Gaming discussions continue

Building connections across communities has been the central focus of Mohawk Council of Kahnawake (MCK) chief Paul Rice’s work in recent weeks, where he’s been advancing discussions related to gaming for the community.

One of those initiatives included the inaugural meeting of the First Peoples Gaming Association (FPGA), an association that brings together First Nations to discuss and share feedback on gaming and regulations.

The association was started by the MCK and furthers the efforts of the late MCK grand chief Joseph Tokwiro Norton, who Rice said advocated for collaborative organizing around gaming.

“It was nice to see a lot of those nations that were having these conversations many years ago be in attendance at the meeting, and many of them remember when this conversation first started,” Rice said. “We want to grow this association so that we can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our fellow nations, with respect to gaming and growing our economies.”

Around 40 representatives attended the meeting from First Nations across Turtle Island. Much of the focus was on Bill S-241, a bill currently before the senate that would amend the criminal code and the Indian Act to give First Nations more jurisdiction over gaming.

The MCK has submitted a briefing with its perspective on gaming and expects to make a presentation at the senate later this year.

“We were preparing and discussing what some of the feedback has been as the bill has progressed through the senate; for us, we’ve always been a leader in gaming, so we wanted to talk about our experiences, and share about challenges for some of these other nations,” he said.

While the MCK was the formal host of the meeting, it was held in Toronto, a move that was made to attract as many guests as possible who were in town for the SBC Summit Canada gaming event later in the week.

At that event, Rice presented on a panel about building sovereignty, and First Nations jurisdiction over gaming.

“The message I left the audience with was if the gaming industry wants to have a lot of success and see explosive growth, First Nations need to be leaders,” Rice said. “That’s the key that will boost not just the economies of First Nations, but a broader Canadian economy as well.”

Also in the gaming portfolio was the announcement this week that the Gaming Working Group (GWG) at the MCK made public an additional document in addition to three previous documents related to the proposed expansion of electronic gaming devices (EGD) in the community.

The documents available for public viewing include the EGD Pilot Project Report from 2022, a three-year summary of Kahnawake’s own source funding utilization through end of fiscal year 2026, the GWG’s mandate and authority, and a Gaming Marking Assessment prepared by a third-party consulting firm in 2023.

Those come as the MCK continues an engagement campaign related to EGDs and gaming - community engagement sessions have taken place over the past weeks, and feedback is still being gathered to be reviewed by the GWG to help inform their recommendations to chiefs concerning EGDs.

“We wanted to re-release and release these documents for the sake of our community engagement and highlight areas we’ve been getting feedback on. There’s a lot of requests for how our own source revenue, the majority of which comes from gaming, is spent, so we released financials to show that,” he said.

He said that community members are encouraged to email any feedback they might have on EGDs to [email protected] - a compiled list of feedback and presentation will follow in the coming weeks.

[email protected]