Re: Why does Columbus have a holiday named after him? He wasn't a hero.
Having lived in Alaska and New Mexico, I have worked alongside Native Americans in greater numbers and proximity than most people I know elsewhere. Sadly, their heavy reliance on casinos works against their interests here quite often, as their own members squander much in gambling and without the expendable income to afford it. They also encourage both drinking and smoking, both of which have devastating effects.
Many tribes do not want casinos for *exactly* this reason. I think many Americans would be surprised to see the list of tribes that has refused to do anything higher than the level of bingo hall gaming precisely because of what you talked about above, regardless of the financial tradeoff. Additionally, not all tribes are capable or situated in a place where "well, go open a casino" makes any sense, nor are all casinos wildly successful, nor are all tribes small enough to end poverty entrenchment from the revenue of a casino.
Here's the thing though, a lot of tribes turned to gaming in the first place because it is so difficult for reservation dwellers to start up enterprise due to the legal complexities of tribal nationhood. As one example, all (remaining) tribal land is considered to be held in trust by the Federal Government-- in effect, tribes own it but are unable to to use it as collateral, or borrow against it for the purposes of business capital loans or anything else. And as I think we all know Indians themselves are not wealthy people, they're in fact the poorest demographic in the United States. Indians largely didn't get into casino gaming "instead of more honest and less unsavory enterprises", but rather because it's so difficult for them to get into any other type of business. Also, nearly all of the first Indian casinos got their investments to begin from Asian overseas lenders-- American banks and capital investors routinely panned reservation tribal ideas for resorts or casinos or businesses. (I'm sure more than one of those lenders must have kicked themselves afterwards.) But that was part of a much longer history of banks being unwilling to lend to tribal entities for starting up businesses.
Despite the "general reputation" that Indians have their own courts (and the accompanying suspicion that they're inherently unfair or corrupt against non-Indians) the typical American is pretty outraged if you explain to them the complex process of what happens if a non-Indian wanders onto a reservation and rapes you or commits some other felony, where due to the legal setup the reservation dweller has no direct power to insist upon a prosecution, and a large number of reservation felonies go unprosecuted.
This is a *bit* of a tangent but it is relevant insofar as, NA's are not simply an ethnicity like any other. They are also (at least with regard to reservation dwellers and tribal members) of a different legal and political category than any other American citizen, which in a few small ways is beneficial, and in a number of large ways is detrimental. With every other ethnicity, you really only have two legal categories: American citizen or not. The rest of what affects them is social and largely not procedurally or legislatively different. For Indians, your citizenship/tribal membership status will effect everything from how you can borrow money to how (un)equally you are protected against crimes, to even child adoption. There isn't a Bureau of White Affairs white people have to go deal with to do home improvements or refinance their house. There is a Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The colorblind approach is admirable in theory but it also does completely miss a lot of specific complexity at work insofar as how certain things affect certain groups differently, and how history has shaped that difference.
