Sandra Hale Schulman
Special to ICT
COACHELLA, California — From near-extinction and loss of their Native lands, the plucky Augustine Band of Cahuilla Indians has rebounded with several successful businesses and plans for more.
The tribe was about to be annexed in the early 1980s by another tribe that was going to take over their desert lands in the far eastern end of the Coachella Valley.
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“The tribe was largely non-existent, down to just a few members,” Jef Bauer, chief executive officer of Augustine Casino, told ICT. “They did not live on the reservation. Mary Ann Martin, who was the matriarch of the resurgence of the tribe, came back to the reservation in the latter part of the ‘80s after her grandmother died, who was the last remaining full-blooded member.”
“And at that time, the tribe didn’t have any assets,” Bauer said. “No capital at all.”
Today, with just seven adults among the 20 citizens, the tribe has a bustling casino, restaurant, and organic farm that serves tribal members, and dabbled in but then sold a gaming manufacturing company.
They were the first tribe in Southern California to develop a solar energy project in 2008 with 25,000 solar panels, which now powers their businesses and has enough left over to sell for a profit.
And they are now looking ahead to new housing and other business ventures.
Reclaiming their lands
The tribe numbered in the 1,000s in the mid-1800s, but by 1951 had declined to 11 members. By 1980, when the tribe had been further reduced because of disease and the remote location, there was only one full-blood member, Mary Ann Martin.
In 1980, Martin and her family petitioned the government and the Bureau of Indian Affairs for permission to return to the reservation and begin to rebuild the tribe. After years of delay, they got permission to return to the land in 1988 and she was named chairperson. They moved in and got to work on the 600-acre site.
“Mary Ann and her remaining family wanted to take the reservation and reclaim it, build their future on it,” Bauer said. “It had become basically a dumping ground for the area… It was piled with rubbish —old cars and refrigerators. Mary Ann and her family moved onto the reservation, basically in a mobile home, and cleaned it up, which was a lot of work.“
Martin lived in a trailer and worked as a waitress at one point, trying to determine how to build an economic future on the reservation. Not only was she raising her young children — Amanda, Ronnie and William — she was also learning about creating and running a tribal government following the deaths of her two brothers. She set up an economic-development plan and eventually negotiated a gaming compact with then-Gov. Gray Davis’ administration.
She was still coming to terms with her Native identity, as well, and had no one left with whom to share her culture. The Augustine tribe is of mixed Native and Black ancestry, and her daughter, Amanda Vance, has said she often was met with strange looks by non-Natives.
“We’re usually criticized for what we look like,” Vance told ICT. “We don’t look Native. We learned from elders [in other tribes] about our heritage. It wasn’t straight from our elders, because my grandmother had passed away, so we kind of used the different tribes around us to get that information, that history and that knowledge.”
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For professional advice, Martin enlisted the support of a consultant, Karen Kupcha, who has worked with many tribes in developing their economic and community plans over the years.
“Karen Kupcha has been working with, and on behalf of, the Augustine Band of Cahuilla Indians since the early ‘90s,” Bauer said. “She was the Augustine’s first — and, so far, only — tribal administrator.”
Kupcha became Martin’s confidant and close friend, and she recalls Martin’s fierce dedication to her family — and how receptive she was to mastering the intricacies of tribal politics and government.
“What an incredible woman,” Kupcha told ICT in a previous interview. “Here she is with three small children and she was open to learning. She was high energy and always on the go.”
By the early 2000s, the tribe was going strong, Bauer said.
“The tribe’s economic strategic plan was not finalized until the late ‘90s,” Bauer said. “They undertook an extensive market research study to determine the best way to support future tribal generations economically and, after much thought and discussion, decided that a casino made the most sense. The gaming industry and political climate was also changing in favor of the tribes in that time. “
The late 1990s and early 2000s saw a surge of political activity, as California tribes in the Mojave Desert — including the Agua Caliente, the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, and the Pechanga tribe near Temecula — negotiated compacts with the state to allow Las Vegas-style casino games.
“From there, the tribe put out an RFP [request for proposal] and had many interested potential partners,” Bauer said. “They chose Paragon Gaming and went to work immediately. Augustine Casino was up and running soon after the 1999 Cabazon ruling, having been bid, designed, constructed and opened in under three years—a remarkably fast time frame for any tribe but especially this small tribe with very limited means at the time.”
Bauer said that now, between casino, gaming commission and public safety — which all work to directly run/support casino operations) — the tribe employs about 250 people.
“The tribe was successful almost immediately with this facility,” Bauer said, “to the point where they shortened the contract by a couple years. They bought out Paragon and took it over themselves. And they’ve been running debt-free since, about 18 years. They had a five-year management agreement, and they bought out the last two years.”
Bauer said he does not think anyone predicted that this remote little place in this part of the Valley at the edge of the desert would be successful. It seemed unlikely to the government, the state of California, and even local businesses.
“Now people know it. I’ve been with the tribe 10 years, I came here from Harrah’s Casino in Reno, Nevada. Mary Ann hired me in 2013, she passed away in early 2017. Her daughter, Amanda Vance has been the chairperson, so I’ve been working with the younger part of the tribe now for the last six years.”
The casino caters to locals, it has slot machines, and a popular restaurant, Café 54, serving up fare that relies on produce from their organic Temalpakh Farm, another tribal success, down the road. Southwest specialties, pastas, and other hearty fare fuel the players and community. Some employees have been there for 20 years, since the very beginning.
“Mary Ann had the vision for the farm, and this tribe carried that vision out, and now it’s quite a unique and wonderful operation that the tribe has, with high potential to help the community and the tribe,” Bauer says, “But the tribe has other plans for developing out the reservation and some of those things are going be announced in the next year and will be very exciting, along with their own tribal living community, which they will be building in the next year.”
Bauer can’t reveal the plans just yet but says “they’ll all be living in a community together that they’ll have built, which is very exciting. I can’t say much more about that other than that’s coming.”
Beyond the casino
The tribe expanded into agriculture about 10 years after the casino opened with Temalpakh Farm in 2018, an organic and sustainable operation that provides produce for the tribe’s cafe, for tribal members, other local restaurants, and at weekend farmers markets.
The 50-acre farm is just down the road from the casino, and produces chard, kale, celery, butternut squash and four kinds of dates, which is a major crop for the region.
The farm draws its name from the Cahuilla word meaning “from the Earth.” All products are organic, local, sustainable and grown without the use of pesticides or chemicals.
“Mary Ann had the vision for the farm, and this tribe carried that vision out,” Bauer said. “And now it’s quite a unique and wonderful operation that the tribe has, with high potential to help the community and the tribe.”
They provide produce to the popular, stylish Ace Hotel in Palm Springs; to Café 54 at the Augustine Casino; and to a new restaurant called Spaghetti Western in Morongo Basin, an Italian themed eatery in a former saloon nightclub.
Locals can pick up a weekly farm box filled with the best of what is in season. The farm has a weekly stand at the Indio Certified Farmers Market in the nearby city of Indio.
The tribe also ventured into Synergy Blue, a Nevada gaming company, which produced arcade gaming machines, Tribal chairperson Amanda Vance took over as CEO in 2019 but realized their skill gaming and arcade machines were not catching on in popularity across the country. Slot machines are still the major money-maker in casinos.
The tribe sold Synergy Blue 19 months ago in 2021, as it also didn’t fit with future plans for community housing, and family-oriented theme parks the tribe is now considering.
Looking ahead
More plans are in the works, Bauer said, but they’re not yet willing to reveal those details.
“The tribe has other plans for developing out the reservation, and some of those things are going to be announced in the next year and will be very exciting, along with their own tribal living community, which they will be building in the next year,” Bauer said.
Bauer can’t spill the plans just yet, but said, “They’ll all be living in a community together that they’ll have built, which is very exciting. I can’t say much more about that other than that’s coming.”
Coachella Valley, meanwhile, is bustling, with the Coachella Music and Arts Festival; and Stagecoach, and a new heavy metal music festival, PowerTrip, added for the fall. And it’s becoming a hot market with people relocating to the area, he said.
“There’s enormous room for growth,” Bauer said. “I can tell you the future businesses that will be coming soon on the reservation will have an appeal valley-wide, whereas the Augustine Casino is truly a neighborhood casino. We don’t market outside of about a 10-mile range, but the rest of the businesses that come in will make it more of a destination point in the East Valley, and that’s very exciting for the tribe as well as the community in the east.”
While other bands of the Cahuilla tribes have been enormously successful with adult casinos, resorts, and entertainment venues, Bauer said the Augustine Band has taken a different path and will also focus on resources for young people.
“This tribe will be a bit more unique in its choices,” he said. “This valley’s starving for things to do for younger people. And so that’s very exciting for me … This tribe will be answering that need with its projects.”
The vision for the future for the Augustine reservation springs from ideas the tribe itself creates, Bauer said.
“It’s really things that they personally enjoy when they’ve been in other markets,” he said. “They came to me in 2019 and asked me to try to get this business on their reservation. So, it’s definitely a passion of theirs, and so we’re very excited. I can’t wait to talk about it.”
*Correction: Jef Bauer is chief executive officer of Augustine Casino. His title was incorrect in an earlier version of the story.
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