The Conversation – “Aboriginal gambling” has become something of a hot-button issue in recent years. A number of academic research articles have documented the “risk factors” for Aboriginal people that increase their likelihood of develop gambling problems – enough to justify a recent overview paper by the Centre for Gambling Education and Research at Southern Cross University.
Governments have not been lax in responding to the perceived evils of Aboriginal gambling. Gambling was one of four goods and services that the 2007 Northern Territory Intervention explicitly banned for the purposes of income management. Police in one remote NT community reportedly posted notices stating that it is an offence to gamble with cards, or even to be present at a card circle.
While gambling may be associated with many negative impacts for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people and communities alike, it is easy to suggest that gambling is just one more problem associated with “dysfunctional” remote communities that need to be “normalised” and brought into line with white mainstream expectations.
Yet accounts of Aboriginal card games in remote communities offer a different perspective, one that reveals complexity and belonging within local social processes. For example, in a 1985 study, ANU anthropologist Jon Altman reported that card circles played an important structural role in the community.
This positive social and economic role has been noted by subsequent studies. Card games have the potential to circulate money among kin in a generally positive way to enhance equality, social cohesion and the ability to accumulate resources for expensive purchases.
