They may not have a casino yet, but leaders of the Enterprise Rancheria certainly know a thing or two about political hardball.
In a maneuver that might make Gray Davis green with envy, five members of the Butte County tribe's council who beat back a recall effort in late September are proposing to throw every person who signed the recall petition out of the tribe.
If approved by three-fourths of the tribal voters who show up at a special hearing in Palermo this morning, 72 people -- or about 20 percent of the 345-member band -- would be "disenrolled."
That would mean no share of revenues, for them or their descendents, from a casino and hotel the tribe is trying to build in Yuba County, near the Sleep Train Ampitheatre and the site of a long-discussed-but-yet-to-be-built auto racetrack.
Before hanging up, a woman who answered the telephone at the tribe's office in Oroville on Tuesday said there would be no comment on the controversy. The tribe's attorney also declined to comment.
In a Sept. 9 letter to the suspended members, however, the tribal council acknowledged it began the disenrollment process in part because the dissidents tried "to divide and separate tribal members by signing and supporting the recall petition ... based on unsupported slanderous allegations."
A leader of the recall movement said the disenrollment effort was "nothing but a power-grab, pure and simple."
"It's an outrageous, deliberate effort to silence tribal members who have spoken out against the tribal council," said Robert Edwards, the tribe's vice chair and one of the 72 targeted to be dropped from tribal membership rolls.
It's also symptomatic of what some observers say is a growing issue. As tribes begin playing for the higher economic stakes fueled by casinos, feuds once confined to the reservation are catching the public eye.
"It is a real problem, particularly now when huge sums of money are at stake," said Joseph Wiseman, who teaches American Indian law at the Empire Law School in Sonoma.
State governments have no authority over Indian tribes' internal affairs, and the federal government has been leery of interfering with a tribe's right to determine its membership.
That reluctance was amplified in 1978, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal courts had no authority to determine what membership rules a tribe must follow, and that only Congress could intervene.
"Indian tribes are distinct, independent political communities," the court said, "retaining their original natural rights in matters of local self-government."
Because of the huge amounts of money involved, Wiseman said, enrollment decisions often appear to the outsider to be motivated by finances rather than politics.
"If tribes are throwing members out because of old grudges or other reasons, it still appears to the public that the motive is greed," Wiseman said. "The fewer members in a tribe, the bigger the (gambling revenues) share for the remaining members."
According to Edwards, whose great-grandmother was a founding member of the Enterprise Rancheria tribe of Estom Yumeka Maidu, the recall-disenrollment fight began in June.
That was when five members of the seven-member tribal council voted to remove a colleague from office because, according to a letter they sent to tribal members, he "consistently displayed uncontrollable behavior" toward them and "is continually unable to disagree without being disagreeable."
The ousted member, Rickie Wilson, says the real reason he was voted off the council was he consistently pointed out when the majority on the council ignored tribal laws.
"I'm the kind of person that if you don't do it by the book, I'm going to say something," Wilson said. "And I'm going to say it to everyone."
In one such instance, Wilson said, the council approved a change in the tribe's constitution that would limit voting members to those who were at least one-sixteenth Maidu by blood. Under the rule the tribe has had for the past 88 years, voting privileges were extended to all those who were direct descendants of "blood" members.
Edwards said the change would mean that his children's children would not be voting members of the tribe if his children married non-Maidu.
Angered by Wilson's dismissal and other actions by the council, some tribal members began a recall. The recall petition was declared valid on Sept. 6. Three days later, the 70 people who signed it were notified they faced disenrollment. Two more members who protested the council's action later were added to the list.
The recall itself failed last month, in part because the 72 people facing disenrollment were suspended from tribal activities and could not vote.
"The disenrollment was a ploy to stop us from voting," Edwards said, "and to intimidate other people."
Another area of contention between the tribe's factions is over whether it owns land in Butte County.
In attempting to build a casino at the Yuba County site, the tribe's leadership has argued that the 40 acres it was given near Oroville in 1915 when the tribe was formed by the federal government were sold off and flooded in the 1960s when the Oroville Dam was built.
That, they contend, entitles them to have 40 acres taken into trust elsewhere in their ancestral territory, which includes Yuba County.
But Edwards and Wilson say that the flooded land actually belonged to a splinter group in the tribe and that the tribe still owns 40 acres of hilly and largely undevelopable land in Butte County. The Edwards/Wilson version is disputed by the tribal council, which contends that it's really the hilly 40 acres that belonged to a splinter group and that the tract therefore is not true tribal land.
If the dissident version is true, that could make it difficult for the tribe to persuade federal officials to take land into trust in another county or to persuade the governor to agree to a casino compact.
"They don't want us talking about that, because it could interfere with the casino plans," said Wilson. "But you have to be honest and upfront about these things."
The tribe's efforts to land a casino, which are financially backed by a Chicago-based company that owns the proposed site, were dealt another blow Wednesday.
On a 3-2 vote, the Yuba County Board of Supervisors decided to determine through an advisory vote in November if county residents like the casino idea.
Last year, on a 3-2 vote, the board approved an agreement with the tribe that would pay the county $73 million over 16 years, in return for supporting the casino proposal.
The supervisor who provided the swing vote last year, however, was replaced in January with a supervisor who opposes the deal, and who provided the swing vote Wednesday.
"This is a huge issue for this little county," said the new supervisor, Dan Logue, "and the whole state. If this tribe is allowed to move from one county to another, the whole state is open game."
But Supervisor Mary Jane Griego, who helped write the deal with the tribe, said the referendum could subject the county to a breach-of-contract suit.
"It's also another case of a government engaging in bad-faith negotiations with Native Americans," she said, "and they have had a long history of that already."