This first picture of the Dakota Sioux Casino just north of Watertown, South Dakota shows what is called a Dream Catcher high up above the main entrance. It is huge. Why the Dakota Sioux Tribal Council decided to have the architect put a dream catcher on top of the casino as the main attraction is open to question?

In 1988 the voters of the state of South Dakota voted to allow legalized gambling in the old town of Deadwood. It had been an historic gambling town since the Gold Rush Days of 1876. The town of Deadwood went to the State Capitol, hat in hand, tears in eyes. They were broke and wanted to restore their old town to the Days of 76 to attract more tourists. Gambling revenue is what they wanted.

The governor of South Dakota said, “The gambling law was against everything that he always believed in, or stood for, but he signed the bill into law any how.” This made it legal for the Indian Reservations to also began building gambling casinos. Our wise old, white-haired lawmakers in Washington D.C., in their wisdom, passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988. Lawmakers are always looking for extra revenue sources to keep their coffers full. They had dreams of unlimited dollars coming to the federal government from the Indian gaming casinos.

The Sioux Tribe may have been thinking about the players and their dream of striking it rich. Each gambler has that on his mind when he goes through the front door. There is a lot of dreaming going on in every gambling casino in the world. The Indians may also have been thinking about the white-haired fathers in Washington, who spoke to them with forked tongues in the past. They now dream of all the money rolling in from the casino profits.

The dream catcher tells me a completely different story. I see several old white-haired chiefs sitting around the fire in the sweat lodge discussing the future of their gambling casinos and how they are doing. The different tribes have casino operations going on across the whole state. That big Dream Catcher high up in the sky tells me that these old white-haired chiefs are sitting there, smiling and smoking their pipes. They are all thinking, “Our dream is coming true, We are taking this country back, one dollar at a time!”