A reference to Kathryn's quotes on the Mashpee in Massachusetts showed up recently in this "Casino Friend" blog on the Mashpee Wampanoag casino plan.

The post asks,

"Kathryn Rand suggests that the BIA might be suspicious of a claimed reservation sited in an ideal location for a casino. Would she say the same thing if the tribe acted like any big corporation would in their position and shopped about to have a reservation on land that was perfectly suited for a specific business, be it an industrial park, a shopping center, or for that matter for growing cranberries?"

The answer is no, not because Kathryn thinks that there is good cause to be "suspicious" of casino-style gaming on newly acquired lands, but because the current political climate is one of hostility toward so-called "reservation shopping."

In fact, we have been critical of this hostility, and called for policymakers to be guided not by politics, but by IGRA's policy goals and tribal sovereignty. We'd point this blogger to our 2007 article in the Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law, "How Congress Can and Should 'Fix' the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act."