Sonoma County Native

Casino Land in Rohnert Park

Opponents paint a pristine, pastoral picture of the land slated for construction of the casino/hotel/resort so I was curious to see for myself what the area had to offer. I decided to drive by the land proposed for Graton Rancheria's casino project located off of Wilfred Avenue in Rohnert Park.

The field itself is flat grassland and free of any structures or dense groves of trees. It is located directly behind a sprawling shopping center that includes Walmart, PepBoys, Linens 'n Things and Outback Stakehouse.

The roads are full of potholes and narrow, with ditches on each side - several feet deep in some spots. About 90% of the adjacent houses are in poor condition, some with backyard livestock including sheep and cows in fields with broken chairs, abandoned vehicles, mobile homes and out buildings.

A few homes were abandoned, tagged and burnt - evidence of being party hide-outs for teens or gangs. The area appears to have been forgotten for the last several decades...

Where are they now?

There is a lot of material on the history of California Indians at local libraries and the Internet. The conquer and destruction of Native Americans during the settlement of the United States is a dark blemish in the establishment of our country. The rationalization at the time was that Native Americans were to be converted and injected into mainstream society just like everyone else. What is their status now?

Here's one example - my grandmother is in her mid-80s and lives on an Indian Reservation in a very small, stripped down HUD-built cabin.

Visiting her is a challenge - my car scrapes through the potholes one at a time and zig-zags up a hill and through tight spaces in between trees. She can now only look back on a hard life of physical labor, surviving a year-long hospitalization with tuberculosis, struggling to raise four kids on her own while working menial jobs, domestic violence and poverty.

This tribe is not federally recognized - that is, the reservation is not owned by the federal government in trust for the tribal members. That also means they are not able to get special funding for housing, roads or community support services. The tribe is under constant pressure to find ways to keep their land by coming up with money every year to pay their property taxes on their 200 acre land base.