the state of California to allow them to build a small casino and bring in slot machines. Not many people would drive all the way out there to play them, so the tribe estimates that the slot machines would bring them in roughly $1 million a year – incredibly low for any sort of slot machine establishment.

They want the money so that they can start to survive like human beings – they want electricity, proper roads, decent housing – all things that the slot machine revenue would help them provide to their people. The tribe still lives in trailers that were provided to them by Lyndon B. Johnson. They need the slot machines to build a proper school, to warm their homes, to give them more food now that their river is running dry of fish. The slot machines would give them jobs – which would give them more money to become self-sufficient.

However, because the government is what it is – you have tribes like the Aqua Caliente screaming because they can’t open another casino with even more slot machines – and there are the Yuroks without a single slot machine among them. Other tribes are making billions from the slot machines, and the Yuroks cannot get permission to make a possible $1 million. With 50 other tribes bringing in $13 billion in slot machines and gambling, that is an average of $260 million per tribe.

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