A U.S. District Judge has ordered the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to reconsider the $700 million Indian casino in Vallejo, California proposed by the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote that the BIA “failed to grapple with the inescapable historical fact that Scotts Valley was a tribe that had its recognition and land stripped away by the federal government and its people scattered to the winds.”
The judge’s 61-page ruling referred extensively to the Bloody Island Massacre of 1850 when the U.S. Cavalry slaughtered about 400 men, women and children of the tribe, and confiscated their land, land where the current city of Vallejo sits.
The lawsuit centers on a survivor of the massacre, a chief named Augustine, whose descendants now make up the tribe.
The tribe’s history is chronicled in “An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe,” by Benjamin Madley.
The judge rejected the BIA’s 2019 ruling against a petition to set aside 128 acres near Vallejo and Interstate 80 for a casino project. She called the ruling “arbitrary and capricious.” She said the ruling should have given more weight to the evidence connecting the Pomos to the Vallejo location through Chief Augustine, whose Pomo name was Shuk. He lived as a leader of the Pomos until he died in 1903.
The evidence for the tribe’s historical connection to the area also comes from letters from the period referring to the tribe living near the current site of Vallejo. Today, the tribe has about 300 members, living in Lake and Mendocino counties.
That’s not good news for the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, which operates Cache Creek casino about 60 miles away. It opposes the Pomo tribe being permitted to build a casino in Vallejo.
