Qualla: United Auburn Indian Community

United Auburn Indian Community: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1967, the United States government declared that the Auburn Band of Indians no longer existed. The tribe's 20-acre rancheria near Auburn, California, had been sold off under the Rancheria Termination Act, leaving only 2.8 acres -- a park and a church -- as the last physical evidence of a reservation that had been formally established just fifty years earlier. The Miwok people who had called the Sierra Nevada foothills home for thousands of years were, in the eyes of federal law, simply gone. They were not, of course, gone at all. The United Auburn Indian Community would eventually restore its federal recognition, reclaim its sovereignty, and build one of the most successful tribal enterprises in California. But the path from termination to Thunder Valley Casino Resort required decades of legal battles and a refusal to accept a government's decision to erase a people's identity.

United Auburn Indian Community: Grizzlies, Acorns, and the Valley Floor

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Long before European contact, the ancestors of the United Auburn Indian Community lived in a territory that provided year-round sustenance. The Sierra Nevada foothills offered grasses, herbs, and rushes for food, clothing, and basket-making. Seeds were gathered with handheld beat...

United Auburn Indian Community: Twenty Acres and a Promise

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Bureau of Indian Affairs had documented the Auburn Indian Community since the early 1900s. In 1917, the federal government purchased 20 acres of land near Auburn and placed it in trust for the Auburn Band, formally creating the Auburn Rancheria. The reservation was modest but...

United Auburn Indian Community: Termination and Its Aftermath

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Congress passed the Rancheria Termination Act in 1953, part of a broader policy aimed at ending federal trust responsibilities to Native American tribes and assimilating indigenous people into mainstream American society. The Auburn Band was among the many California tribes affec...

United Auburn Indian Community: Restoration and Reinvention

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Federal recognition was eventually restored, and the United Auburn Indian Community emerged as a federally recognized tribe with approximately 170 members, 52 of whom reside on the Auburn Rancheria in western Placer County near the community of Sheridan. The tribe governs itself ...

United Auburn Indian Community: Giving Back to the Foothills

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Casino revenue transformed the tribe's capacity to invest in its community and its neighbors. In March 2004, UAIC established its Community Giving Program, which has provided over $4.6 million to nonprofit organizations supporting education, health, arts and humanities, environme...