They are going from unskilled laborer to chief executive officer. The Indians of California, or those lucky enough to be members of federally recognized tribes, are about to undergo a transformation as profound as their clash centuries ago with settlers.Īlmost overnight, many Indian groups are moving from scraping together the cash for groceries to running multimillion-dollar operations.
But in the next month, the newest Indian casino in California will rise from the earth-prelude to the boom times to come for the state's once demoralized and impoverished Native Americans, who are fast becoming millionaires with political and economic clout. It does not look like a gold mine, just a sun-blasted slab of desert along the highway.
