On Partying at ‘Mo Sun’ — Or, Not

In the mid-1800s, the Trail of Tears forced tens of thousands of indigenous people from their homes; the federal government bought or seized their land through bribery, purposeful miscommunication, coercion and brutality.

On March 7, 2009, my friend Elizabeth Durante ’10 was murdered by a drunk driver— a young sailor who can be seen on Mohegan Sun Casino security cameras staggering out of that establishment not long before the vehicular crash.

These events are not unrelated.

Tribal casinos, which litter New England today, serve only to propagate the exploitation of Native Americans, perpetuate the immobile ethnic castes of the modern U.S.-American class system, and glamorize gambling and alcohol overuse as an escape from the drudgery of work, life and quotidian lucklessness.

The privileged students of Connecticut College may derive pleasure from the out-of-the-ordinaryness of visiting neighboring towns’ casinos. Getting dolled up according to porn star-inspired gender constructs to have drinks purchased for you by slick, Jäger-swilling hunks at Little Black Dress Night must be the most titillating of thrills. Catching overpriced cockrock from some touring fogies way past their prime, in the auditorium whose absurdly ornate stylings caricaturize the Pequot tribe and where dehumanizing cheerleading ‘competitions’ are held, is the ultimate in stimulation— if you’re a skeezy old soul who’s just won a tenner on the table games.

We are, however, students at a “highly selective private liberal arts college (as our website now so boorishly boasts),” where free or inexpensive cultural and intellectual events are constantly taking place– not to mention the plentiful goings-on in nearby Mystic, Niantic, Middletown, New Haven and Providence. We are educated on the pervasive nature of injustice in our society. We know too much not to claim responsibility for where we spend our time and monies.

So, can’t we do better than Mo Sun?

Indian casinos are not good for their patrons, not good for the tribes (already shat on by the white man six ways to Sunday), and not good for the victims of the irresponsible manslaughterers who leave the casinos driving drunk. These are not isolated incidents; only a month after Liz Durante was killed, Iris Soto of Willimantic died in an accident with a driver coming from the casino whose BAC was over twice the legal limit. Alcohol has drastic negative on tribal members, too. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, in 2002-2005, American Indians and Alaska Natives were more likely than members of other racial groups to have a past year alcohol use disorder (10.7 vs. 7.6 percent), defining the disorder according to the DSM-IV. Coping with a disappearing culture may lead Native Americans to drink, and tribal casinos, with their emphasis on ignoring the problems of the real world with consumption and play, contributes to problems of substance abuse.

That Mohegan Sun features a casino of the wind, of the sky, and of the earth, is a colonizer’s slap in the face to the native tribes of the region. Grotesque levels of material fetishism represent capitalistic greed at its worst, not the self-sustaining culture of respect for which the Pequots and other area tribes are known. The casino’s website boasts, “Featuring the world’s largest fully functional indoor planetarium dome and Wombi Rock, a multi-level onyx and alabaster structure housing a lounge and dance floor, Casino of the Sky continues to honor the traditions of the Mohegan Tribe.” Do the many shops filled with designer goods made by children in the developing world honor these traditions, too? The only possibly good reason to go to Mohegan Sun is on free cone day at the Ben & Jerry’s there— and even (especially?) then, it is incredibly important to make sure none are driving under the influence.

Mohegan Sun’s lame new marketing campaign says “Consider it your edge.”
But the real edge goes to those who don’t need to support the dangerous addictions of alcoholism and gambling or bastardize a culture to get their kicks.