Website: https://www.yochadehe.org/
Source: https://nativeamerica.travel/listings/yocha-dehe-wintun-nation
The story of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation is one of its journeying back to its land. Located in the rolling hills of California’s Capay Valley, the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation was almost extinguished through colonization and forced removal. But the Tribe’s strength and tenacity not only regained its land, heritage and name, but has placed the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation in firm control of its future. Gaming has made the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation wealthy, but agriculture has made it rich.
Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation
Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation is in northern California’s Yolo County, which borders Sacramento to the east. Yolo comes from the Patwin word Yo-loy, “Place abounding in rushes,” a reminder of the wetlands that used to dot this area. Reeds were woven into baskets to gather the abundant fruit, vegetables and nuts that grew naturally throughout the Capay Valley. Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation are part of the larger Wintun People that includes six other federally recognized tribes in northern California. The Patwin are the southern band of Wintun, and Patwin is also the traditional language of Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation. Wintun have lived in the fertile, rolling hills of the Capay Valley since 500 A.D. In addition to foraging and hunting, fishing for king salmon completed their traditional diet.
A Painful Past
The Native People of northern California suffered greatly as Spain, Mexico and later the United States expanded into California with colonization, trapping, ranching and gold mining. New diseases afflicted many of California’s Native American population, including the Wintun.
In 1907 ancestors of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation were forcibly moved from their village to a reservation in Rumsey, California. Named the Rumsey Indian Rancheria of Wintun Indians of California by the government, this new land was not suited for foraging, agriculture or hunting. The Wintun people faced malnutrition and were solely dependent upon federal government supplies that were much different from their traditional diet.
A Smart Gamble
In 1940, just 33 years after they had been forced from their traditional land, Tribal leadership successfully petitioned the federal government to relocate to a small piece of land within the Tribe’s traditional territory. This 185 acres near Brooks in the Capay Valley enjoyed a Mediterranean-like climate, with summer temperatures rarely breaking into the 90s with cool nights. Cache Creek flows 87-miles from Clear Lake to the west through Yolo County before entering the Sacramento River, providing good irrigation despite having been contaminated by mining in the past. With this fertile land and water source, the Tribe was finally able to grow crops and feed itself. It was still dependent upon the federal government for additional food and services, a vast difference from the self-sufficiency Elders of the Tribe could remember.
But this dependency began to change on July 25, 1985, only 45 years after their move to their new land, when the doors to Cache Creek Indian Bingo & Casino opened. The passing that year of the California Lottery and the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act allowed Tribal Nations to enter into gaming operations, and Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation took full advantage. Located on the Tribe’s land in Brooks about an hour’s drive west of Sacramento, the bingo hall almost immediately began to bring in revenue at levels the Tribe had never dreamed of. Cache Creek became the largest and most successful casino in northern California.
Thanks to this revenue, in 2004 the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation added a $200 million resort and renamed the complex the Cache Creek Casino Resort. This new resort included 200 guest rooms, 10 restaurants, the 700-seat Club 88, a 20,000-square-foot event center, a spa, an outdoor pool, an 18-hole championship golf course and a convenience store. Ongoing as of 2020, 459 additional guest rooms are being added as is an event center, a new restaurant, meeting spaces and a second resort-style pool.
Back to the Land
So why would a wealthy Tribe of fewer than 100 members want to venture into farming, a notoriously capricious industry?
“For centuries this land has sustained and supported the forebearers of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation,” says Ben Deci, the public information officer for the Tribe. “One of the Tribe’s concerns all along has been to continue a connection to this land and protect this land, and one of the best ways to do that in practice is through agriculture. The Tribe has taken care of the land, and the land is taking care of the Tribe.”
Thanks to gaming revenue, the Tribe has been able to purchase thousands of acres of its traditional range. More than 22,000 acres of its Capay Valley land has been devoted to agriculture and conservation. Of that, 3,000 acres are being farmed, and more than 1,200 acres are in permanent conservation easements. Crops being grown, harvested and sold by the Tribe include alfalfa, almonds, oat hay, ryegrass, safflower, garbanzo beans, sunflowers, sorghum, walnuts and wheat. Asparagus, tomatoes and squash are planted on 250 acres dedicated to organic growing, and 800 head of cattle are raised on 10,000 acres of rangeland. Wine vineyards originally placed around the golf course for aesthetics are producing several varietals of wine. But it’s olives that drive Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation’s agritourism. More than 3,000 olive trees are planted on 550 acres, and the Tribe takes great pride in making some the finest extra virgin olive oil in the world.
On to Olives
The Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation is at the same latitude as southern Italy and Greece, and shares a similar climate. This makes the Capay Valley perfect for growing a variety of crops, but the Tribe had 82 acres that were classified as Class 3, “Severe limitations that reduce the choice of plants or require special conservation practices, or both,” by the USDA. However, after working with an agricultural team from the University of California, it was determined that this dry acreage would be perfect for olive trees. In 2008, Arbequina olive trees were planted on this initial 82 acres, and the Tribe harvested its first crop in 2011.
Tribal Chairman Marshall McKay at the time cited recent reports about the poor quality of olive oil–if it was even olive oil–being sold in the U.S. and saw a market for a product for which the Tribe was ideally suited to grow. The olive oil made from that first 2011 crop sold out. Wanting to completely control the quality of their in-demand olive oil, the Tribe invested in a state-of-the-art olive mill that was imported from Italy and operational for the 2012 season.
The Tribe could now produce extra virgin olive oil within hours of picking the olives, producing some of the nation’s freshest, awarding-winning estate olive oil that earned gold medals at the 2020 Good Food Foundation Awards competition for its Picual Extra Virgin Olive Oil and 2020 California Olive Oil Council Extra Virgin Olive Oil Competition for its Estate Grown Taggiasca, among other honors. Picual, Frantoio, Taggiasca and Coratina olive trees produce a variety of flavor profiles for which the Tribe is known. The Tribe strives for an overall zero-waste stream, and wastewater is used for irrigation and olive pulp helps feed the Tribes cattle herd.
This success and return to the land inspired the Tribe to do something else …
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Civil Eats TV: Liquid Gold on Tribal Land
With its Séka Hills olive oil, the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation is reclaiming its ancestral land with a crop for the future.
Source: Civil Eats – https://civileats.com/2020/11/24/civil-eats-tv-liquid-gold-on-tribal-land/
“We were always told if you take care of the land, the land will take care of you,” says James Kinter, tribal secretary of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, whose ancestral homeland is located in Northern California’s Capay Valley. “This is something that we fought blood, sweat, and tears for. Because we had to buy back land that was stolen from us.”
Kinter is standing in an olive orchard on a blustery November morning, in the shadow of the tribe’s Cache Creek Casino and Resort and nearby golf club. “Before the gaming era of our tribe, we were very much in poverty,” he said, describing the tribe’s long journey from decimation to reclamation over more than 100 years. “Transforming this land really helped our tribe; we never forget where we came from.”
More than 4,000 years ago, the Yocha Dehe thrived as farmers and hunters in this region. By the mid-18th century, they were forced off their land by Spanish colonizers, enslaved by missionaries, and rendered nearly extinct. In the 1900s, the tribe was forcibly relocated by the U.S. government to a barren and non-irrigatable reservation; by then, the tribe’s population had dramatically declined from 20,000 to just a few hundred members.
For decades, the tribe, once resilient and self-sufficient, eked out a subsistence living, reliant on the government for survival. It wasn’t until the 1980s, when portions of the Yocha Dehe ancestral land were returned, that a period of stability began, including the development of a bingo hall (later to become the casino), which helped reverse—and return—the tribe’s fortunes.
A Return to Farming
With the money from their successful enterprises, the tribe began farming again in 2003, first planting wheat and sunflowers, and later, alfalfa, safflower, garbanzo beans, sunflower, sorghum, walnuts, almonds, and seven varietals of wine grapes, with the support of the research and development team at U.C. Davis and Jim Etters, the tribe’s director of land management.
Today, with more than 22,000 total acres in production, the Yocha Dehe own one of the most diverse farming operations in Yolo County, and it is one of just a few tribes that are expanding their agricultural footprint in California. Of the 3,000 acres the tribe is currently farming, 250 acres are certified organic (they grow organic wheat, asparagus, tomatoes, and squash), and more than 1,200 acres are in permanent conservation easements. In addition to the farming operation, the Yocha Dehe run a herd of 700 cattle, following a sustainable grazing program on the tribe’s more than 10,000 acres of rangeland.
Wherever possible, the tribe uses sustainable farming practices, and has received several grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource Conservation Service for water and rangeland conservation, and for ongoing work on sustainable grazing practices, erosion control, and invasive weed control.
“Growing up, we weren’t into farming in the way we are now,” says Kinter. “We were more the people working on the farms. And now we’re the owner[s].”
Reclaiming their land has also led to tribal gold: the Yocha Dehe produce award-winning extra virgin olive oil, grown, harvested, and produced under the Séka Hills label, named for the blue hills that overlook the valley. And while olives and olive oil are not a traditional Native crop, it seems fitting that the tribe has taken a practice brought by Spanish colonizers and made it their own.
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A Tribal Olive Oil Blend From Northern California
Aug. 10, 2020 The Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation has just released a new offering under its Séka Hills label.
Back in 2011, the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation in Northern California began bottling oil from arbequina olives its members were cultivating on their land. Now they have built a mill, opened two tasting rooms and expanded the acreage of olive trees from 82 to more than 500. They’ve added more single varietal bottlings of frantoio, picual and taggiasca, and earned extra-virgin status for their oils, which are used by a number of restaurants, mostly in California. Their new Tribal Blend is made from a selection of oils, from five estates in the Capay Valley, chosen by tribal citizens and the Séka Hills team. The blend is a bright chartreuse, mellow and rich with a piquant finish.
