A winning hand

Thunder Valley's opening  offers some jobs and a better life

By Steve Wiegand -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT

For 86 years, they waited.

Through winters without heat and summers without water, through a flood of broken promises that washed the weak away, they held on to their identities as descendants of California's first human inhabitants.

For 86 years they clung to a rockpile.

Monday they open a gold mine. Sometime close to 10 a.m., members of the United Auburn Indian Community will open a $215 million casino complex on 49 acres of unincorporated Placer County land, at Industrial and Athens avenues off Highway 65.

When the finishing touches are completed this fall, the casino will house 1,906 slot and video poker machines, 100 table games, a 500-seat buffet, fast-food outlets, restaurants and seven bars, the main one featuring an impressive, if artificial, waterfall.

Employing 1,800 people, the casino is expected to generate more than $200 million in annual revenues. Most of the profits will go to the 247-member tribe.

"It's hard to believe," said tribal chairwoman Jessica Tavares, a 54-year-old woman with 15 grandchildren, a droll sense of humor and a tendency toward skepticism. "It's a miracle for us ... and a new set of headaches."

The old set of headaches is still easy to see, starting at the tribe's office, located in a mini-mall just off Interstate 80 in Newcastle, next to Newcastle Pizza and Dinner Co.

Along with notices for an upcoming softball game against the Wilton Rancheria, the office's bulletin board is covered with postings for housing assistance, vaccination and nutritional programs and job training -- "Become an ironworker."

According to Bureau of Indian Affairs statistics, 52 percent of the tribe's employable adults who lived on or near the reservation were unemployed in 2001. Of those who were employed, 96 percent were making less than a poverty-level income.

About 50 tribal members found jobs at the casino construction site.

"They want to take part in something that is going to be theirs," Tavares says, then jokingly adds "so they can pass on stories how they built it all by themselves."

Fliers for addiction treatment programs are a reminder of the drug and alcohol demons that some tribal members battle.

"Most of our members have no health insurance, a lot of them have no jobs, just about all of them have big problems of one kind or other," says Tavares.

A few miles away, up Indian Hill Road, about one-third of the tribe's members live on a rocky 20-acre parcel that was once the reservation. The enclave of trailers, mobile homes and modest houses is surrounded by pricey new subdivisions with names like "Diamond Ridge Estates" and "Dunmore," which is advertising "homes from the low 300s."

On a warm spring afternoon, it's a scene of pastoral poverty, with sweeping vistas of the valley visible past the oak trees -- and few amenities to help buffer against the area's weather extremes.

"You should be here in August," Tavares observes dryly. "Or January."

Tavares lives in Roseville, but grew up on the rancheria, and in her role as tribal chair, spends a great deal of time there.

On a recent visit, she points out the rusting skeletons of abandoned vehicles that dot the landscape.

"When we get the money, a lot of this will be cleaned up," Tavares says. "We'll get rid of a lot of these old cars. People bring their old cars up here and leave 'em here. It's like they think, 'The Indians won't mind.' "

Near the entrance to the rancheria's circular road is a giant garbage container that on this day contains discarded building materials, bags of refuse and a large couch.

"We got the county to put that in," Tavares says, "and they come out and empty it. It really helps out."

On the rancheria's western edge, some of the kids have erected the frame of a giant tepee, which Tavares says is meant to remind the subdivision residents that this is Indian country.

Walking down the road, Tavares notes the carcass of a large alligator lizard. She recalls that her mother used to pour hot water on such reptiles to discourage them from nestling into the family's beds.

One memory triggers another: of cleaning and eating the rabbits and squirrels and blue jays her uncles would kill to supplement the family diet; of hauling water from a drainage canal 75 yards down the hill; of outhouses and hand-me-down clothes and neighbors living in the back seats of cars.

Poverty, no matter how pastoral its setting, is still poverty.

Like many of California's 107 federally recognized tribes, the United Auburn Indian Community was born of desperation.

By the end of the 19th century, the state's American Indian population had been reduced, mainly through disease and murders that were sanctioned by official and unofficial government policies, from about 150,000 in 1848 to fewer than 20,000.

"The savages were in the way," the noted California historian Hubert Howe Bancroft wrote in 1890. "The miners and settlers were arrogant and impatient ... It was one of the last human hunts of civilization, and the basest and most brutal of them all."

By 1917, 25 survivors of two cultures, the Nisenan Maidu and Sierra Miwok, huddled together on a tract of unfertile land a mile or two southwest of Auburn. The federal government bought 20 acres of the land, which it held in trust for the band, and called it the Auburn Rancheria.

"They are a small hard-working band of good Indians," Special Indian Agent John Terrell reported then to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, "who should receive some of the benefits ... for the homeless Indians of California."

Those benefits apparently did not include a water supply. For the next 29 years, the tribe lobbied the federal government to drill a well. In 1946, a well was drilled. It produced a little water, but it was laced with bitter-tasting minerals and was unfit for drinking. Then the drillers hit granite and quit. It would take another 24 years and a lawsuit before the government finally provided funds for a water supply.

"We live under slum conditions," tribal member Edward Ainsworth told a Bee reporter in 1947. "It's time the government woke up and did something for us."

Garron Cayton is doing something for his 67-year-old Aunt Maxine. He stands outside the 8-by-47-foot trailer he once lived in with his parents and four siblings on the rancheria, and talks about how he's fixing it up so his aunt can move in.

"It's not going to be all that great," he says, "but it's better than what she has now."

Aunt Maxine, who is too shy to talk to a reporter or give her last name, lives in a wooden shack about 25 yards away, with tarps on the roof and one of the sides to keep the weather at bay.

Her water supply consists of a garden hose connected to an outside tap, so she washes dishes on the side of the house. There, she can watch the construction of houses selling for $380,000 just down the hill. Her electrical supply is an orange extension cord, run from a neighboring house.

It's one of many shelters on the rancheria that was built without building permits or attention to housing codes -- or connections to utilities.

"There's no heat, no insulation, everything is dilapidated," Cayton says. "This got built for her when I was 6 or 7 so she would have a place, because there was no room anywhere else."

Cayton has spent most of his 44 years on "the rez." He moved away briefly when he was a kid, but family problems and a yearning to go home prodded him into buying a bus ticket in Kansas at the age of 13 and returning, alone, to the rancheria.

"I lived here with my grandmother, who was sick and old and couldn't drive," he recalls. "So I drove myself to school ... by the time I was 16, I had 36 tickets for driving without a license."

He graduated from high school, took some classes at local community colleges, worked in the swimming pool business and in construction.

Nowadays, he does odd jobs, works on restoring the trailer for his aunt -- and waits for the casino.

"When I get my money, I want to put it into a center for underprivileged kids, Indians or not," he says. "Someplace where they can grow up and not be scared of everybody ... someplace like we never had."

In 1958, after a century of failing to solve the "Indian problem," Congress gave up. In California, federal recognition of 41 of the state's 100-plus tribes was terminated and the reservation land was given to the families living there or sold as surplus.

The terminated tribes were promised improvements to the land, such as utilities, paved roads and sewage systems to compensate for losing their tribal status, but the promises were generally forgotten.

"We were always waiting for our 'Indian money,' " said Tavares.

"Indian money" was a long-anticipated reparation payment for California Indians, who'd been promised millions of acres in 19th-century treaties that Congress ultimately failed to ratify. After more than a century, the money arrived in 1966.

"It came to $642 a person," she said with a laugh slightly hard around the edges.

While the land was held in trust, the Indians didn't pay property taxes, and many of them had no idea what they were. They found out when tax bills arrived that they couldn't pay, and some of the land was lost to tax liens.

Even with the tribe officially disbanded, many members clung to the old rancheria.

"A lot of families wanted to stick close together, and a lot of people just didn't have anyplace else to go," Tavares said. "My mom was on welfare with seven kids, my dad was sickly, on disability. This was all we knew."

During the 1960s and '70s, Congress gradually realized that the move to terminate tribes had been another policy failure, but had no new solutions. Some California tribes successfully sued to be reinstated, but the Auburn band remained disorganized and discouraged.

Finally, in 1991, surviving members of the band formally organized as the United Auburn Indian Community, in hopes of regaining access to federal aid programs. Three years later, the group won federal recognition, and with it the right to acquire land in Placer County as a new reservation.

But finding money to buy the land was another thing: Poverty, even with federal recognition, is still poverty.

Thunder Valley is a casino that sprang from a coup.

Once it became federally recognized, the United Auburn tribe faced the vexing combination of opportunity and empty pockets.

Some members, including three of the four people on the tribal council, wanted to find a way other than gambling to bring in revenue. Others, including Tavares, thought otherwise.

"Somebody wanted to build a coffee shop on the old reservation to bring in some income, and I figured that wouldn't be enough to help anybody," she said. "I thought the best way out of the poverty was to build a casino like the other tribes had, so the income would be enough to do things."

Tavares led a recall of the anti-casino council members, and was elected tribal chair in 1995. She has been easily re-elected twice since.

Finding financial backers for something as potentially lucrative as a casino wasn't tough: "The suitors were nonstop for six years," said tribal attorney Howard Dickstein, a Sacramento lawyer and veteran of several casino openings.

The tribe eventually settled on Station Casinos Inc., a company that owns all or part of 10 casinos in and around Las Vegas. Station spent about $15 million to buy the land for the tribe and provide funds to help the tribe through the development process. Station will operate the casino for seven years in return for 24 percent of the casino's net revenue.

The tribe also secured about $200 million in construction financing from lenders led by Bank of America and Wells Fargo, even though the tribe's only collateral is the prospect of an operating casino.

Finding the right location and getting the neighbors to go along was a different story. An "exploratory look" at a site near Penryn elicited howls of outrage from area residents.

"I had just been elected," said Placer County Supervisor Robert Weygandt, who early on was a leader of the opposition. "I'd never been in an Indian casino. I didn't know a thing about our options politically or strategically."

What Weygandt and other supervisors soon learned was that in the face of Indian tribal sovereignty and federal law, their options were limited.

"We sort of postured, and we indicated to them we were going to fight them, using federal environmental laws," he said, "and we would make it as tough on them as possible, although in my own mind I always knew that we would lose."

Instead of a fight, the tribe and county worked out an agreement, ratified in early 2000, for a site in the Sunset Industrial Park.

Under the deal, the tribe agreed to pay for millions of dollars in infrastructure improvements, provide the county with $500,000 per year for extra sheriff's deputies, build a fire station at the casino site, contribute annually to a program for problem gamblers and abide by state and local environmental rules.

"This is one of only three agreements between tribes and local governments in California that is worth anything," Cheryl Schmit, executive director of the anti-Indian casino group Stand Up for California, said with grudging admiration.

But other local governments were unswayed. In April 2002, the cities of Rocklin and Roseville joined a private group called Citizens for Safer Communities in filing a lawsuit. The suit claimed the plan failed to consider the negative impacts the casino might have on surrounding communities.

Last September, a Washington, D.C., federal judge dismissed the case. Rejecting lucrative offerings from the tribe in return for dropping their opposition, the cities appealed. But even some casino opponents are less than optimistic about their chances.

"After this appeal is decided, I don't see the sense in appealing it again. I think we've gone as far as we can go, and there's a time to call it quits," said Roseville Mayor Rocky Rockholm. "I still don't think it's the right fit for this community, but if it comes, it comes, and that's the end of it."

Tribal attorney Dickstein notes that Station and the lending banks are confident enough the appeal will be denied that they have risked millions of dollars on the project.

Still, he acknowledges he will feel a lot better when the legal issues are settled.

"I'll be pleased when it's over, and so will the tribe, because it's the last contingency out there," Dickstein said. "At one point, there were scores of contingencies, and they have been eliminated one by one over a period of eight years."

Tavares never thought it would take so long.

"When we first located the lawyer we thought we would go with, we thought it would be a year," she said, laughing in Dickstein's direction. "He kept telling us 'soon, soon.' Eight years was 'soon' to him, but it seemed a long time to us.

"The attitude we have is, 'We'll believe it when the doors open ... and the money starts coming in.' "

But having money and spending it wisely are two different things.

It has been Howard Dickstein's experience that California Indians are a tough and resourceful people, and Dickstein has a lot of experience.

"They have an enormous capacity for absorbing information and making decisions," he said. "It's not coincidental that Jessica (Tavares) and her family survived, and others didn't. There were qualities there that were never mined or brought out, but they were there."

The tribe will need its good qualities, particularly patience, because it will be awhile before the slot machines pay off.

For one thing, there's a $200 million debt to whittle down. Then, there are federal rules that require casino profits to be directed first at specific tribal needs, such as health care, education and housing, before stipends to individuals can be handed out.

In mid-May, the tribal council voted on priorities for the money: First, they want a health plan that provides comprehensive medical, dental and vision coverage for all tribal members. Next, all school-age children will have academic evaluations. Then, they will have the opportunity to go to the public or private schools of their choice, from pre-kindergarten to college, with all expenses paid.

Finally, stipends to individual members of the tribe will be paid only after they complete an 18-hour course at American River College on how to manage personal finances. Tavares estimates that 60 percent of the tribe's adult members never have had a checking account.

No one has put a formal estimate on what the stipends might be. But guesses among some tribal members, based on what other tribes have experienced, have ranged from $3,000 to $7,500 per month per tribal member.

Some plan to stay on the rancheria and rebuild, Tavares said. Others, she said, will eventually move into homes on a 1,100-acre site near Camp Far West Reservoir in Placer County "as soon as we have money to build houses."

Owning a casino, Dickstein says, "is a life-transforming experience."

At a conference table in a law office in midtown Sacramento, the past and future of the United Auburn Indian Community sit side by side.

Jenny Sturgeon was born in Sacramento in 1934, but moved to "the rez" when she was 6. She remembers working in the pear orchards when she was a child, carrying heavy ladders while her parents picked, camping among the trees -- and thinking it was fun.

"I look back now and I wonder how I did that," she says. "But we were poor, and that was how we made our living."

After graduating from high school, she married a missionary and moved around, doing mission work among Indians in other states. Eventually she returned to the land off Indian Hill Road, and worked in education and health programs. Through it all, she and her family remained poor.

Still, she had her doubts when the tribe decided to build a casino.

"I didn't think too much of it because I was more worried about getting jobs and health care and things like that," she says. "But I came around to think it was the best thing to do."

Sturgeon speaks without a trace of bitterness about what life was like on the reservation. The only time an edge creeps into her voice is when she talks about how hard it was for community members to find jobs. All the construction jobs go to the sons and friends of contractors, she says. Union membership is required, and that costs $800. Many tribal members have no transportation to get to job sites.

"The Indians get put down because they don't work," she says. "Well, there are a lot of reasons they don't work."

When the money comes in, she wants to see a health program, and education and housing, and maybe enough for a modest vacation, her first in 15 years. But she is not counting on anything just yet.

"I should be excited," she says, "but we have been let down so many times. It's hard to get excited until I see those doors open."

Kari Adams sits next to Sturgeon and listens with a degree of respect and patience uncommon in a 17-year-old.

"I didn't have it as bad as she did," she explains, adding that she lived in Sacramento rather than on the reservation. She talks about visiting the reservation at age 12.

"I had this picture in my mind of big old tepees," she says, drawing laughter from the other Indians in the room. "But I couldn't believe how horrible it was ... there were people actually living in old cars."

A few minutes later, however, she talks about once living in a car herself for two weeks, about moving whenever the rent was raised, and going without new clothes.

Poverty closes generation gaps.

"I looked at it as a learning process," she says. "I understand the value of money and the importance of putting priorities on what you can get."

She was 12 before she understood what a casino was and how it could help her tribe. Her respect and patience give way to unbridled -- and infectious -- enthusiasm when she talks about it.

Adams, who graduated from high school early, works at the casino in the human resources department. She plans to take a few courses she needs at Sierra College, then transfer to UC Davis and eventually become both a child psychologist and a veterinarian.

"I'm finally going to have an opportunity, and that's all I want," she says.

"An opportunity."

Thunder Valley Casino at a glance

Some facts and figures on the Thunder Valley Casino, opening Monday in Placer County:

Where it is: Near the intersection of Industrial and Athens avenues, off Highway 65.

Ways to lose wages: The 75,000-square-foot casino will open with 1,906 slot and video poker machines. There will be about 100 tables for blackjack and other card games, a room for Asian games such as pai gow, and a VIP room for high rollers.

Places to eat: A 500-seat buffet and a fast-food court will be ready Monday. A 24-hour cafe and two restaurants, one a steakhouse and the other an Asian food bistro run by the Fat family, will open later this year.

Places to drink: The casino will have seven bars, including three in the high-limit gambling area and a main bar with an impressive waterfall.

Places to park: There should be room for 3,000 vehicles.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em: Because the casino is on sovereign lands and not governed by state laws on the subject, smoking will be allowed in the casino and bars. A decision has not been made yet on the restaurants.

The hosts: The United Auburn Indian Community owns and controls the casino. Daily operations will be handled by Station Casinos Inc., a publicly traded company that owns all or part of 10 casinos in the Las Vegas area.

United Auburn Indian Community through the years

About 1900: Survivors of two Indian cultures band together on a hilly, rocky site two miles southwest of Auburn.

1917: The federal government acquires 20 acres for the Indian community, creating Auburn Rancheria.

1953: The government adds another 20 acres to the site.

1958: The tribe is one of 41 California tribes terminated by the federal government. Except for a two-acre parcel containing a church and community center, the rancheria land is sold or given to individuals in the tribe.

1991: The tribe adopts a constitution and petitions the Bureau of Indian Affairs for recognition.

1994: Congress passes, and President Clinton signs, legislation giving federal recognition to the tribe and authorizing it to acquire tribal land in Placer County.

1999: The tribe and the state of California agree to a compact allowing the tribe to operate a Las Vegas-style casino.

2000: The tribe and Placer County sign a memorandum of understanding in which the county agrees to endorse a casino in return for economic and environmental concessions from the tribe.

April 2002: The cities of Rocklin and Roseville and a group called Citizens for Safer Communities sue to stop the casino.

September 2002: A federal judge dismisses the case. The plaintiffs' appeal is still pending. The U.S. Department of the Interior takes a 49-acre site into trust for the tribe.

October, 2002: Construction begins on the casino.

June 9, 2003: Thunder Valley Casino is set to open.