HERINK - FOXWOOD CASINO RESPONSE

Cooks discusses the Foxwood Casinos as a cultural space of the Pequot tribe. A
space that acted as a pseudo-museum of outsourced and hodgepodged Native American culture. The Foxwood Casions, currently the largest casino/resort in the world, is located on reservation land with only one road leading into it or out of it. This allows for the space to behave as an isolated microcosm, where the tribe allows white gamblers to come in, spend money and leave without witnessing any evidence of the atrocities committed toward the Native Americans.
Cook explains that the cultural space is an space which has been exoticized in order to create an ambiance without creating a cultural baggage for the casino goers. Cook explains that the stereotypical representation of the American Indian has been engrained in people’s memories, so in order to create a cultural space that can be appreciated by people not of the native culture, they needed to “play the game” and demonstrate their Indianness as loudly as possible.
One question I had regarding the text was the passage which read, “the history of Native peoples has been characterized by space, not time.” Cooke then goes on to explain that in order for the anglo observer to appreciate something as Native American, we must see the feathers, the head dresses, the chokers, the wampums, the teepees, the regalia and other artifacts associated with what we believe is that cultural identity. However, I believe that we have delegated the Native people to time instead of space. I believe that when we see Native American’s dressed in their regalia for example, we are able to handle the guilt we should feel because we place them in the past and view this as the equivalent to someone dressing up like a cowboy from the Old West. We do not see the artifacts, like those that exist at the Foxwood Casino as something excavated and ancient, removed from us. This compartmentalization of the tribes like the Pequot to a place like time allows the majority to avoid the confrontation, they are able to story the Native Americans alive today as ghosts, a bad memory, and in doing so can compartmentalize their guilt with it.

Does does the cultural space of the Foxwood Casinos sacrifice the cultural identity of the Pequot Indians? Or, are they actually taking advantage of the white man by “playing Indian”?
Is the Native American cultural identity compartmentalized into time or space?