By Micheal Rios, Tulalip News
On Monday, April 24, the Tulalip Tribes held their 16th annual Tribal Bingo Celebration. Tribal citizens who live locally on or around the reservation were joined by their fellow tribal members who journeyed from Seattle, Bellingham, and Tacoma to join in on the festivities and try their luck to win high-end prizes and fill their pockets with cash.
Board of Director Theresa Sheldon took to Facebook early in the morning to remind everyone about the special day and to wish everyone good luck. “Best of luck to all our Tulalip Bingo-ers! Enjoy visiting, laughing, hugging, and catching up with each other. The three sessions are 10am, 2pm and 6pm. Have fun! t’igwicid to Tammy Taylor and her staff for making this event such a success and always a good time.”
Like he has done in years past, Board of Director Mel Sheldon reigned supreme on the mic as the MC for each bingo session. Mel kept the atmosphere lively and upbeat with plenty of jokes and witty banter.
“We are honored to host our tribal bingo while bringing fun and excitement to the membership for 16 wonderful years now,” said Tammy Taylor, Tulalip Bingo Director. “The beautiful part of our celebration is it really brings the tribal membership together for a fun time, free of politics and drama. It’s all about our people enjoying each other’s company, sharing stories, and catching up with people you don’t see often enough. During any one of the three sessions you could feel the happiness, feel the positive spirits, and see the beautiful smiles of our elders.”
Bingo staff did their best to make the 16th annual celebration one to remember. First of all, instead of having only two sessions like years past, there were three sessions; held at 10:00 a.m., 2:00 p.m., and 6:00 p.m. Adding an extra session makes seating more comfortable and gave a slight bump to everyone’s chance of winning prizes and cash. Secondly, the door prize drawings were held in a different fashion. Tribal members who were lucky enough to have their ID called would make their way to the front and choose from a number of tribally designed cards (provided by our very own Hibulb Cultural Center), and then inside a folded envelope within each card would be their door prize. Prizes ranged from a trip voucher, a laptop, a 60” flat screen SMART TV, and of course various amounts of everyone’s favorite, cold hard cash.
Spanning each session were 14 games of bingo, plus an all-new Wild Goose Chase pull-tab game. For each session there was an estimated $30,000 in total cash prizes awarded to bingo and door-prize raffle winners.
The 6:00 p.m. evening session was most popular with 347 tribal members in attendance, followed by the 2:00 p.m. afternoon session with 340, and lastly the 10:00 a.m. session had 305. All in all there were 992 Tulalip tribal members who took part in this year’s bingo celebration.
“Our Bingo team did a wonderful job of preparing for each session and executing as a team,” added Tammy. “There were virtually no lines, whether it was getting the membership in the door and finding a seat or getting a plate of food. Our Deli team cooked and prepared more than enough food for the breakfast, lunch and light dinner we provided. From our Bingo team members to the Enrollment team members, everyone did a fantastic job start to finish.”
