To Tiny Tribe, Prop. 5 Looks Like a Bad Bet

Paula Lorenzo is a minority of a minority. She’s a California Indian. And she’s an Indian who opposes the Indian gaming initiative, Proposition 5.

Not that she has anything against wagering a buck or two. Hardly. Her tribe--the Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians--netted $20 million last year off gambling, she says. That’s a healthy haul for a tribe that lists only 19 adult members, plus 16 children.

Some might suggest this is an unreasonably high profit for just a few Indians. Others would retort that, well, this tribe--like many others--would be a lot bigger today if it weren’t for the epidemics of European diseases and mass killings by white people in the last century.

In the 1850s, the state paid bounties for Indian body parts. Rewards ranged from 25 cents per scalp to $5 for a whole head. Gov. John McDougall declared “a war of extermination . . . until the Indian race becomes extinct.” The number of California Indians plummeted from 300,000 in 1769 to 17,000 by 1900. So it shouldn’t surprise anybody that there aren’t more Indians around to divvy up the slot and card winnings.

But you won’t hear any of this from Lorenzo, 48, the Rumsey tribal chairwoman.

“Put history where it belongs--in the history books,” she says. “My father and grandfather [a tribal chief] were always reliving history over and over again. What bugs me about history is that it doesn’t help you move forward. We want to keep going.”

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Lorenzo wants to keep going with her lucrative gambling operation. Unlike the vast majority of gaming tribes--36 out of 41--the Rumsey band opposes Proposition 5. These Indians believe the initiative threatens their casino, Cache (pronounced cash) Creek, which rises out of rich soil in the picturesque Capay Valley, 45 miles northwest of Sacramento.

The Rumsey tribe is one of 11 that have signed a gaming compact with Gov. Pete Wilson. Lorenzo is perfectly happy with that agreement, because it’s solid. She fears the instability of Proposition 5--all the expected court challenges--and the potential gambling competition if it is upheld.

She’s afraid that under Proposition 5 Indian gaming would proliferate--and, ultimately as a result, perhaps all California gambling would too. That also worries Nevada casinos, of course, and it’s why they’re anteing up tens of millions of dollars to beat Proposition 5.

“If Proposition 5 passes, it takes away our exclusivity,” Lorenzo says. “We’re out in a rural area. No one would come out to Cache Creek. It’s a nice drive-through, but not a place to drive to. We’d have to start all over. That would be devastating. . . .

“We could plant seeds, but that’s not what our people want to do. I’ve never been able to grow anything. I can’t run a tractor. There’s no way I was ever going to become a farmer. This is what my father and grandfather wanted us to do--run a business.”

Besides, Lorenzo adds, she likes the political assimilation that comes from negotiating with the state and working with local governments. “We’ve raised the tribe to the status of a recognized government,” she says. “People no longer say, ‘They’re just drunken Indians who don’t know what’s going on.’ ”

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I caught up with Lorenzo in a small casino office just as she was about to ride off into Nevada and Utah on a Harley. She rode for a week with her husband on the back of his bike.

“Being on a bike is like being free,” she says. “Sitting in a car, people talk to you. On a bike, you don’t hear anybody. You’re able to just be in your thoughts, out in space, listening to the wind. Next year I’ll have my own bike. It’s part of the American dream.”

The American dream indeed.

“The tribe was 100% on welfare and working on farms before gaming,” she recalls. “Now we’re 100% off welfare. We’ve got a nice portfolio, and we’re making sure there’s money for the next 10 generations.”

Each family also gets $1,500 a month, there’s free health care and a new tribal school. “Our kids got picked on at the public schools,” she says. “Like, ‘You rich Indians, you think you know everything now.’ ”

The tribe opened a bingo casino in 1985 and got into slots and cards in 1993. It now has 230 slots and 22 card tables for poker and blackjack. A major expansion is underway.

The state compact basically means that the tribe must junk its illegal slots for legal video terminals, which operate differently but still look and sound a lot like slots. There’s also a total limit on machines--975, which may crimp some big Indian casinos, but not Cache Creek.

Lorenzo now is accused in a pro-Proposition 5 TV ad of “betraying” her “own people” by fighting the initiative. Not even close. Her people have hit the jackpot, and she just wants to make sure they don’t lose it.