From the Roosevelt Fitzgerald Professional Papers (MS-01082) -- Drafts for the Las Vegas Sentinel Voice file. On George Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr. comparisons.
The regional subject files include materials collected by anthropologist Katherine Spilde about Native American gaming, Native American communities in the United States, and the US and international gaming industries. The materials date from 1859 to 2015, with the bulk of materials dating from 1990 to 2010. Materials dating from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are a reproduction of a federal treaty and an ethnohistorical essay. The majority of the materials document Native American gaming following the passage of the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. The papers include research and subject files created by Dr. Spilde during her employment with the National Gambling Impact Study Commission (NGISC), National Indian Gaming Association (NIGA), and Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development (HPAIED). The materials document Native American gaming enterprises both on and off reservations, the socioeconomic impact of gaming, the political history of gaming in the US, and international gaming. The series includes socioeconomic reports, testimonies, correspondence, memos, press releases, photographs, audiovisual materials, promotional materials, brochures, fact sheets, summaries, booklets, pamphlets, advertisements, tourism materials, journal articles, legal briefs, legislative documents, court opinions, notes, presentations, conference materials, periodicals, community newspapers, and newspaper articles.
The collection contains documentation on a number of Native American nations, including the Misi-zaaga'iganiing Anishinaabeg (Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Mille Lacs Band); Gaa-waabaabiganikaag Anishinaabeg (Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Band); Forest County Bodéwadmi (Forest County Potawatomi Community); Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin; Mashantucket Pequot Indian Tribe; Mohegan Tribe of Indians; Tulalip Tribes of Washington; Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation; Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North and South Dakota; Mandan, Hidatsa, and Sahnish (Arikara) (Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation, North Dakota); and Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. Other communities are also represented in the series, but to a lesser extent. In addition to materials about gaming and casinos, Dr. Spilde also collected documents, photographs, and audiovisual materials about Native American culture in general. The series documents regional and national trends in Native American gaming, and the greater gaming industry. Materials trace federal and state relationships with individual Native American nations, specifically concerning gaming enterprises.
Archival Collection
Katherine A. Spilde Papers on Native American Gaming
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Collection Number: MS-00092 Collection Name: Katherine A. Spilde Papers on Native American Gaming Box/Folder: N/A
Della Mae Rostine left Missouri with her husband, Rocco, in 1942, and headed to Las Vegas. Happy to leave behind the hard life and instability the mining industry had to offer, after living in Las Vegas for the first year the couple settled in Henderson, Nevada, known as the townsite at that time. Della Mae’s oral history provides readers with a glimpse of what life was like for the 14,000-plus individuals and families who also moved to southern Nevada during the same period in order to make a living in the growing “war work” industry the area had to offer. Della Mae shares the hardships faced in finding housing, especially for families with children. She discusses challenges ranging from securing home furnishings to purchasing groceries, including the rations on gasoline and butter at that time. Della Mae also discusses her experiences with the Basic Magnesium plant where her husband was hired as a construction worker in the early days of the plant and where she would work briefly as a machinist making shell casings and monitoring the down time on the production line. She also touches briefly on the social opportunities the BMI plant, and later Rheem Manufacturing, offered to the workers and their families. When World War II ended, more than half of residents of the townsite left, leaving fewer than 7,000 people to form what would later become the city of Henderson, Nevada. Della Mae’s oral history is a brief overview of a family life which began when BMI was just getting off the ground and continued through the many changes that took place in the BMI complex and the town site over several decades. The timing of the Rostine family’s arrival and the fact that they stayed and made a permanent home in Henderson led to their designation as one of Henderson’s “founding families.”