Ryan Randazzo RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
6/9/2003 03:58 pm
His mother was killed in front of him when he was 8, his peers picked
on him in school and his fifth-grade teacher told him to “try taking a
bath.”
But as Jeff Moman, 28, watches his children get off the school bus, he
knows that the challenges he faced growing up as a member of the United
Auburn Indian Community won’t be passed onto them.
With the first coin plunked into a slot machine at its grand opening
Monday, the Thunder Valley Casino owned by the California tribe began
trickling a revenue stream that promises to flood the impoverished
community with the means to accomplish more than many ever dreamed
possible.
Plans are in the works to use the casino profits to provide health
care, housing, private education, improved governance and a slew of
other benefits for the tribe’s 235 members.
“I always tell my kids they will have it easier than I did,” Moman said
as Trista, 9; Brad, 7; and Mathew, 5, played after school.
The group of Maidu and Miwok Indians, as well as one Pomo Indian, were
merged into a single rancheria by the government in 1917, tribal
attorney Howard Dickstein said. The reservation was moved around Placer
County at least twice.
In an attempt to assimilate the small community, the government
terminated the reservation and distributed the land among the members
in 1953. Some lost their property for not paying taxes, Dickstein
said.
An act of Congress restoring their tribal recognition in 1994 allowed
the tribe to select an area in Placer County for a reservation because
collectively, the community only owned 2.8 acres on the old rancheria
used for a church and a park, he said.
The site they selected, about 20 miles from Indian Hill Road near a
landfill and surrounded by cattle pastures, is where they built Thunder
Valley.
Life on ‘the rez’
People still call the area off Indian Hill Road on the outskirts of
town where about 50 tribal members live a reservation — or “rez” — and
themes of poverty and alcohol abuse have dominated life there, Moman
said.
When he was 8, he watched with the rest of his family as a
brother-in-law pulled up in front of the house and then shot and killed
his mother because of a family dispute.
Today, dozens of junked cars overgrown with weeds sit haphazardly among
the homes and trailers, some of which have no running water. Trash
spills into the street from a large, community trash bin.
A block from the reservation, a housing development with homes starting
in the mid-$300,000s has broken ground, and the cultural contrast is
still an issue for the tribe.
An older boy has been teasing Moman’s son on the bus, saying things
like “You don’t have a good house,” when he gets dropped off. Moman had
to talk to the bus driver about it.
“We used to get a lot of that, get flicked on the head by the older
kids,” said Moman, a heavyset man with an Indian pride tattoo on his
right shoulder. “It teaches the kids there is something wrong with
their heritage.”
The 76 percent of casino revenues left over for the tribe after paying
business partner Station Casinos its cut all will go back to the
people.
The amount of money individual tribal members will receive from the
casino depends on how much it makes.
But once the tribe pays off the five-year loans used for the casino,
$10,000 a month would not be unreasonable, Dickstein confirmed. The
majority of funds must go to community investments and other business
ventures, rather than individual payments, he said.
Making plans
While the community has many issues to sort out before checks arrive —
including an 18-hour financial responsibility course each member must
attend — the income immediately will give the people something of which
to be proud.
Some of the money will help 17-year-old Kari Adams attend college. She
graduated early from high school in Sacramento and intends to study
veterinary medicine and child psychology at the University of
California, Davis.
She wants to merge the fields by creating her own practice where she
pairs abused children with abused horses. The idea comes from time
spent in a rough Sacramento neighborhood during her childhood where she
met many abused children.
The bright, enthusiastic teen smiles constantly — even when discussing
hardships.
“The house we lived in was so infested with cockroaches, even when you
turned the light on, they were still there,” Adams said. “They had
nowhere to go.”
A rugged upbringing motivated her to help others, but how she would
manage to make a difference always was elusive. The casino has changed
that.
“It is not a dream anymore,” she said. “It is a reality now.”
Adams, too, said she has an awkward time relating to non-Indians.
“Nowadays, when I talk to people, everyone says they are part Indian as
soon as I say I am Indian,” she said. “If I was not an Indian, and I
saw the reservation, I would not want to be an Indian.”
However, not everyone respects the tribal community, and many are
resentful that the government put the land for the casino into trust
for the tribe.
“They shouldn’t have been allowed to build it,” said one elderly
Lincoln resident who refused to be identified. “The Indians get too
much federal assistance.”
When pressed for identification, and asked if she feared speaking out
against the tribe, a bystander commented, “They’ll put a spell on
you.”
United Auburn Indian Community Chairwoman Jessica Tavares shrugs off
such racist attitudes as commonplace.
“That is what happens when you don’t teach kids well in school,” she
said.
Tavares recalled days as a schoolchild when she would rather skip class
than attend lectures on how American Indians “burned wagons and killed
everybody.”
Tribal members are well aware of the latest act they are being blamed
for: killing gambling in Reno.
Thunder Valley is bigger than all but five Reno-Sparks casinos, and
sits just seven miles off Interstate 80 between Reno and the
Sacramento-San Francisco market that gives The Biggest Little City more
than half of its tourists.
Tavares and other tribal members say they can’t understand how Reno
casinos can fear losing business to Thunder Valley when casinos run by
other tribes around Sacramento not only accepted the new competition,
but attended the ground-breaking to congratulate everyone.
“The Indians do not want to be used as a scapegoat one more time in
history,” tribal spokesman Doug Elmets said.
Lifestyle changes
Tribal members spend far more time thinking of how the casino will
allow them to break out of a lifestyle they have lived since settlers
moved into the western slope of the Sierra Nevada with the Gold Rush in
the 1840s.
The community bought 1,100 acres of land in Placer County where they
plan on building 85 homes. A new neighborhood would be a significant
change from the hard lifestyle to which most of the people are
accustomed.
Jenny Sturgeon, 67, grew up on the rancheria, but spent much of her
childhood traveling with her family to pick fruit.
At age 7, she worked from 6 to 11 a.m., when she was allowed to play
while the adults finished the day’s work.
“I loved to do it,” she said, recalling how the children would make a
game of soaking their clothes as they picked grapes from the saturated
vines. “We had to work like that to survive.”
She is hopeful the casino will give the community a more even footing
in a society where she said that has not always been the case.
She recalls applying for a county grant in the mid-1960s, but the money
went to the local animal shelter rather than the tribe, which intended
to use the money for health care. She was so angry she tore up the
flowers that decorated the lawn at the animal shelter.
Sturgeon scoffed at the assertion that through the growth of tribal
casinos — California has 52 today — American Indians are getting
revenge on society by spreading the legal sins of drinking and
gambling.
“If Donald Trump came to put a casino in, they would pull out the red
carpet for him,” she said. “But because it is the Indians …” she trails
off.
For tribal members such as Moman, a practicing Christian known to
gather the community’s children for Sunday prayers, focusing on helping
the next generation is more important.
The first thing he plans to do with any casino money is set up trust
funds for his children. Moman, who is 11 credits shy of a high school
diploma, hopes they will attend college.
If he has enough money, he might try to open an antique store.
But he doesn’t intend to leave the home on the rancheria his father
left to him when he died last winter.
“But I might fix it up a little,” he said.
He also will continue speaking the native languages to his children in
hopes that they can maintain their heritage, even though their lives
likely will change significantly.
“God made us Indian for a reason.”
