Ray Halbritter, Nation Representative and CEO of Oneida Nation Enterprises including Turning Stone Resort Casino, was recently interviewed about tribal gaming by WERS Radio, an NPR affiliate in Boston. He spoke about how gaming by the Oneida Indian Nation meant a path out of poverty and a way to provide the Oneida people with things like healthcare, housing, higher language and a language program.

During the same segment, Reporter Emma-Jean Weinstein spoke with Jessica Cattelino, associate professor of anthropology at UCLA and author of the book, "High Stakes: Seminole Gaming and Sovereignty." Cattelino said, “The important thing to know first of all about tribal gaming is that these are government operations. That is, they’re not like Donald Trump’s casinos or the casinos in Las Vegas which are privately owned.” She added, “The main difference is really after the gambler leaves the casino, what happens with that money? Instead of going into the pockets of an individual or a group of shareholders, the revenues from tribal gaming go into the political body of the tribal nations.”

That message reinforces the message that Halbritter drove home in a recent op-ed article in the Albany Times Union. That unlike corporate gaming companies, “we are governments that are obligated to invest our revenues and resources into our ancestral lands and surrounding communities right here in New York.”

And that is what the Oneida Nation has done since 1993—creating more than 4,500 jobs; spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year for goods and services from other local and regional businesses and becoming the third largest employer in the 16 counties of Greater Central New York—behind only Cornell University in Ithaca and Upstate Medical University in Syracuse.