Event Details

Name: Mike Hoeft discusses The Bingo Queens of Oneida: How Two Moms Started Tribal Gaming in Wisconsin
Start: 2024-05-07
End: 2024-05-07
Location: Jack Russell Memorial Library

Tuesday, May 7, 2024

6:00pm

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Location

Jack Russell Memorial Library

100 Park Ave.

Hartford, WI 53027

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About the Event

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The Wisconsin Historical Society Speakers Bureau offers an exciting opportunity for our historians, curators and authors to visit your community and share the stories of our great state.

Learn how two moms started tribal gaming in Wisconsin in order to literally keep the lights on in the Oneida community center. Michael Hoeft, author of The Bingo Queens of Oneida shares the story of Sandra Ninham and Alma Webster, the Oneida women who, in 1976, introduced bingo to the Oneida Indian Reservation outside Green Bay as a way to pay a few bills. From these humble beginnings, bingo became the tribe's first moneymaker on a reservation where about half the population was living in poverty and was soon financing vital health and housing services for tribal elderly and poor.

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Mike Hoeft

Mike Hoeft earned his bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of New Mexico and worked as a reporter and copyeditor for 30 years on daily newspapers. For 23 of those years, he was on staff in the newsroom of the Green Bay Press-Gazette. He lives with his family in Oneida and currently works as a paralegal for Oneida Nation Family Services.