Welcome to fabulous Cherokee

Ultimately, it's the old one-two-punchline that betrays Whagoo-le Tramper's "live Indian dance show" as more shtick than sacrament. He tugs at his feather headdress, part of his dance costume. His lips hover inches from the red foam microphone head. "I was talking to my elder the other day, and he said, 'The Indian is going to be the first ones to get to heaven.' I said, 'How you figure that?' And he said, "'Cause we have reservations.' T Badabing. The audience roars.

But from the road, this fenced-off dance pavilion in Cherokee, North Carolina, across from a boiled peanuts shack, looks like sacred ground. At first, the sounds seem authentic, riveting-the reverberating, emphatic beat of hands on taut animal skin; the eerie chorus of tribal voices, the tinny tinkling of bells. An imposing teepee sits behind the stage, echoing the swell of the Smokies rising in the background.

The sacramental dignity quickly melts away once offstage. Dancers relax around an umbrellaed table in rickety lawn chairs, their seating area a makeshift backstage wing. Scuffed Reeboks and Nikes peek out from under the fringe of their polyester felt pants. The speakers hum a static buzz in lieu of the taped tribal dance music.

A cigarette smolders between between hoop dancer Tramper's fingers. One of his colleagues idly prods the assembled Pepsi cups and McDonald's french fry containers with a feather-tipped baton. And as the smoke curls around Tramper's head, his eyes fixate on the tip basket circulating through the all-white audience-on the pile of wilted $1 bills.

He does this seven days a week-and has for 39 years.

"We're here to entertain," Tramper says, his accent the distinct mix of Smoky-Mountain Southern and Cherokee peculiar to the area. "These dances are just powwows-none of them Cherokee dances."

Instead, the ceremonial routines are borrowed from the traditions of Canadian, Mexican and Plains tribes. The teepee and the buffalo, emblems of tribes that roamed the Great Plains, do not reflect any part of the Eastern Band's historically agrarian, settled lifestyle. Tramper's dance pavilion-like almost all of the town's enterprise-instead uses the stereotyped Plains "Injun" from '30s, '40s and '50s spaghetti Westerns to make culture profitable.

But he and his dancers do not seem to take issue with such distortion. What historical associations and social scientists are calling "heritage tourism"-that is, the marketing of an ethnicity-is common practice on this and most Native American reservations in the United States. Ever since roads were paved in the 1950s on the tribe's official tract of land, called the Qualla Boundary, commercial enterprise and tourism have almost entirely replaced agriculture and logging as a way of life.

Gaming is not just a means of income on this or any reservation in the 28 states with Indian casinos. It is a means of survival. Revenue generated goes toward health care, education and housing. But the mere presence of the Harrah's on the Eastern Band's Qualla Boundary attracts up to four million people each year-all of them potential tourists. And people like Tramper stand to gain from the mass influx, regardless of whether they're marketing genuine Cherokee heritage, a watered-down variant or some mish-mashed hybrid of other tribes' cultures.

As it now stands, Cherokee is not the kind of place where bleeding-heart activists thrive. The word "Indian" is more common than either "Native American," or, the most recent addition to politically correct parlance, "First American." Many of the town's biggest problems-poverty, nutrition and health issues-are common to the entire Smoky Mountain region. And though Finger describes the Eastern Band as retaining their culture while staying "adaptive" to modernity, there are more immediate social and economic pressures. Culture-preservation projects might not assume first priority.

It's no surprise, then, that a revitalized community interest in heritage comes couched in casino-related politics.

In a 2002 referendum, 57 percent of the Cherokee voters gave tribal council officials the go-ahead to pare down its tribal enrollment roster-an act that may cause some Qualla Boundary residents to lose their standing as official members. The three-year, $800,000 audit began in September 2005, ending years of avoiding action on the issue of membership-an issue that, thanks to the Harrah's, has become ever more divisive.

Membership means, in one sense, being considered ethnically part of the group. But because the Eastern Band's 13,400 members are entitled to certain benefits, both from the federal government and from the casino, enrolled status also has monetary perks. In this county, one of North Carolina's poorest, membership is more often seen in terms of the latter-as a means of access to housing, health care, education and jobs.

"There have been recurring themes of this idea of identity in terms of actual membership, or enrollment in a group, since the late 19th century," Finger said. "And it comes because there has been assigned a monetary value to that membership. People wanted to make sure they got some sort of cut."

In addition to federal programs-which cover things like health care and college tuition-each enrolled member of the tribe receives $7,000 a year from the casino as part of the Eastern Band's partnership with Harrah's Entertainment. The balance of casino profits is stockpiled for community projects, like local education and improving health care facilities. Enrolled members are also given first priority for jobs at both the Harrah's and two hotels.

"Even down to the smallest kid, the babies-even if you was born yesterday, you would receive that per-cap in June and at Christmas," says Jerry Wolf, a tribal elder. "It is help that is needed very badly."

The annual checcks were certainly one of the great selling points for bringing in the casino. But Wolf says that he and most of his tribe fought vehemently against its installation.

"In the beginning, it was frightening," Wolf says. "Everyone would say, 'Gambling is coming to Cherokee, gambling is coming to Cherokee!' We started thinking of all the mobs, the gangs, the mafia-what you see on television."

The 12 elected members of the tribal council ultimately overruled Wolf and other detractors. The council drew up the contracts, hushing up the issue until it was too late, some say. The tribe-at-large never voted on the issue.

"Suddenly, someone found out about it-found out that we were getting a casino anyway," Wolf recalls, his white brows furrowing in the leathery folds of his forehead. "It made quite a few of us angry. We didn't have a say in anything."

Wolf describes the casino as much-needed fulfillment of a reservation niche-incongruous though it might be, it has improved quality of life for many Cherokee. People are driving new vehicles, he says, and the gamblers tend to stick to themselves. It has also helped encourage high school graduation: Young members cannot receive their dividend payments, which are held in a trust, until they turn 21, or if they present a diploma at 18. It's a very different day, he says, from his own time in school. At age eight, Wolf was sent to a government boarding school for Cherokee boys-and beaten for speaking his native tongue.

"Thngs are different today," he says.

But casino cash hasn't helped everything, least of all the audit debate. Rather, dividend payments have helped frame the issue in more dichotomous terms.

Even before the auditors arrived on the reservation, concerns were rampant over how many "outsiders," or non-Cherokee, had finagled enrollment status. In 1995, the first year Eastern Band members received dividend payments from the reservation casino, membership spiked by nearly 700 members-up from an increase of almost 300 members in 1994. Roll-takers have struggled for years with tribal censuses. So-called "$5 Indians," realizing the potential property and monetary gains enrollment could offer back when the reservation was first established in the early 19th century, paid off roll-takers to qualify.

In a culture still struggling with a legacy of swindling and deprivation, these imposters are seen as funneling money away from those with legitimate Cherokee heritage. Weeding out members might fulfill lofty goals for greater tribal cohesion, but a likelier motivator is money: Fewer people mean bigger per-capita checks. In a tourist-trap town, it's the cash that really matters.

"The recent success they've had with gaming is a very large incentive for some people to say, 'Well, why should these people share our profits, even if their ancestors got them on the roll illegally?'" Finger says, adding that on and around the Qualla Boundary there are several members who do not qualify on a blood-quantum basis-their percentage of Eastern Cherokee blood. In particular, he says, the recurring issue of roster audits highlights on-going disputes among members living on or off the reservation.

"In this day and age, a lot of people have raised questions about members living off the reservation-even if they qualify, should we necessarily cut them a break if they're not part of ongoing daily life?" he asks. His read on the situation is that many members will not want to retain or accept members who live off the Qualla Boundary, citing communities over the boundary lines that have "never been terribly popular."

In its capacity as a government agency, the Bureau of Indian Affairs is charged with officially recognizing American Indian tribes. Its selective, stamp-of-approval function firstly legitimizes a tribe's claim to self-govern; secondly, it authorizes the allotment of various federal goodies.

But the BIA does not have jurisdiction over tribal enrollment. As of now, all tribes have the right to self-determine their members. In the case of the Eastern Band and tribes all over the country, this poses some problems. How does a group strictly define its ethnic identity? How does one codify "being Indian?"

Grappling with definitions is not just a problem for social scientists or the independent auditors combing through birth and death certificates. Members themselves struggle with the meaning. In some circles, it is simply a matter of DNA, of weeding out those with lowest quanta of Cherokee blood. In others, Indian-ness hinges more on ideals of close community, of participation in daily life, in commerce or in council politics.

"Indian identity also has a deep emotional and cultural meaning," Finger says. "You've a got strange juxtaposition of that with the monetary motivation right now that makes the audit take on new life."

There was a time when simply living on the Qualla Boundary or having family on that land was grounds enough for membership. Now, being a member requires having a connection to the 1924 official roster of the Eastern Band-called the Baker Roll-as well as being at least 1/16 Eastern Cherokee by blood. The Baker Roll itself is considered to have illegitimate members on it, thanks to the sloppy initial scramble to enroll. Still, the document is widely considered too old and too established to be audited.

If the tribe succeeds in eliminating "illegitimate" members, its problems might not end. The Eastern Band has only disenrolled seven members in the last decade, but nationwide instances of tribal disenrollment have resulted in multimillion-dollar lawsuits. In southern California, the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians in terminated membership for over 130 members in 2004; the tribe is now facing a lawsuit for more than $38 million-money the disenrolled tribe members say they would have received in annual casino dividends of $120,000 per person.

Back in Cherokee, there are at least a few tribe members whose enrollment is not at all in danger-those who have both sufficient genetic evidence and are active in the Qualla Boundary community. From the total number of current members, Tramper estimates there are about 4,500 "purebloods" left on the enrollment roster, of which he himself is one.

"All my dancers are real Indians, are full-blood Indians," he says to the crowd.

It might be part of the act, but touting his heritage will only become more relevant to his financial survival-both on the stage and in his mountain home.