Bingo became the tribe’s first moneymaker on a reservation where about half the population was living in poverty.Īuthor Mike Hoeft traces the historical struggles of the Oneida-one of six nations of the Iroquois, or Haudenosaunee, confederacy-from their alliance with America during the Revolutionary War to their journey to Wisconsin.
The Bingo Queens of Oneida: How Two Moms Started Tribal Gaming tells the story through the eyes of Sandra Ninham and Alma Webster, the Oneida women who had the idea for a bingo operation run by the tribe to benefit the entire tribe. The bingo moms were just trying to take care of the kids in the community. While militant Indian activists often dominated national headlines in the 1970s, these church-going Oneida women were the unsung catalysts behind bingo’s rising prominence as a sovereignty issue in the Oneida Nation. Bingo not only paid the light bill at the struggling civic center but was soon financing vital health and housing services for tribal elderly and poor.
A group of women on the Oneida Indian Reservation just outside Green Bay, Wisconsin, introduced bingo in 1976 simply to pay a few bills. Before Indian casinos sprouted up around the country, a few enterprising tribes got their start in gambling by opening bingo parlors.
