This article examines the multiple and contradictory ways that tribes, as anomalies within American governance, have been conceptualized within popular opinion and federal Indian policy. It is the inconsistent treatment tribes have received, based on these differing conceptions, that makes Indian gaming so confusing and conflictual. Tribal gaming is conducted based on rights derived from an understanding of tribes as sovereign nations represented by governments. This status and the rights associated with it appear to conflict with perceptions and treatment of tribes as wards, minorities, rights holders, and corporations. Absent unlikely action by Congress to establish greater coherency across Indian policies, widespread variation, uncertainty, and conflict will continue to characterize tribal gaming. However, an understanding of tribes as sovereign governments is slowly being institutionalized within American governance and may shift the terms through which tribal gaming is publicly discussed.
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