Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (AP)

An Oklahoma tribal leader says tribes must wield political power to combat a national movement to erode their sovereign rights.

John “Rocky” Barrett, longtime chairman of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, a panelist at the 18th-annual Sovereignty Symposium, said “right-wing nuts” aim to reduce the economic gain that gambling has brought to American Indian tribes.

“Never in the history of the United States have tribes been allowed to profit at the expense of the European invaders ever and it will not happen now,” he said.

He predicted Congress will alter the 1988 federal law that controls Indian gaming. Among other things, Congress will protect states against tribal efforts to establish casinos in their ancestral lands, he said. That tactic has been used by some Oklahoma tribes that were moved here from other states.

Barrett said the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act will “run its course.” Meantime, he said, tribes must use casino profits to “marshal political power and public opinion by buying and controlling media.”

He also labeled the recent state-tribal gaming compact as “the stupidest, most absurd” agreement ever developed.

“The tribes in this state have been taken, flimflammed and bamboozled,” Barrett said.

Barrett complained that the compact doesn’t allow for Class III, Las Vegas-style gambling.