American Indian Culture and Research Journal

This paper analyzes the antagonistic relations between white residents of southeastern Connecticut and the small tribe of American Indians who own one of only two casinos in Connecticut. The economic success of Foxwoods Casino Resort has enabled the tribe to buy back land, sparking fears of land annexation by American Indians. Antagonism between the two groups has a long history but the existence of American Indians had been obfuscated, so their rights to a casino and to the wealth it has generated are not accepted by some. The new wealth and the small size of the tribe have led to negative reactions by white residents. Theoretical constructs of cross-cultural ‘incompossibility’ (Lyotard) and of power relationships (Foucault) are used to reveal representations and discursive systems deployed through history and today to maintain identity and separation between these two groups. Power relationships, however, can be resisted or subjected to change, even if they had seemed immutably normal in southeastern Connecticut.