Even more remarkable, though, is the tribe's philanthropy. Since 1996, the Shakopee tribe has donated some $243.5 million to local charities and poorer tribes. In 2010 alone, the tribe gave away some $28.5M in charitable gifts, outdoing big local names like the 3M Corporation, despite the fact that the tribe receives no tax benefits. The reservation lands established for the tribe in the 1880s was 250-acres in Prior Lake and Shakopee. The Little Six Casino and Mystic Lake Casino Hotel are situated on those lands and extend to a whopping 2000 acres.

When Louise Smith looks at fellow tribal members on the tiny Mdewakanton Sioux reservation, she grows more disapproving every day.

'This reservation is all blue-eyed and blond. You don't see a dark-skinned person around here,' said the 84-year-old retired nurse's aide, whose grandfather, Harry Bluestone, once lived on this land.

Smith is party to a legal action to stop enrollment of new members who have less than one-quarter Mdewakanton blood, a requirement in the tribe's constitution.

To be sure, there are brown-eyed, dark-haired, dusky-skinned people here.

But the reservation, formed in 1969 on old land parcels given some Mdewakantons in the late 19th Century, looks more like an affluent suburban subdivision than an American Indian reservation.

There's good reason for that. Mystic Lake, the tribe's casino, just half an hour from the Twin Cities, is the second most lucrative Indian gaming operation in the nation.

Gamblers lost $500 million there last year, and 65 percent of the net profits were paid to tribal members, who number fewer than 100. That means each enrolled member got more than $400,000 last year. Projections for this year are for $500,000 each.

Those figures were closely guarded secrets until April 26, when tribal member Leonard Prescott, president of Little Six Inc., which operates the casino, decided to reveal them. Prescott was under fire from tribal Chairman Stanley Crooks for alleged mismanagement of casino profits and misconduct with several female employees.

On May 6, he was ousted from the casino by the tribe's gaming commission.

Meanwhile, there is concern among the Mdewakanton Sioux and other tribes that the financial revelations may have hurt Indian gaming in Minnesota.

Opponents in the hospitality and tavern industries have been clamoring to break the monopoly that tribes have on video slot machines. They have leaped at the chance to portray the enormous success of the Shakopee casino as the rule for the state's 16 other Indian casinos, most of which don't do nearly as well.

There may be valid reasons for the ouster of Prescott, but it is difficult to view them apart from a longstanding feud that has raged between the Prescotts and Crooks.

In 1984, Leonard Prescott won the tribal chairmanship by defeating Stanley Crooks' late father, Norman, who in 1982 brought bingo to the reservation. Stanley Crooks in turn defeated Prescott three years ago.

Last year, the feud was over the question that concerns Louise Smith and Indians on other reservations: membership eligibility, or, who is an Indian?

'The time is coming when the issue of membership will hit all tribes. The blood levels are reaching less than a quarter in most places,' said Robert Wynecoop, who is retired from the Twin Cities office of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

Crooks and others wanted the tribe to adopt 30 children and adults, most of whom were relatives or children of existing members. Because of marriage outside the tribe, they have less than one-fourth Mdewakanton blood.

Membership eligibility has great political and economic implications on Indian reservations.

Bestowing it affects participation in tribal programs, occupation of tribal land and the receipt of tribal benefits, such as per capita payments from casino profits.

The chairman or tribal council can use the bestowal-or retention-of membership as a powerful political tool to compel loyalty or to settle old scores.

Shakopee Mdewakanton Tribe Casino Jobs

Last fall Louise Smith found to her shock and anger that three of her grandchildren, who were on the membership rolls, had been removed.

'When I asked why, he (Stanley Crooks) said it was because I didn't support adoption,' she said.

Tribes such as the Hopis, Navajo and the Crow are big enough to provide ample opportunities for marriage within the tribe, and thus are able to maintain strict blood-quantum requirements.

'The whole purpose of these requirements is to make sure tribal members marry other tribal members and maintain the culture,' said Lathel Duffield, branch chief of the BIA's tribal enrollment office in Washington, D.C.

But such a standard is proving increasingly difficult to maintain; many tribes have reduced their requirements. The Mashantucket Pequots, owners of the nation's most successful casino in Ledyard, Conn., now require only one-sixteenth blood.

Other tribes have dropped blood requirements altogether and require only proof of lineal descendancy for membership. This was the plan in Shakopee last winter.

'Intermarriage is most cases is not an option for most for these folks. So the tribe is naturally diluting itself,' said Roseann Campagnoli, a spokesman for the tribe and chairman Stanley Crooks.

'Grandchildren aren't going to make the 25 percent cutoff, so what do you do? Does the tribe end?'

Smith, her daughter Winifred Feezor and others successfully blocked the adoption on grounds the tribe's 1969 constitution requires members prove to have a minimum of one-fourth Mdewakanton blood.

Shakopee Mdewakanton Casino

They argue that there are at least 60 Mdewakanton Sioux living off the reservation who would easily qualify.

Shakopee Mdewakanton Tribe Casino Entertainment

The Bureau of Indian Affairs agreed on the constitutional requirement, but the issue is still working its way through tribal courts.

Shakopee Mdewakanton Tribe Casinos

Smith, who lives in an old, wooden mobile home, says she doesn't care about the money.

Shakopee Mdewakanton Tribe Casino Phone Number

She is concerned, she says, about the loss of Indian values and culture if the requirements are reduced on a reservation that may now be the most affluent in the nation.

'I guess there just won't be any more Indians eventually,' she said. 'They'll just fade away.'