With debts paid, Chukchansi tribe to reap financial jackpot. But storm clouds are brewing
Members of the tribe that operates the Chukchansi Gold Resort & Casino in eastern Madera County are poised to receive a major influx of income after more than $220 million in debt against the casino was paid off this spring.
But the benefits of that windfall may be blunted by another round of infighting within the Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians over who is an official member of the tribe — and therefore entitled to receive cash disbursements and other perks of membership.
Sources within the tribe and its administration who spoke on condition of anonymity said that since the majority of the seven-member tribal council changed hands last fall, the board under the leadership of new tribal chairperson Janet Bill has moved to amend the enrollment ordinance.
Those rules govern who may be approved for membership and the conditions under which members can be removed from the membership roll.
The tribe’s election ordinance establishing the process for electing the tribal council was also changed.
On March 10, tribal administrator Robert Reyes was removed from his position, according to a council update, and Michael Wynn was appointed as an interim replacement. A week later, the tribal council announced that enrollment director Martha Rodriguez was no longer in her role.
Earlier this month, a tribal council update reported the leadership took action “to terminate benefits for all descendants of petitioners, effective immediately ...” under membership provisions of the constitution.
Sources within tribal administration told The Fresno Bee that meant suspension of about 70 members from receiving any tribal benefits — not just per-capita payments of casino revenues, but also assistance for housing, health care, education, clothing allowances for children, or tribal elders benefits.
Multiple sources within the tribe told The Bee that Claudia Gonzales, an at-large member of the tribal council who was its chairperson until last fall, was suspended from her seat on the council. Gonzales did not return a phone message seeking comment.
The latest developments follow a string of messages to tribal members in recent monthly newsletters by treasurer Marco Alcantar and at-large board members Joshua Herr and Thomas Pisano urging unity among the membership and discounting rumors of disenrollments.
“I know there was a concern that change in leadership would only create instability and lead to more turmoil for our tribe as we’ve experienced in the past,” Alcantar wrote in February.
He followed that up in the March tribal newsletter, asserting that “rumors have recently spread throughout our tribe suggesting that with the change in Tribal Council members, disenrollment will soon follow.”
In the April newsletter, Herr weighed in with a note of hope and unity. “This is an important moment for the tribe as we make our final debt payments made possible by our debt restructure last year,” Herr wrote. “As a petitioner who was disenrolled in the past, I pray we can stay united to share in the new prosperity we have achieved.”
“We need to strengthen our tribal laws including our Enrollment Ordinance and our Constitution to guarantee the rights of our enrolled members to be equal citizens of this Tribe,” Herr added. “We are all equal in the eyes of our Creator, and our Tribe will be stronger together.”
Neither Alcantar nor Bill responded to a request from The Bee to discuss the payoff of the debt, what that would mean for cash payments to tribal members, or how suspending or disenrolling members would affect distributions to the remaining members.
Sources within the tribe said the “petitioners” for whom payments and benefits have been cut represent one of three membership tiers within the tribe.
Of approximately 1,700 to 1,800 members of the tribe, most are “allotees” who under a federal allotment act in the late 1800s were granted land that has been passed through the generations.
Others are “distributees,” or people of native descent whose ancestors either turned down the original federal land allotments or never received land who later sought or won distributions from the federal government.
Petitioners are also people who did not receive land, but if they could prove Chukchansi bloodlines or heritage, they could petition to become official members of the tribe in the years following the adoption of the tribe’s constitution in 1988.
At fewer than 200 members, petitioners are the smallest share of the Picayune Rancheria membership.
The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs did not respond to a query from The Bee about what role the agency plays in overseeing tribal enrollment ordinances or mediating disputes over tribal membership. Tribes are considered sovereign to govern themselves, and a tribal member who has been disenrolled generally has little recourse under U.S. law, according to attorneys who deal with tribal laws.
Big money is at stake
In the tribe’s March newsletter, Alcantar reported that the casino made its final payment in January on about $193 million in bond debt against the casino. Payoff of another $30 million loan was completed last week.
While the bonds and other debt were being paid off, all but about $11 million in yearly casino revenue was required to be used to retire the debt, Alcantar wrote. That money, under the tribe’s current revenue allocation plan, was split four ways:
- $5.5 million per year for tribal government.
- $2.75 million per year for per capita payments to tribal members.
- $1.65 million per year for tribal economic development projects.
- $1.1 million per year for a permanent fund.
Now that the debt is paid, the casino and tribe will have a lot more money at their disposal. Alcantar said January’s revenues alone amounted to $9.8 million before interest, taxes, depreciation and other factors. “That’s in a single month, compared to $11 million for the entire year,” he said.
Based on the current allocation plan, Alcantar wrote that those January revenues would have created:
- $4.92 million per month for tribal government.
- $2.46 million per month for per-capita payments to members.
- $1.48 million per month for economic development.
- Just under $1 million per month for the permanent fund.
Save for the glimpse that Alcantar offered about January’s casino revenue, it’s unclear just how much income the tribe receives from its gaming operations. Tribes that operate casinos are required to send audited financial statements to the state Department of Justice’s Bureau of Gambling Control and to the National Indian Gaming Commission, but those documents are confidential.
The Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians is one of 63 tribes operating casinos in California. The Coarsegold-based tribe has had a gaming compact with the state since 1999, and opened the Chukchansi Gold casino in 2003.
While the annual revenue is confidential, the tribe’s compact requires it to make quarterly license payments to a tribal revenue sharing trust fund based on the number of licensed slot machines and other gaming devices.
Since the Chukchansi Gold casino opened, the Picayune Rancheria tribe has paid nearly $48 million into the trust fund as of the end of 2021, according to a report by the California Gambling Control Commission. Among the 63 gaming tribes in the state, only five have paid more into the trust fund.
A history of infighting
The reported new suspensions of dozens of tribal members — cutting them off from a share of casino revenues and other benefits — are the latest round in a long series of back-and-forth leadership disputes when majority control of the tribal council changes as a result of annual fall elections. It’s a scenario that has been repeated as different tribal factions jockey for control of the tribe and its lucrative gaming operation.
In 2019, the memberships of at least 60 people who had been granted tribal status just two years earlier were suspended. And at least one past disenrollment episode in 2016 took aim at families that were among the founding members of the tribe.
Suspension is one step in the tribe’s process toward possible disenrollment, which removes a person from the tribe’s official roll of recognized members. It not only affects current members, but also affects the children and future descendants of disenrolled members. The action can also jeopardize a person’s access to resources from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The tribe’s 1988 constitution states that its membership shall consist of people listed as distributees or dependents at the time a tribal distribution plan was approved by the U.S. Department of Interior in 1960; “all persons of Chukchansi Indian blood who have a special relationship with the tribe not shared by Indians in general” and who have received allotments of public land under an 1887 law; or direct lineal descendants of people living or dead who are or were eligible for membership and of Chukchansi blood.
The tribal constitution bars membership in the Picayune Rancheria tribe “if she/he is recognized as a member of any other tribe, band, or Indian community.”
Under the tribe’s enrollment ordinance, a member may be disenrolled only if they become enrolled in any other tribe, band or Indian community, or if there is a determination that a person’s eligibility for membership was “based upon a mistake of fact due to erroneous or fraudulent documentation. …”
Critics have described disenrollment not as a move to preserve Chukchansi ancestry, heritage or culture, but as a blow by the tribe against its own people, fueled by greed for casino gaming revenue. The fewer enrolled members there are, the bigger the slices of the financial pie grow for those who remain.
Hence, for a person facing suspension or disenrollment, the situation is often one in which nothing has changed about their ancestry or bloodline except for which tribal faction is interpreting the enrollment ordinance.
The membership roll for the Picayune Rancheria is confidential, and it’s unclear exactly how many official members there are who receive per-capita shares of casino revenue. One source within the tribe estimated the number at between 1,700 and 1,800 people.
One of the people speaking to The Bee anonymously for fear of suspension or disenrollment or possibly losing their job with the tribe say one of their biggest concerns is that “once they start disenrolling, someone’s going to start doing something stupid at the casino and get it shut down like happened in 2014.”
That’s when an armed clash between two tribal factions broke out in the casino offices and spilled out into the casino gaming floor and hotel, prompting a 14-month closure of the casino — the tribe’s primary source of revenue — by state and federal officials.
This story was originally published April 22, 2022 at 9:02 AM.
