Fungibility: Florida Seminole Casino Dividends and the Fiscal Politics of Indigeneity

摘要

In this article, I examine Florida Seminoles' governmental distributions of tribal-gaming revenues that take the form ofper capita dividends. Dividends reveal the political and cultural stakes of money's fungibility—its ability to substitute for itself. Fromtribal policy debates over children's dividends to the legitimization of political leadership through monetary redistribution, Seminolesselectively exploit the fungibility of money to break or make ties with one another and with non-Seminoles. They do so in ways thatreinforce indigenous political authority and autonomy, and they thereby challenge structural expectations in U.S. public culture andpolicy that would oppose indigenous distinctiveness to the embrace of money.