October 27, 2025
The modern-day relationship between tribal nations and the federal government rests on trust, transparency and mutual respect. Hard fought by native people over the course of decades, these principles are rooted in the federal government’s respect and protection of tribal resources, ancestral homelands and, most importantly, sovereignty.
Yet the Biden administration’s Department of the Interior attempted to disrupt this trust through an 11th-hour political maneuver — opposed by leading California officials and tribes — that would hand over our tribe’s ancestral homelands to a tribe with no connections to the land, from over 100 miles away, and for a special-interest-funded, $700 million mega casino.
This decision was enormously problematic our people and for the many tribal nations across America who watched with alarm as it further disconnected federal decision making from the everyday voices and needs of Indian Country.
In fact, many tribes expressed concern that this decision process set dangerous cultural, environmental and legal precedents as Biden’s political appointees walked out the door. California tribes are urging the rejection of this casino project proposal. Here’s why.
Yet, today, The Trump administration’s Department of the Interior has an opportunity to put this decision right by overturning the Biden Administration’s misguided casino approval.
In this, they are supported by a broad coalition of bipartisan stakeholders, including other tribes, members of Congress, such as Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., the State of California, local governments, and concerned citizen groups and residents, whose voices have all been ignored.
At the heart of the issue are competing claims of a “significant ancestral connection” to lands in Vallejo, California, which, under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, could be allocated to a “landless” tribe under the “Restored Lands Exception” to the law for gaming. But this case is undermined by two critical facts: Scotts Valley is neither landless nor has an ancestral connection to the land.
Today, Scotts Valley operates an energy company in its Clear Lake homelands, where the tribe owns properties, runs a government headquarters and hosts its tribal citizens. At the same time, Scotts Valley failed in 2012, 2017 and 2019 to receive a “restored lands” determination — with the latter two being for Vallejo, and both decisions denied by the Trump administration.
On the contrary, Yocha Dehe’s connections to the land are indisputable. Over decades, historians, ethnographers and public agencies — including Solano County, named for a Patwin leader, and California’s Native American Heritage Commission — have recognized Yocha Dehe as Patwin ancestral territory. Yet Scotts Valley’s proposal attempts to bulldoze a legitimate Patwin cultural site and destroy environmental habitats that our tribal citizens maintain. All for a mega casino that would proliferate gaming, increase traffic, use up city resources, and create a construction zone for years, disrupting already-existing residential communities in Vallejo.
Recent developments offer hope, but it is critical that Interior Department Secretary Doug Burgum and leaders of the Trump administration act decisively to finalize this decision once and for all.
It’s an opportunity to reaffirm previous decisions of the first Trump administration in 2017 and 2019, and to recommit to the core principles that must guide federal-tribal relations: meaningful government-to-government consultation from the earliest stages of decision-making, evidence-based decisions grounded in historical, archaeological and cultural documentation, and respect for established legal precedent.
Anthony Roberts, chairman of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation. Elected chairman in January 2018, he has served on the Tribal Council since 2000 and as treasurer since 2006. He can be found here.