ABSTRACT
Of the many regional casinos—those outside of Las Vegas—the most successful is on the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation near Ledyard, Connecticut. The design of the casino subverts the typical theme of a Vegas casino by offering an interpretation of the “white” culture of coastal Connecticut and by providing a retroactive mythos about the origin of the Mashantucket Pequot tribe—a particularly small one whose extraordinary wealth has caused much consternation both from within and without Native American populations. 1 The casino's attempts at theming call attention to the tribe's self-consciousness about its position vis-a-vis other tribes and what is being said about the phenomenon of Native American gaming from within the Native American national communities. These disputes about self-representation seem to have complicated the thematics of this particular casino.
