Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Teetilawuncha: WE HAVE THE TRUTH



Teetilawuncha's Blog has an interesting back and forth on the Hunter Family termination from the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians.

Our family has the truth, the CPP has the lie.

3 comments:

PHunter said...

The TRUTH will come out. The Hunter family is more Pechanga than, say, the Basquez-Salazar clan.

What is Jennie's Membership number?

Chukchansi said...

Every dismembered citizen needs to get formally organized into their tribe now and start meeting together! Read the following article that appeared today in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Wilka,
NDN Warrior
Theresa Crane of the Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians
Arrested/Disenrolled Member #A0078

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080717/news_1m17pasqual.html

MEDIATION OK'D IN SPLIT BY TRIBE ON MEMBERSHIP

By Onell R. Soto
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

July 17, 2008

VALLEY CENTER – A dispute over membership in the San Pasqual Indian band is threatening its government and its operation of the Valley View Casino, which has created hundreds of jobs and earned millions in revenues.
The disagreement has split the tribe into two camps, which the Bureau of Indian Affairs is working to reconcile.

The sides met yesterday with James Fletcher, the BIA's Southern California superintendent, and agreed to mediation, he said.

Without a resolution, Fletcher said he's at a crossroads.

Each side is asking him to recognize it as the true tribal government.

Fletcher said he has three options: recognize one group, the other, or neither. If he chooses neither group, then there is no tribal government. And without a government, the tribe can't run a casino, Fletcher said.

“I just don't know how it's going to come out,” Fletcher said last night.

Tribal membership has been a heated issue at San Pasqual for years. But last month, about 50 members of the 300-member tribe were told they were suspended because an anthropological study had determined an ancestor was adopted; as a result, they weren't really Indians.

The tribe is denying them tribal benefits, which include monthly casino-profit payments of nearly $4,000 each and, for some, housing and jobs.

On Sunday, the day of the tribe's quarterly general meeting, two meetings were held.

One was in a tent on the Valley Center reservation and called by the tribal chairman. The other was in an Escondido meeting hall, called by the tribe's vice chairman and attended by people whose ancestry is being challenged.

People who attended the meetings said each had the appropriate quorum of the tribe's adult members.

Tribal Chairman Allen Lawson said he doesn't want to talk about the issue publicly. Joe Navarro, who heads the tribal corporation that runs the casino, also declined to comment.

In a letter to members last week, the tribe's Enrollment Committee said, “There is no connection between the enrollment action and the casino operation.”

The National Indian Gaming Commission is keeping tabs on the dispute.

“There has to be a functioning government in place,” said Eric Schalansky, the commission's Sacramento-based regional director.

And that's on top of the other issue Fletcher flagged to the gaming commission last month – that the tribe has no provision for suspending members, and cutting off payments could be a violation of its plans for distributing gambling profits.

“There are a lot of questions about what they're doing and how they're doing it,” Schalansky said.

Schalansky said he's working with Fletcher to decide what to do, and that it would take days, if not weeks, to analyze the ramifications of the tribal situation.

The tribal membership issue dates to at least the 1990s, when tribal leadership objected to inclusion on the tribe's rolls of the descendants of Marcus Alto Sr., who died in 1988.

In 1995, the head of the BIA ruled that Alto was a San Pasqual Indian and his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren had enough Indian ancestry – “blood of the band” as it's known.

Last year, tribal member Ron Mast challenged their membership to the tribe's Enrollment Committee. Mast said he found additional information that proved Alto was adopted and not Indian.

The committee hired an anthropologist who put together a book-length report that criticized the BIA's handling of the matter in the 1990s and concluded that Alto and his descendants weren't Indian.

OPechanga said...

I agree Wilka, where are the terminated Chukchansi people?

Your issue has received some press in California, and we've posted about it here.

How many strong are you right now?

And where is your blog/website located? Feel free to send me stuff you would like posted.