Gamblers drawn by $1 million jackpots and pickup trucks as prizes are trying their luck at South Dakota's first Indian casino, the newest hope of prosperity for the hard-pressed Santee Sioux tribe.
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The casino, in the style of Las Vegas and Atlantic City, N.J., opened Tuesday with slot machines, card games and bingo on a dusty plot of reservation land surrounded by cornfields outside Flandreau, population 2,200.The tribe is the first of nine in South Dakota to receive state permission to open a casino under the National Indian Gaming Act of 1988, based on a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that once a state allows any form of gambling, Indian tribes can offer the same games, without government restriction.