The Cupeno's Trail of Tears; A horrible beginning and now Robert Smith wreaks more sorrow on Pala

Tony Perry of the LA Times has a story of the beginnings of the Pala Tribe, which their Chairman Robert Smith is shredding via disenrollment....

The history of the Pala Band of Mission Indians begins with an event so traumatic that it is known as the Cupeño Trail of Tears. It remains so central to tribal members, they memorialize it in the entryway of the building that has come to symbolize the tribe's modern prosperity: a casino off Interstate 15 in northern San Diego County.

In 1903, U.S. officials forced hundreds of Cupeño Indians, at gunpoint, to move their household possessions, wagons and livestock from their longtime home in what was then called San Jose del Valle, now Warner Springs. A court had ruled that the tribe did not own the land that it had occupied for generations; the new owner had dreams of a resort.

The tribe was herded around Mt. Palomar to a spot beside a Catholic mission in the San Luis Rey River Valley. During the 40-mile forced march, women and children were terrified.

When tribe members arrived at their new home, they found "nothing but tents and the rundown mission," according to the casino display. At the insistence of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Cupeño tribe melded with the Luiseño tribe that lived nearby — creating the modern Pala Band of Mission Indians.

Under the hand of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the two groups existed side by side despite occasional rivalries. To this day, descendants of the Luiseño pioneers prefer one cemetery, descendants of the early Cupeño largely prefer another.

One of the survivors of the forced march was Margarita Britten. She was an expert in basket weaving; she and her husband had seven children. At Pala, she became a tribal elder.

The disenrollment controversy involves a decision by the Pala governing board that Britten's father was not an Indian and thus she was not a full-blooded Cupeño. In all, 162 of her descendants have been cut off from sharing in the tribe's profits from its casino, hotel and other business ventures.

Britten's relatives note that the Bureau of Indian Affairs has repeatedly ruled that Britten was a full-blooded Cupeño. And they say it is unfair to expect her descendants to have documents such as birth certificates or marriage licenses that predate the relocation.

Tribal members who have been disenrolled have made plaintive appeals to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, although the agency does not have the authority to overrule the Pala board. Says one appeal:

"Indian ancestry is a priceless personal truth, central to identity, culture and community. It is rooted in individual biology and being, inalterable by the whims of others. Ancestry is not a political status to be erased with the stroke of a pen."

This Week in March 2006, Paulina Hunter Descendent Were Notified of Disenrollment By Corrupt Pechanga Tribal Council Led By Mark Macarro

That's six years that Hunter descendents have been stripped of their tribal citizenship, due to unconstitutional actions by the corrupt Pechanga Tribal Council and by collusion with enrollment committee members, including Bobbi LeMere (who, in a quid pro quo, got her sisters enrolled in the tribe, even though scores of others were in the moratorium  READ Corruption Exposed… )  Ruth Masiel, matriarch of the crime family and mother of councilmember Andrew Masiel Sr. and Frances Miranda, who two years before, had seen to it that her OWN FAMILY members, the descendent of Manuela Miranda were also stripped of their citizenship.


Concerning Disgraceful Actions by the Pechanga Tribal Council

In a notice dated August 7, 2006, the descendants of Paulina Hunter, an original allottee of the Pechanga Indian Reservation, were informed that the Pechanga Tribal Council and the Pechanga Enrollment Committee had denied their appeal to over-turn the Enrollment Committee’s earlier decision to disenroll the family.

The Hunter Family members were disenrolled in March of this year when the Enrollment Committee concluded that their ancestor, Paulina Hunter, was not a Temecula Indian.
Along with disenrollment notices from the Enrollment Committee, a memo from the Tribal Council explained that it had decided that a law passed by the Tribe’s governing body in July 2005 to bar future disenrollments applied to all tribal members except the Hunter Family.

The disenrollment of the Hunter family was initiated when several statements were presented to the Enrollment Committee claiming Paulina Hunter was non-Indian or not a member. One such letter came from a convicted felon serving time in the California State Prison system for child molestation.

In response to the allegations, the descendants of Paulina Hunter provided numerous documents as proof that Paulina Hunter was indeed of Indian ancestry and was an original Pechanga/Temecula Indian. These documents were required to be certified, while the "so-called evidence" against the family was neither sworn, nor certified. They disregarded evidence, while accepting hearsay.

In fact, a report prepared by Dr. John Johnson, the curator of anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, at the request of the Enrollment Committee concluded that a "preponderance of the evidence" from surviving historical records and census documents shows that Paulina Hunter was a Pechanga member who lived in Temecula and was allotted reservation land. There is no greater authority on this issue than Dr. Johnson. The research was almost two thousand dollars, but the tribe was not charged for all the preparatory work that Dr. Johnson had done throughout his career, surely saving the tribe more than $10,000

"My feeling is it's a faulty interpretation of the record to reject this family. Paulina Hunter was definitely a core member of the Temecula Band of Luiseño Indians," Dr. Johnson said. "I don't understand the decision other than it is not based on fact. It is based on conjecture and politics."

The disenrollment of the Hunter family is the second such disenrollment of a large family from the Pechanga Band. Each has occurred just months before scheduled tribal elections for Chairman and Tribal Council.
The expulsions of the 2 families removed significant opposition to the current administration and others running for tribal office.

Each “disenrollment” was done in violation of both tribal and federal laws which are intended to protect the rights and privileges of tribal members.

Specifically, the members were denied the due process and equal rights protections provided in the Indian Civil Rights Act, as well as language in the Band’s Constitution and Bylaws which mandates that tribal officials uphold the individual rights of each member without malice or prejudice. The disenrollments reduced the Pechanga Band's enrollment by nearly 30%, and each enrolled member, including those responsible for the violations of human and civil rights, could reap additional profits in the tens of millions of dollars.

Here are some of the infractions the Bobbi LeMere led committee committed:

The Appeal Procedures state that the purpose of the appeal is in identifying any infraction to the disenrollment procedure or any unfair and/or partial handling of a disenrollment case pursuant to Procedures § 9, page 4. The Enrollment Committee committed numerous errors or infractions of fundamental Pechanga law and procedural Pechanga law as follows:

1. Knowingly violated the will and intent of the General Council by continuing disenrollment proceedings after General Council’s vote to suspend all disenrollment;
2. Erroneously made determinations in contradiction of Dr. John Johnson’s anthropological report prepared on behalf of the Enrollment Committee;
3. Erroneously based disenrollment on an issue allegedly found in the enrollment application which applies to persons applying for membership after 1996;
4. Erroneously relied on a personal statement of recognition from the Dept. of Interior 1928 application over numerous other more credible sources;
5. Erroneously relied on a personal statement from the Dept. of Interior 1928 application of a person who is not a direct ancestor of Appellants;
6. Erroneously interpreted the personal statement in the Dept. of Interior 1928 application that San Luis Rey Mission Indian is not synonymous with Pechanga or Temecula Indian;
7. Erroneously made a finding that the Pechanga Reservation contained distinct Tribes—Temecula and San Luis Rey;
8. Violated the Pechanga Band Constitution by imposing a more restrictive membership standard than contained in Article II: Membership;
9. Ignored the Official Enrollment Book of 1979 as the original source document for determining Membership as stated in the Constitution;
10. Violated the Pechanga Band Enrollment Committee Guidelines by conducting disenrollment procedures without a lawful quorum and by reviewing disenrollment cases out of order for the purpose of stacking the Committee;
11. Contradicted previous actions and decisions of the Enrollment Committee;
12. Failed to indicate any mistakes or irregularities in the Appellants enrollment and failed to conduct the review of the Appellants’ case in a fair and/or impartial manner;
13. Violated the Indian Civil Rights Act by retro-actively applying 1996 Enrollment Application to Appellants;
14. Violated Constitution and Disenrollment Procedures through application of more restrictive standards;
15. Acted negligently in the review of the Appellants case.

Council member Andrew Masiel should have recused himself, as he was judging an appeal on an issue in which he had guided his MOTHER and his aunt, Ihrene Scearce.

Corruption, Greed, Denial of Civil Rights, Theft, Dishonor, all in the month of March....

Terminated Pala Members Sue Federal Government. Pala Acted OUTSIDE their Constitution. BIA Wrong to Accept New Constitution without Election

Edward Sifuentes from the North County Times has the details of what happens when a tribe strips the citizenship from their people


A woman with a blood disease lost her health insurance, a young woman starting college could lose her scholarship, a man could lose his job and a woman with a newborn baby could lose her home.

All these and many other hardships were the results of the Pala Band of Mission Indians' decision to remove more than 160 people from its tribe, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court earlier this month.

The lawsuit is asking the Bureau of Indian Affairs to step in and restore the former Pala members' benefits, including the estimated $150,000 a year in casino revenues that go to each member; health insurance coverage; and their ability to participate in tribal government.

Escondido attorneys Thor Emblem and Tracy Emblem filed the lawsuit March 5 on behalf of about 60 former members of the Pala tribe.

The attorneys declined to comment on the case.

The families "will suffer immediate and irreparable harm and request immediate action to restore their ... tribal benefits while their appeal of the (tribe's) actions are pending review by the Bureau of Indian Affairs," the lawsuit states.

Last year, the Pala tribe, which owns a large casino and resort near Fallbrook, removed from its membership rolls eight people who were descendants of a woman named Margarita Brittain, saying they did not have sufficient Pala heritage to belong in the tribe.

Earlier this year, the tribe expelled an additional 154 people who were also Brittain descendants.

After an appeal, the Bureau of Indian Affairs recommended that the first eight people be allowed back into the tribe. Pala has not said whether it plans to honor the BIA's recommendation.

In court documents, the 60 people say they were illegally kicked out. They argue that the tribe illegally changed its constitution in 1997 without holding an election allowing all tribal members an opportunity to vote on the new constitution.

One of the changes in the constitution was that the tribe's executive council, a five-member panel, could remove individuals from the tribe. People expelled from the tribe can appeal to the BIA, but the federal agency can only recommend whether to allow people back in.

Under the previous rules, the BIA was the final arbiter on membership disputes, according to court documents.

The attorneys argue in their lawsuit that the BIA was wrong to accept the new constitution without an election.

BIA officials could not be reached for comment. OP: Does BIA want fewer Indians?

This Week in March 2004, The Corrupt Pechanga Tribal Council Led By Mark Macarro Allowed the Disenrollment of The Manuel Miranda Descendents.

This week in 2004, Mark "No business of the White Man" Macarro, head of the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians, allowed the enrollment committee to disenroll the descendents of Manuela Miranda.  These descendents were family to committee member, Frances Miranda, a hateful person.   Here's one story of that family. 

An article from Vince Beiser from 2006 is still worth the read for those who don't know what gaming has done. We will be bringing back older articles to help those new readers find out what is happening in Indian Country while Congress turns a blind eye.

For many Native American tribes, the success of their gambling operations ends a run of misfortune and dispossession that dates back to when white men first dubbed them Indians.

Since full-scale reservation gambling was sanctioned by Congress in 1988, its annual take has grown to some $20 billion, with more than one hundred tribes doling out profits directly to their members.

The Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians whose reservation is a patch of largely useless scrub-and-rock desert southeast of Los Angeles, rake in well over $200 million a year from a 522-room casino/resort with eight restaurants and 2,000 slot and video-poker machines. The cut for each Pechanga adult: $270,000. But if being an Indian has taken on the imprimatur of wealth, high stakes have also led tribes to deal some of their people out.

Bands from California to Connecticut have expelled thousands of long-standing members, often on flimsy grounds of inadequate Indian ancestry. By thinning their numbers, casino-operating tribes have figured out how to split the pot fewer ways.

This decision concerns the disenrollment of John Gomez Jr., whose entire extended family, consisting of 135 adults and all of their offspring, was declared in 2004 no longer to be Pechanga. Gomez and his relatives are descended from Manuela Miranda, who all sides agree was part of the Temecula tribe from which the Pechanga originate.

Decades after the federal government established the Pechanga reservation in 1882, Miranda's granddaughter - Gomez's grandmother - left the impoverished area. But Gomez's people never stopped identifying themselves as Pechanga. Gomez's father returned to the reservation every summer when he was a boy, and later he took his children there for family occasions.

In 1998, Gomez settled his own family a few miles from the reservation, in the town of Temecula, and he soon went to work for the tribe as its legal analyst. His brother has served as the executive chef of the casino's restaurant, his cousin was the casino's head of human resources, and other relatives helped draft the tribe's constitution. In 2002, Gomez and a cousin were elected to the Pechanga enrollment committee. Deluged with applications after the opening of its first gambling hall in 1995, the tribe imposed a moratorium the following year on accepting new adult members, although children of existing members were still permitted to apply. OP: The moratorium was pushed by the splinter group under the guise of allowing the enrollment committee to "catch up" on applications. It was really put there to keep rightful people from their "share" of per capita

Some of the new applicants were undoubtably opportunistic pretenders, but others had lived their entire family lives as unquestioned tribal members and simply never had reason to formally enroll. According to Gomez, he and his cousin found that the committee was not processing applications filed before the moratorium and was failing to enroll some members' children. Only after he called for an investigation, says Gomez, did questions about his own ancestry arise.

The Pechanga authorities (Tribal Chairman Mark Macarro) say they are just belatedly enforcing long-standing rules regarding descent and historical residence, the specifics of which are outlined here. Most tribes require that members show proof of a blood quantum: a minimum of one full-blooded grandparent or great-grandparent. But with so much at stake, how that Indian status is proven has become a matter of intense dispute. Macarro's ancestor called a subsequently disenrolled Indian, Paulina Hunter, aunt. Lineal descent allows Macarro to say, my "great-great grandmother was an Indian. Macarro grew up in Colton, not on the reservation.

When a former chairman of California's Redding Rancheria tribe and seventy-five members of his extended family were disenrolled in 2004, they dug up the remains of two ancestors for DNA testing. Three experts agreed that the genetic evidence confirmed that they were bona fide Redding Rancherias. Yet the tribal council stuck to its decision - meaning that the roughly $3 million in casino payouts that had been going to the ousted clan now gets divided up among the tribe's remaining 230 members.

This memo, from a group that calls itself the Concerned Pechanga People, contained the first claims that Gomez's family did not meet the criteria for membership. (Several of these "concerned" Pechanga just happened to be related to the enrollment committee members Gomez had accused of stonewalling applications.) When it was presented to the full committee in December 2002, the memo set off a series of accusations and counter-accusations about the illegitimacy of other members' Pechanga roots. At one point seven of ten members on the enrollment committee were forced to step down pending reviews of their own status.

In other tribes, too, disenrollment has been used as a club to settle scores and to protect political power. An entire family was expelled from one California band after its members pushed for a recall election of the tribal council. Part of the impetus for the Redding Rancheria disenrollments, according to the tribe's own lawyer, was "all kinds of interpersonal things. There were a lot of things family members did to others that were resented."

Forced to prove their Pechanga lineage, Gomez and his family searched through government archives and boxes tucked away in homes, eventually amassing hundreds of historical documents, many as old as the baptismal record from 1864 catalogued here. But using such documentation to "authenticate" Indian ancestry is dubious at best. I

n the late nineteenth century, census takers simply eyeballed those living on reservations to determine whether they were one-quarter, half, or full-blooded Indian. Indians themselves, fearing their land would otherwise be confiscated, often felt compelled to say they were white or Mexican. Indeed, California municipalities offered bounties on Indian scalps until the late nineteenth century, giving their owners an obvious incentive to hide their true identity.

John Gomez's case hinges not on his ancestor's blood, but as the ruling examines here, on where precisely Manuela Miranda lived at a specific time. In 1875, the Temecula were forced off their land by neighboring ranchers backed by San Diego County sheriffs. Many of them drifted away to towns; others resettled in the nearby Pechanga valley, which the government eventually designated as the Pechanga reservation.

Over the years most residents abandoned this inhospitable land, and the reservation began to be repopulated only after the community finally got electricity in 1970. The tribe's constitution, passed in 1978, says that members must prove "descent from original Pechanga Temecula people."
But in 1996 the tribal council tightened the rules, declaring for the first time that members had to have an ancestor from the subset of Temeculas who relocated to the Pechanga valley.

Gomez and his family point to minutes from the 1996 meeting indicating that the more stringent qualifications were not meant to be applied retroactively to established members such as themselves. Manuela Miranda was born in 1864 in the Temecula village. She never knew her father, and her mother died when she was five, at which point she went to live with an older half-sister. After the ranchers pushed them out of the village, the half-sister moved to the Pechanga valley and a teenage Miranda was soon married off to a non-Indian, with whom she settled and eventually had tn children in nearby San Jacinto.

As is indicated here, the enrollment committee acknowledges that Miranda identified herself as an "Indian of the Pechanga Reservation" in a 1916 probate record. But at the age of sixty-four, when applying to have her name added to a new federal listing of California Indians, she said otherwise. Miranda's complicated relationship to her tribe is far from exceptional. Large numbers of Indians have moved off their reservations, often with the encouragement of government programs. And marriage outside the tribe and race has been commonplace since the late nineteenth century.

In fact, today fewer than half of all Indians even claim full-blood status. Unfortunately for Gomez, the enrollment-committee members with ties to the Concerned Pechanga People were reinstated before his case was considered: in resuming their positions, they were able to rule against him. The committee states here that Miranda never relocated to the Pechanga valley, and therefore her progeny are not Pechangas. Yet Gomez's family insists that Miranda kept in close contact with her relatives on the reservation, and in affidavits elderly tribal members have sworn that they always viewed her as one of their own.

Even though Miranda's half-sister also lived off the reservation for many years, the committee decided that her living descendants are members in good standing. (One of these descendants, Frances Miranda, is among the enrollment-committee members who voted to remove Gomez.) For her people and for each of the remaining 850 adults in the tribe, the ouster of Gomez's clan raised their individual share of casino money by some 15 percent.

Gomez's disenrollment does not mean that he is not an Indian (as is made clear here) but it does put him outside the Pechanga tribe, costing him more than his monthly casino check, his job, and the health and life insurance that came with it. He is now barred from visiting ancestor's grave sites. His grandmother is no longer allowed to attend classes at the reservation's senior-citizen center. And his cousins' children have been expelled from the Pechanga elementary school, where they were learning the tribe's language. (Members of Gomez's family also made up the core of the tribe's softball team, and their expulsion forced the Pechanga to withdraw from intertribal play.) For others, disenrollment does mean that they are declared no longer to be Indians of any sort. Thus they lose government scholarships, job training, and other benefits reserved for Native Americans.

Most federal programs require that recipients be at least one-quarter Indian, but a tribe's judgment is frequently the only proof of that blood quantum. Members of Gomez's family can attest to this dilemma: since being disenrolled many of them have lost their federally funded Indian health care. There are now more than one thousand people fighting ejections from California tribes alone, and far more are embroiled in similar disputes nationwide. Yet for the disenrolled there is little recourse.

Gomez followed the protocol specified here and appealed this decision to the tribal council, which, predictably, also ruled against him. Next he turned to state and federal courts, hoping they would be able to settle conflicting interpretations of tribal law and historical record. But the same sovereignty that allows Indian tribes to run casinos and sell fireworks on their lanes also puts them largely outside the jurisdiction of the courts. A federal judge, ruling last September on another California case, wrote, "These doctrines of tribal sovereign immunity were developed decades ago, before the gaming boom created a new and economically valuable premium on tribal membership." Although the judge was unwilling to challenge the 1978 Supreme Court decision that made membership an internal tribal matter, she nevertheless found the case "deeply troubling on the level of fundamental substantive justice."

Gomez recently helped form the American Indian Rights and Resource Organization, which is calling on Congress to address the current spate of disenrollment abuse. The group has staged a series of protests, including one in January at the annual Western Indian Gaming Conference in Palm Springs. As Gomez and a few dozen others picketed outside, their former tribal compatriots were inside the city's capacious exhibition hall, cutting deals from prospective caterers. more protestors may join Gomez's side: in March the Pechanga started disenrollment proceedings against another ninety of its adult members. American Indians, it appears, are still being driven from their lands, their heritage stolen from them.

But today the ranchers are other Indians, and bounties can exceed $290,000 a head.

Pala Disenrollments Discovered by LA TIMES; Is Robert Smith, Chairman of Pala Lying?

The Los Angeles Times has finally caught wind of what is happening in California's Indian Gaming Country. THe link to the full story is at the end of this excerpt, we recommend that you SHARE the story on Facebook and join the comments.

The shameful disenrollments at Pala are in the news.


But now, renewed doubts about Britten's lineage are at the root of a divisive "blood quantum" dispute roiling the 1,000-member Pala Band of Mission Indians, formed by the fusion of the Cupeño and Luiseño bands.

At issue is whether Britten was a full-blooded Indian. OP: That issue was settled by the BIA decades ago.

The governing board of the Pala Band in the last year has "disenrolled" some 162 descendants of Britten, cutting them off from their monthly share of the tribe's profit from casino, hotel and other business ventures, about $7,500 a month, in addition to health insurance and other benefits.

The Pala dispute echoes those at other Indian tribes in California and elsewhere, where money has complicated disputes over identity, nationhood and personality conflicts, according to David Wilkins, professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota and a member of the Lumbee tribe in North Carolina.

"Somewhere, as tribes have tried to reconstruct their sense of nationhood, particularly in tribes with casino money, they hit upon disenrollment as a way to settle disputes over personality issues and money," Wilkins said.

The American Indian Movement estimates that upward of 3,000 tribal members from two dozen tribes in California and other states have been "disenrolled" in the last 15 years. "Tribes are being destroyed by it," Wilkins said.

Firms now offer DNA testing to prove Indian ancestry, while "disenrollment clubs" offer succor to those no longer welcome in their tribes. Angry websites collect accusations of betrayal.

Robert Smith, Pala's strong-willed chairman, is not moved by the appeals of those who have been disenrolled, nor by the dire assertions of Wilkins, nor by recommendations from Bureau of Indian Affairs officials to reverse the disenrollment decisions.

Smith said evidence shows Britten's father was a white man, not an Indian, and thus Britten and her progeny were not full-blooded Indian.

"This is not about money, this is about what's right," Smith said during an interview at the casino's food court, to the plink-plink of nearby slot machines. "I've heard all the arguments about Margarita Britten. All the old people knew: She was only half-Indian." OP: All the current people know, Robert Smith is a tyrant.

Read more about Pala Disenrollments

Learn more about tribal disenrollments in CALIFORNIA:

Redding Rancheria Disenrollment

Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians Disenrollment

Corrupt Tribal Councils

Attorney Jon Velie, Cherokee Freedmen attorney, Fighting for the Individual Indian's Rights

Attorneys litigating the ongoing Cherokee Freedmen case spoke during a law symposium held March 1 at the University of Oklahoma College of Law in Norman, Okla.

Freedmen attorney Jon Velie spoke first and said along with representing the Freedmen he is championing individual Indian rights. Those rights have come in direct conflict with sovereign tribes as they gain more power “than they’ve ever had,” he said. OP: The question is WHY isn't the Native American Rights Fund helping the individual Indian with their civil rights struggles against CORRUPT tribal councils?

He said the question he has been asking is how is that power being used and how is that power affecting individual Indian people’s rights? OP: Many councils have abused their power and ignored the will of their people

Velie explained to the audience who the Cherokee Freedmen are and why they have been in litigation with the CN. He said the Freedmen are Cherokee Indians of African descent, are descendant’s of slaves “that were held by Cherokee masters” and were part of the slave industry that was regulated by the CN.
There are likely 25,000 Cherokee Freedmen descendants today. About 2,800 are officially registered with the CN, and the rest “are on the outside looking in,” he said.

“We have the Cherokee Nation in probably its most lucrative time period, and we have people really suffering on the financial side who do not get to participate in that,” Velie said. “And that’s just on the benefits side. More of them are frustrated by the loss of their identity – being able to be Cherokee.” OP: Chad Smith could fly in a private jet, yet he successfully got rid of his slave descendents.

Velie also explained what the CN is today, and said it is the largest or second largest tribe in the country comprised of ethnic Cherokees, Shawnees and Delawares. He added because the CN chronicled its history better than other tribes it is known that the Cherokee Freedmen once held political power in the tribe including positions on the Tribal Council.

“We see these people have been very important and have been a part of this tribe for a long time,” he said.

Cherokee Freedmen derived their rights from the 1866 Treaty between the CN and the United States following the Civil War, Velie said. The CN had sided with the Confederacy and the treaty allowed the CN to rejoin the union following the war with some stipulations, which included giving rights of Cherokee citizens to former slaves and Freedmen living within the CN.

In 2003, a group of Cherokee Freedmen sued the CN to regain those rights, which they lost in 1983. Even though the U.S. had stated the 1866 Treaty was in “full force and effect” when it came to the rights of Freedmen citizens, Freedmen were not allowed to vote in the 2003 CN election.
Velie said the Freedmen sued because they were denied the right to vote, and after initially taking the position that it would not recognize the 2003 election, the federal government reversed its decision.

Lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was paid nearly $120,000 by Cherokee Nation Enterprises (now Cherokee Nation Businesses) to lobby on the tribe’s behalf, influenced the U.S. government’s reversal, Velie said.

Vann v. Norton was the Freedmen lawsuit filed in 2003, but the defendant’s name has changed over the years as the Secretary of the Interior’s name has changed. Last November, a federal judge dismissed the eight-year-old case, at the time called Vann et al v. Salazar, and transferred the last remaining lawsuit involving the Freedmen, Cherokee Nation v. Nash, back to the U.S. District Court in Tulsa where it waits to be heard.

In 2006, Freedmen gained back their citizenship and the right to vote following a Cherokee Judicial Appeals Tribunal ruling in Allen v. CN Registrar. However, the following year, Cherokee voters, in a special election, voted to amend the tribe’s 2003 Constitution and the Freedmen lost their citizenship rights again. The amendment required CN citizens to have an ancestor with Indian blood on the Dawes Roll. Many Freedmen did not meet this requirement.

Velie explained the federal government never approved the 2003 CN Constitution that was amended in 2007 to prevent Freedmen citizenship.

Through a May 2007 court injunction, about 2,800 Freedmen currently have citizenship and voting rights while they wait for the Nash case to be heard.

The Nash case involves five random Cherokee Freedmen and the Secretary of the Interior who have been sued by the CN. Velie is representing the Freedmen involved.

Velie said it “preposterous” that an Indian nation is suing its own citizens in federal court for standing up for its rights.

He added the CN’s position in the Nash case under the leadership of Principal Chief Chad Smith was “very dangerous” because the tribe’s attorneys were prepared to argue the 1866 Treaty was “abrogated” or repealed by the U.S. If that is so, then the other components of the treaty – the re-establishment of government to relations between the U.S. and CN and the establishment of tribe’s current boundaries are also abrogated.

“It’s not just dangerous for the Cherokee Nation but also dangerous for all Indian tribes because treaties sit as this relationship between nations,” he said. “A nation without a treaty has less power than a nation with a treaty, and you don’t see tribes argue against treaties very often.”

However, if the Cherokee Freedmen win the case it could have implications for all Five Civilized Tribes that includes the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee Creek and Seminole Nations because those tribes all had slaves and subsequently their Freedmen were given citizenship rights in 1866, Velie said. Each of the five tribes also has a Freedmen roll as part of their Dawes Roll.

Though the Redbird case of 1906 gave the five tribes the right to determine their tribal citizenship, it did not allow the tribes to ignore treaties that established citizenship rights for its Freedmen members, he said.

Velie added time and time again in the late 1800s and early 1900s the courts reaffirmed the Freedmen’s civil rights, yet Freedmen are again being forced to return to court to fight for their rights.

He said the questions in court could be: should a tribe have a right to determine its own citizenship and what gives an individual election official, a temporary elected official, the right to take away the birthright of another individual Indian?

“It’s something that should be thought of by people that govern Indian tribes. Think about this membership thing. Do we really want to have the absolute right to kick our own people out of our own nations?”

OP: Read this article on Tribal Citizenship: http://www.originalpechanga.com/2012/03/loss-of-tribal-citizenship-is-wrong-and.html

CASINO CRIMEWATCH: Car Thief Tries to Kill Sheriff's Deputies at Rincon Casino. They Shoot and MISS

Car thief tries to kill deputies who OPEN FIRE on him at RinconTribal Casino.

At least one deputy opened fire today on a suspected auto thief -- missing him -- when the suspect allegedly tried to run three of them over with a stolen pickup truck in front of Harrah's Rincon Casino.

The uninjured suspect made a failed attempt to evade arrest by fleeing on foot following the law enforcement shooting, which happened about 1:15 p.m. in a parking area at the gaming resort in rural Valley Center, sheriff's spokeswoman Jan Caldwell said.

Deputies had been waiting outside the casino for the suspect to emerge after finding the truck -- reported stolen in Escondido -- parked in the lot, according to Caldwell.

When the still-unidentified man left the gambling hall, he allegedly ignored the deputies' orders to surrender and tried to leave in the pickup.

The shooting was moments later, after the suspect accelerated the vehicle in reverse directly toward the three deputies, Caldwell told news crews.

Following the gunfire, the man tried to drive the truck over a landscaped median but only managed to get it stuck on a roadside hedge, Caldwell said.

She said he then jumped out and ran into a nearby residential area, where deputies found him and took him into custody a short time later

Related Stories:

Pechanga Carjacking

Previous carjacking at Rincon: http://www.originalpechanga.com/2012/03/tribal-casino-crimewatch-carjacking-at.html

After paying out $400,000 To Entice Members to Vote, Reggie Lewis Elected to Chukchansi Council

The Sierra Star News' Carmen George has thefull details of the drama, subterfuge and get paid to vote story at the Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians

The General Council meeting was scheduled for Saturday after the council led by Lewis failed the weekend before to reach a quorum, with meetings historically only held quarterly. This time, a $1,000 check was promised to every tribal member that attended, and free rooms at Chukchansi Gold Resort & Casino for those traveling from outside 70 miles of the rancheria.

An estimated 60 Chukchansi people, including those elected Dec. 3, were not a part of those discussions, barred from attending the General Council meeting on grounds that they were not allowed on tribal properties for 30 days. Salazar said the number was actually about 40 individuals.

They were kept out of the meeting because they were determined to be present at the tribal offices Feb. 27 or 28 during the office break-in in an attempt to seat the four tribal council members elected in December. The newly-elected are against recent disenrollments of tribal members, what Lewis' council has been voting in favor of.

Some tribal members did not receive letters that they were banned from tribal property until Saturday, when trying to attend the meeting or vote. Some stated that they were never present at the tribal offices when the break-in occurred -- purposefully avoiding the offices for fear of retaliation later.


Read More at the Carmen George link above