A Life of Payouts, Not Handouts

Yet at 27, he has accumulated more wealth than many working Americans will see in a lifetime. Every month, Kahn receives a check for nearly $30,000 -- his share of profits from the Chumash Casino Resort.

Scattered in his yard on the reservation here are a silver Range Rover, two oversized pickup trucks, a high-powered speedboat and a pair of all-terrain vehicles. He owns a vacation home in Lake Tahoe and recently paid $1.6 million for a five-acre estate in Santa Ynez.

"People ask me if I think I deserve it," says Kahn, his shiny, dark hair neatly bundled in a ponytail.

"Not more than my ancestors," is his standard reply. "I don't care how many casinos we build," he says. "We could never overcome what was taken from our ancestors."

For much of the past two centuries, the Chumash of Santa Ynez lived in anonymity and abject poverty. As recently as the 1960s, reservation homes lacked running water, electricity and phone service. A decade ago, some Chumash still relied on welfare and donated clothing.

Then came the casino.

Since 2000, when California voters granted Native American tribes the exclusive right to offer Las Vegas-style gambling, each of the 153 members of the Santa Ynez band has received more than $1 million in casino income.

The torrent of money has caused a jarring transformation in the life of the Chumash. It has provided financial security and a bounty of material goods. It has enabled the Chumash to revive their language and instruct their children in the tribe's ancient traditions.

But the sudden riches also have sparked conflict and fevered spending. Some tribal leaders worry that the monthly casino check is simply a new form of dependency, as corrosive as the welfare payments of old.

In the decades before gambling, many Chumash Indians toiled as ranch hands, truckers, maids and farmworkers. Now, they hire day laborers to tend their own sprawling estates.

They play golf at country clubs and vacation in Paris, Madrid and Maui. So many tribal members own vacation property in the Sierra Nevada that they jokingly call the area "Chumash North."