From AP via the Albuquerque Tribune:
Charles Leno worked a dead-end job dealing cards at the Chinook Winds casino on the Oregon coast, earning minimum wage and not much in fringe benefits.
He saw little in his future, so he was casting about for a change – and the change he decided on was his tribe.
Last year the 28-year-old moved from the tribe of his mother’s ancestry, the Siletz, to his father’s tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde – operators of Oregon’s most successful casino.
“They help you more here,” he said.
As a tribal member, he receives between $4,000 and $5,000 a year in per-capita payments. He had hiring priority for a higher-paying job at Spirit Mountain casino. And his newborn son, Future Warrior, receives the same benefits every year in a trust – a solid investment of tens of thousands of dollars by the time the boy turns 18.
American Indians are discovering that one possible route out of poverty is joining a tribe with a successful casino, a transfer that’s allowed if they can show they have blood ties to that tribe.