If you were to look at the tribe’s history as a time-lapse video, it would be mind-boggling, the changes that have happened in a relatively short time,” says Kari Smith, COO and general manager of Cache Creek Casino Resort, owned by the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation of California.

During the Gold Rush of the mid-1880s, the Yocha Dehe Wintun were forced off verdant ancestral lands onto a barren rancheria, where they struggled to survive. In the 1940s, they regained part of their land in the Capay Valley. In the 1980s, they opened a modest bingo hall.