Nation of One : Lucille Lucero, 75, is the sole survivor of her tribe, But her plan to preserve her heritgage doesn’t sit well with some other Native Americans.

An orange electrical cord extends out a window of the old house and winds its way to a small silver trailer, where Lucille Lucero sits in a wheelchair watching “Days of Our Lives.”

Both she and the house have grown old over the years, and Lucero, 75, has come to need more warmth than the drafty house provides. So with winter approaching, she lives alone at the other end of the extension cord, in the Jet Stream trailer just yards from the house.

An electric heater hums at her feet as she skeptically observes the scandalous, messy turn of events unfolding on the small screen. It is how she has come to view life in general. Skepticism has become a part of her nature.

She has been feeling a heaviness, she says, as if word of sickness or death were approaching. When she was young, such word came by way of her father, Louie Oliver, who would sit alone beneath the big oak tree in back and sing a traditional Miwok song before delivering the news to the family.

She suspects such a message is forthcoming. It has been in her dreams the past two nights and in the voice of the owl the day before. “I wonder who it is?” she asks.

Perhaps it is her, she thinks. Lucero, who lives on 67 acres known as the Buena Vista Rancheria--and whose health is fragile--is the only surviving member of the Buena Vista Band of Miwok Indians.

So that the tribe can survive when she is gone, Lucero is forming a government. She is also increasing the size of the tribe by enrolling relatives of her late husband as members. A faction of the nearby Ione Band of Miwok Indians is opposed to “outsiders” coming in and taking control of the land, which includes a cemetery where they say some of their members are buried.

And they are opposed to a government-created tribe with one member being recognized and allowed to receive funds, services and programs through the Bureau of Indian Affairs when many other tribes that have existed over centuries are denied those things.

It is an emotional issue in this valley, 40 miles southeast of Sacramento near the town of Ione. Politics and anger, perhaps even greed have swirled over the narrow strip of land, clouding a sky once the domain of the red tail hawks and other birds--the owls and California eagles.

For now, people on both sides of the issue say they want only for this elder, whose life has been hard, to live in peace. Such restraint could end when she dies.

*

Lucille Oliver was 11 years old when she started working in the fields, harvesting hops, grapes, prunes, tomatoes.

It was hard work, and that is what Lucero remembers most vividly about childhood. She can still feel the weight of boxes and buckets filled with grapes, and she can envision the sweat that soaked through the back of her mother’s dress as she stood on the porch to look out on the valley after toiling over a wood-burning stove. Life was hard work.

Lucero has no memories of playing as a child and says she never had dreams that extended beyond the boundaries of daily life.

Her family gathered acorns, which were ground into flour or made into soup, and bought rice and beans by the 50-pound sack to carry them through winter. Some years, her father would take her to the bean fields that already had been harvested, and they would scavenge what had been buried in the dirt.

She sees beauty in this land, beyond the noise of the nearby coal mine, the rust of scattered wreckage and the old house too cold for her to occupy.

It is the beauty of history and space, of walking on the land of her ancestors, of seeing the rocks used in centuries past to grind acorn, of sitting in the shade of trees that like her, were once young.

There used to be more life here. Hundreds of people would come to Buena Vista on Memorial Day while her father was alive. They would eat and play games, including “Indian football.”

“It was like regular football, rough,” she says. “They didn’t have a football. It was a big ball out of old rags and socks and anything to make a big football, and they played that down in the field--the men against the women or they’d play together. And on this side, we had baseball. We had something going all day on Memorials.”

But even on Memorial Day, Lucero didn’t play. She toiled around the house, helping prepare food and clean up.

She attended school grudgingly, speaking little English when she first started.

“I went to high school, didn’t learn nothin’,” she says. “The Indians were getting free clothes to go to school--that’s the only reason I went--a new pair of shoes and new dress and all that. . . . I didn’t care for school. . . . I didn’t like being around those people. I still don’t.”

She met Donald Lucero while working in the fields. He would play his guitar and sing to her in the evenings. Nine years after they met, they were married on June 13, 1947.

He was a soldier, overseas during most of their marriage. He had heart trouble, and when he was discharged from the Army, he went into the hospital. He died on Dec. 5, 1959, at age 45.

She still carries the red billfold he gave her one birthday. It is where she keeps his photos, his military identification card.

“It’s so old,” she says of the billfold as she flips slowly through the snapshots. “It just falls apart.”

In her bedroom, she keeps pictures of Donald, handsome in his uniforms, in crumbling frames that have been damaged by the rain that comes in through the roof and window.

She can’t do much anymore. Her joints are swollen and weak from arthritis. She lived in a nursing home and with her niece for a period after breaking a hip a few years ago. It’s difficult to even lift a cup to her mouth. Sometimes, she feels like the red billfold.

It’s lonely now. They never had children. Her parents and siblings--three sisters and brother--are dead. One of her sisters had two children. They, too, are gone.

She can still look at her past with fondness.

“Yeah, I had a good life. It didn’t last long, but I had a good life,” she says, as if it were already over.

Her memories of simple, precious times on the rancheria bring warmth when she sits alone in her trailer.

*

Unlike reservations that usually were established along tribal lines (such as Pine Ridge in South Dakota), rancherias were for homeless, landless Native Americans in California regardless of tribal affiliation.

“Many tribes in the past were considered to be historical in nature, (but) the tribes that we’re dealing with in California, for the most part, legal experts would say, were created by Congress, because they created a land base for them and said, ‘You’re a tribe,’ ” says Michael R. Smith, deputy area director for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Sacramento, noting that tribal membership--more often than blood quantum--is used to determine eligibility for BIA benefits.

From the perspective of the federal government, tribes are viewed as political--not racial--entities, he says.

In fact, blood quanta required for membership have been dropped to as low as one-sixteenth by some tribes, Smith says, and some have adoption clauses to enroll members who have no Native American blood.

In the 1950s, hundreds of tribes were “terminated” as a result of Congress’ call for “assimilation” of Native Americans. Residents of the land took individual title to property, thus placing it on tax rolls.

Although they received ownership of the land, they gave up their rights to receive federal services previously provided for the well-being of Native Americans.

Promises were made that the government, as a condition of termination, would make improvements in roads, sewer and water.

Like many promises, this one, too, was broken.

In 1979, a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 34 rancherias was filed and in 1983 a settlement was reached. Known as the Tillie Hardwick case, 17 of the rancherias, including Buena Vista, were returned to the BIA Federal Register list of recognized tribes.

Reinstatement allowed the rancherias to regain the status they had before termination. It is the status many terminated tribes still struggle to regain.

For years after reinstatement, Lucille Lucero didn’t bother to form a tribal government. She saw little need.

Title to the land was kept in her name until 1986, when she deeded it to her niece and tribal spokeswoman, Donnamarie Potts, who spent much of her childhood being raised by Lucero at Buena Vista. Potts now has her own trailer there, although she spends most of her time in Sacramento, where she is pursuing a degree in ethnic studies at Sacramento State University.

A former police officer, Potts is active in Miwok cultural groups. She is a dancer and healer. She has worked in equal-rights efforts for women and farm workers. It is all, she says, part of the struggle.

But now her struggle centers on the faction of the Ione band that she says has tried to wrest control of Buena Vista away from her aunt and away from her.

The group went so far as to take on the name of Buena Vista Rancheria for the Miwok Indians before gaining federal recognition earlier this year under the name of the Ione Band of Miwoks.

It claimed Lucero was one of their members and also claimed jurisdiction over the 67 acres because of their historical relationship to the land. It is, they say, where a number of their members are buried.

In an attempt to settle the land issue and preserve the Buena Vista tribe, Lucero in September had a constitution written and submitted it to the BIA for review. She and the new members are operating under an interim tribal government until final approval is granted.

Lucero listed herself as tribal chairwoman and initially proposed bringing in two more members: her niece Potts and Potts’ mother, Margaret Lucero. Since then, three adults and six children have been added. All are related through her late husband’s side of the family. There may be others eligible for membership under the tribe’s proposed enrollment ordinance.

Their first order of business will be to acquire improved housing for Lucero, perhaps a new trailer. They also would like to build a cultural center and restore the roundhouse, which stood for many years as the area’s spiritual center.

Ione Band Tribal Administrator Joan Villa says her group is opposed to the government allowing Lucero to organize as a federally recognized tribe, while denying similar status to other tribes that have existed over centuries.

“How can one person be a tribe? How can she be allowed to come up with a tribe out of nowhere?” asks Villa. “Where does this alleged tribe come from? Do you put an ad in the paper saying, ‘Calling all Miwoks?’ ”

Villa says her group has nothing against Lucero, but worries about “outsiders” taking control of land considered sacred.

“We want her to be able to live in peace, but is it right for that sacred place to go into the hands of someone who has nothing to do with us? Donnamarie is from another Indian reservation. . . . She was the niece of Lucille Lucero’s husband, who was not related to us. She is not a blood relative.”

Neither is Villa, who married into the band in 1987. Both she and Potts, whose ancestry is three-quarters Native American (Miwok and Maidu) and a quarter Mexican, say the real issue may be gaming. Casinos have proven to be lucrative for developers as well as many tribes, providing revenue and jobs, in some cases leading to self-reliance for capital improvements on tribal land.

Potts and Villa accuse each other of wanting the land for gaming purposes, but both say they would buy land for gaming or any other business rather than develop on existing tribal property.

Meanwhile, winter is coming. The BIA says it may be able to provide improved housing for Lucero by early next year. Lucero says she hopes they are right, but she has heard such words before.

She says she is ready to pass on. The thought of death, the message of dreams and owls, do not invoke fear. “I think,” she says, “I’ll be better off.”

Buena Vista Rancheria Lucille Lucero is the last member of the Buena Vista band of Miwoks to live on the 67-acre rancheria.