The five-member California Valley Miwok Tribe has no land to
call its own, but 40 years ago it had a
”
rancheria,
”
as reservations in California were called at the time.
Gilroy – The five-member California Valley Miwok Tribe has no land to call its own, but 40 years ago it had a “rancheria,” as reservations in California were called at the time.
It was a .92-acre plot of land in Sheep Ranch, a tiny Calavares County hamlet in the Sierra Nevada. There, in 1915, the federal government established a home for a homeless band, calling them the Sheep Ranch Rancheria of Miwok Indians.
The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs tried to dissolve the rancheria in the 1960s but then reneged on the deal – too late, as it turned out. After 20 years of competing claims, the federal government confirmed in the early 1990s that the tribe was, in fact, landless, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Debora Luther, who represents the BIA’s Sacramento office.
That landless status means the federally recognized California Valley Miwoks – as they renamed themselves within the last five years – have the right to acquire land, have the U.S. government designate that land as sovereign territory and build a casino. That’s what they tried to do in 1999 in San Joaquin County, but disagreements with the BIA ultimately killed a deal between the tribe and North America Sports Management, of Florida. The company sued the tribe for misrepresenting its relationship with the BIA and ultimately reached an undisclosed settlement.
Now, four members of the tribe are trying to build a casino three or four miles south of Gilroy, on state Highway 25 near the Santa Clara-San Benito county line. A group of local investors is working with them and will decide within the next two weeks whether to move forward with the plan, according to Phillip Thompson, the tribe’s Washington, D.C.-based attorney.
Local Amah-Mutsun Ohlone Indians say the land is their ancestral turf, but that claim may be moot since the federal government does not recognize any Ohlone tribe’s existence.
The California Valley Miwok Tribe is made up of Yakima Dixie, Silvia Burley, Burley’s two daughters and her granddaughter. Burley claims to be the tribal chairwoman, but Dixie – the tribe’s only official member until 1998, when he let Burley and her daughters in – claims Burley forged his signature on a 1999 document that relinquished his chairmanship to her.
“He wants to be the boss,” Thompson said of Dixie. “He says a whole lot of things. He’s a convicted felon. … I don’t think that Mr. Dixie’s claims are valid.”
Dixie is now in Calavares County Jail on weapons charges. He has a long criminal history and did time in prison for the second-degree murder of a relative.
Nevertheless, the BIA’s Sacramento office has not sided with Burley and her family and disputes the tribe’s organization according to its constitution – specifically, the rules on who can and cannot become a tribe member.
“They’re trying to hold the Mr. Dixie issue over the tribe’s head to get the tribe to do what they want to do,” said Thompson, a former BIA attorney himself. “The tribe has legal authority and … Congressional authority to organize as they see fit.”
The tribe, meanwhile, is now based in Stockton, where Silvia Burley lives with her non-tribal husband, Tiger Paulk. She has so far refused interviews and referred all questions to Thompson.
“She’s not saying anything until it’s time for a project to be developed,” Thompson said.
Six years ago, Burley was homeless, living in a Salvation Army shelter in Olympia, Wash. In 1996, she made her way back to Sheep Ranch – her ancestral land, she has said – and met Dixie.
Because the California Valley Miwoks are not a gaming tribe at present, they receive a share of other state tribes’ gaming revenues. Every non-gaming tribe is entitled to the same portion regardless of the number of members in the tribe.
The tribe has reportedly earned millions from this revenue sharing but could earn much more with its own casino.
