It doesn’t take a big tribe, or a rich one, to open a big
casino.
Gilroy – It doesn’t take a big tribe, or a rich one, to open a big casino.
What it may take, however, is good relationships: with federal, state and local governments, with an unrecognized tribe who claims a casino site as its own ancestral territory, with neighboring residents and, perhaps, within the tribe’s own ranks.
The California Valley Miwok Tribe, based in Stockton, has just five members, and only four are united in a plan to build a casino a few miles south of the Santa Clara-San Benito county line on state Highway 25.
It would not be the smallest gaming tribe in California, according to its Maryland lawyer, Phillip Thompson. The Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians has two adult members and recently struck a casino compact agreement with the governor, according to Thompson. He also said the Augustine Band of Mission Indians has one adult member, but has a casino in Coachella.
The California Valley Miwoks also don’t have much money of their own, Thompson said, but they don’t really need capital right now. The tribe has something that brings investors running – federally recognized sovereignty, something all the Ohlone (also known as Costanoan) Indians in the Bay Area and Central Coast lack.
That status is golden in the casino industry. With it, a tribe can negotiate with federal and state governments to build a casino on its land. If, like the California Valley Miwoks, the tribe is landless, it can shop around for the most lucrative site – even on land claimed by other, unrecognized tribes.
Non-tribal investors are often willing to supply the start-up costs.
“Basically, how these things work is, developers come to a tribe and say, ‘We’d like to develop a project with you,'” Thompson said Tuesday.
“In this case, because we have to do sort of regulatory things and political things and technical things, there needs to be a substantial up-front investment.”
Kirk Rossman – one of Heritage Bank’s founders – is leading the casino project with two new investment firms, called Game Won and Game Too. So far, the other confirmed investors are Chris Vanni, Pat Ansuini and Joe Giacalone of Gilroy, San Jose grower and food processor Sal Rubino and Pepper Snyder, who owns Sprig Electric of San Jose.
The group and tribe are looking at sites for a casino and resort hotel that could contain up to 1,700 slot machines and cost anywhere from $100 million to $300 million, according to Thompson.
Meanwhile, the California Valley Miwok Tribe is not a united front. The lone dissident, 64-year-old Yakima Dixie, was the tribe’s only member until he admitted the others in the mid-1990s. As the lucrative casino plans begin to roll, however, he is in Calaveras County Jail, where he has been serving time for charges of assault with a deadly weapon, brandishing a weapon and illegal possession of a weapon, according to jail officials.
Back in Stockton, Sylvia Burley is the tribal chairwoman. Her husband, Tiger Paulk, is not a tribe member but handles its economic development on a paid basis, according to Thompson. As for the other three members, Thompson identified them only as Burley’s “relatives.”
This casino would be the tribe’s first business venture, Thompson said. Before it could be built, however, the tribe has to deal with the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“The tribe currently has significant government-to-government issues with the BIA offices out of Sacramento,” Thompson said. “I think the BIA has no interest in working with this tribe in any way. … They have continuously fought with this tribe and sided with Mr. Dixie. … They have a belief that this tribe should have to follow their … provisional organization. … We have inherent authority to organize our government as fit.”
The tribe does have a good working relationship with the BIA office in Washington, D.C., said Thompson, a former BIA attorney. The tribe is therefore trying to deal with that office, or perhaps switch to the BIA office in Redding.
After the BIA places the casino site in trust, the governor would have to sign a compact with the tribe. Schwarzenegger’s staff members have said they would want to see a strong show of local support before backing a casino here.
Among the local opponents are the Amah-Mutsuns, a band of Ohlone Indians who were baptized at the missions of San Juan Bautista and Santa Cruz. Although the band has been divided since a schism in 2000, members of both sides have said the California Valley Miwoks would be unwelcome intruders onto the Amah-Mutsuns ancestral territory.
Thompson said the California Valley Miwoks would have to prove an ancestral claim to the casino site before the BIA would put the land in their trust. That proof, he said, “will be provided at the appropriate time.
“We believe there is some credible information out there that the Miwoks and Costanoan Ohlones were basically the same people,” he said.
The California Valley Miwoks were known as the Sheep Ranch Rancheria Miwoks until they organized themselves in 1999. In 1915, Thompson said, the BIA purchased the Sheep Ranch Rancheria, in Calaveras County, for them under the Homeless Indian Act.
Reach staff writer Peter Crowley at 408-847-7109 or [email protected].
