Indian Gaming enterprises comprise gambling businesses operated on Indian reservations or tribal land, which have limited sovereignty and therefore the ability to exist outside of direct state regulation.

In 1987, in a case called Cabazon Band of Mission Indians v. California , the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that, as sovereign political entities, federally recognized Native American tribal entities could operate gaming facilities free of state regulation. The foundation for this case was laid in an earlier case, Bryan v. Itasca County , in 1976. Following Bryan, Indian tribes began engaging in high stakes bingo and other gambling enterprises. By 1987, when Cabazon Band reached the Supreme Court, Indian gaming was a $500 million industry. Soon after the Cabazon Band opinion affirmed the Bryan decision and ratified the tribal legal theory supporting the right to engage in Indian gaming, Congress enacted the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), which sets the terms for how Native American tribal entities are permitted to operate casinos and bingo parlours. Tribal entities such as the Chickasaw Nation and the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma near large cities have been particularly successful. Generally, a tribal entity is permitted to operate gaming facilities if anyone in the state is permitted to.

Initially there was hope that tribe-operated casinos would provide a source of income for Native American communities and aid ongoing reservation economic development. Many tribal governments have seen substantial improvements in their ability to provide public services to their members, building schools, making infrastructural improvements, and shoring up the loss of native traditions. Tribal gaming operations have not been without controversy, however. A small number of tribes have been able to distribute large per-capita payments, generating considerable public attention. Others describe examples of small groups of people with dubious Native American heritage who have been able to gain federal recognition for the sole purpose of establishing a tax-exempt casino. In addition, some studies suggest that the presence of gambling establishments on reservations has led to an increase in the rate of compulsive gambling on reservations. Additionally, the national expansion of Indian Gaming has led to a practice critics call reservation shopping . This term describes tribes that, with the backing of casino investors, attempt to locate a casino out of their indigenous homeland, usually near a large urban center. However, although authorized by the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, only three such "off-reservation" casinos have been built to date.

In 2006, Congress introduced necessary to protect their own casino interests from those tribes that are outside the region. Further, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) has faced increasing pressure to tighten up regulatory approval and oversight of casino approvals. In particular, the BIA has been instructed by Congress to implement new procedures after two decades of IGRA's existence. These procedures would allow local communities to have more say in the siting of casinos in their community and would make the process of casino approval more transparent than it is today. To many tribes, however, the proposed regulations would further encroach on tribal sovereignty.