Tuesday, September 23, 2008

...Why Disenrolling Tribes Like The Pechanga Tribal Council are UNETHICAL



People have asked me why I use the term unethical in my blog’s banner. Here’s the reasons why.

Recall the five fundamental principles of ethics:

1. Do No Harm - Pechanga has failed miserably in this area. Not only have they caused financial harm to many of their tribal members, stripping them of their per capita, they have left them unprotected in the area of health care. They also have violated the Tribal Constitution and illegally have kept many rightful members out, via a moratorium.

2. Make Things Better - Well, Pechanga started well, with a plan to lift all it’s people from poverty. Many of us weren’t in poverty, but did benefit from the casino. After all, our families’ ancestors were original Pechanga Temecula people. But then, came the moratorium, which kept rightful members OUT and followed that with disenrollments, which made things worse.

3. Respect Others – Pechanga touted elders like Lawrence Madariaga, Paulina Hunter’s great-grandson with rewards like plaques for their service, but then left them out in the cold by kicking them from the tribal rolls and then saying, “go get a job” to 80 year olds. They disregarded their most vaunted elder, Antonio Ashman’s sworn testimony that he knew Paulina Hunter when he was a young man in the 1880’s

4. Be Fair – We will be detailing the unfairness of the tribal council, the disenrollment committee and the CPP, but there was no fairness. The Tribal Enrollment committee did not allow us to question our accusers, did not tell us what was missing in our paperwork, forced us to have red ribbon certified paperwork of over 400 pages and yet accepted a letter of hearsay from an imprisoned child molester as more factual, that the results of their own study.

5. Be Loving – How loving is it to eliminate old people, children, infirm from the tribe? To take away their voting rights, elder care, and educational assistance. The tribal council should have taken their task of looking after the individual tribal members welfare. They did not.

Also, recall that ethical responsibilities apply not just to how we treat others but to how we treat ourselves, too. Although ethics is fundamentally a guard against self-obsession, it is right and good to treat ourselves with respect, fairness, and compassion and to avoid causing ourselves harm. Now, the actions of the CPP are causing harm to the tribe and the tribe is paying the public relations price for what they have done, and that price is already $60 million or more.

Exercise your moral outrage and avoid Pechanga.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

When you judge a society as unethical, you need not look further than its most vulnerable citizens. The orphans of this Tribe have been treated prejudicially and with malice.

Trust funds were intentionally withheld, insurance coverage changes concealed, and their rights to their legal property confiscated. According to this society's constitution, these offenses are greater than just unethical, they are grounds for impeachment of its leaders.

just do it said...

The leftover Pechanga Tribal Members seem to be happy with all the disenrollments and moratorium.
That leads one to believe that they are ok with this behavieur
and condoning this corruption or,
that they know what is going on
and look the other way to get their per cap. or,
they believe what is told to them
and don't bother to actually seek out the truth- being duped- or,
just being stupid or,
they just don't care
as long as they are taken care of.
YES, THAT IS THE IMPRESSION WE GET FROM THIS TRIBE.

Anonymous said...

Please people take the money out of the equation!!!
Can you imagine setting quietly to watch any nation or sect of people maliciously take away the rights of any part of its own the way we are allowing it to happen to our American Indians?

Wake up America, the rights of a people within our United States are being violated!

How many times and how many ways will we continue to allow this to happen?

Please people take the money out of the equation!!

Anonymous said...

Also, as we have said in several other threads that are now in the archives, promising under oath to the U.S. congress and the U.S. dept. of Interior to not do any development to the Great Oak Ranch property in order to have this land put into trust making it part of the reservation and then tearing up part of the property to put in the Journey at Pechanga golf course is unethical.

They can do a thousand commercials saying how in touch with nature and the land they are but it still doesn't hide the fact that they destroyed a valuable and irrplacable ecological and cultural resourse.

The congressional record dated April 17, 2002 has Pechanga chairman Mark Macarro testifying to the resources committee that there would be no changes done to this property.

His brother, tribal general council John Macarro recently said, in response to crtics of the Great Oak Ranch development, that once a tribe has land put into trust they can do anything they want with the land.

PECHANGA SPEAKS WITH A FORKED TOUGUE?

Anonymous said...

The tribal council allowing family members of the Masiel/Basquez family and Francis Miranda, a descendant of Candelaria Nesecat Flores, to vote on the disenrollment cases of the Hunters and Manuela Miranda famlies after Hunters and M Mirandas had filed disenrollment papers against them IS UNETHICAL!

Also, Hunters and M Mirandas found evidence of wrong doing by the above mentioned people in the handling of enrollment applications of people who ended up in the moratorium and they brought this to the attention of the tribal council and as stated above they were still allowed to vote on the Hunters and M Miranda's cases.

The Pechanga constitution says that elected officials are to uphold the rights of tribal members without malice or predjudice.

SO ALLOWING PEOPLE WHO MY FAMILY MEMBERS HAD BROUGHT ALLEGATIONS OF WRONG DOING VOTE ON OUR DISENROLLMENT CASE IS UNETHICAL BECAUSE OF A GROSS CONFLICT OF INTEREST!

By the way, to this day I don't know if the tribal council ever followed up on the allegations of wrong doing mentioned above and that is also unethical.

Is it any coincidence that the deciding votes on kicking out both the Hunters and M Mirandas were those people who had a personal stake and likely a motive of revenge in getting rid of us?

Luiseno said...

The Tribal Council is UNETHICAL because after the general assembly voted to stop all disenrollments the Tribal Council went behind there backs, canceled the next few General Assembly meetings for several months. And with Armed guaeds guarding the locked doors they hid behind, decided to overthrow the vote of the people and disenroll the Hunters anyways.

Anonymous said...

... With no evidence to support the disenrollment beside a letter full of false accusations & innuendo. The letter included no supporting documents, writtin by a felon in jail.!!

Way to go Pechanga- Way to F your brother's for the white man's money!!

Look at the FACTS not fantasy "here say", the illusions of the greedy & evil CPP.

Anonymous said...

It was also unethical for the tribal council to allow the enrollment committee to take disenrollment cases out of the order they were filed.

The Hunter and Manuela Miranda families were filed against for disenrollment first before the Basquez/Maseils and the Candealaria Flores descendants.

By the way, the Hunters and M. Mirandas had no plans to file against those other families but only did so after those other families had filed against us.

We had suspicions that they, the other families, are not Pechanga, especially the Basquez/Masiels, but we still weren't trying to get them kicked out of the tribe.

But once those other family lines were cleared, their family members were reinstated to the enrollment committee and they voted the M Mirandas and Hunters out of the tribe.

Again, they shouldn't have been allwed to vote on the Hunters and M Mirandas as IT WAS UNETHICAL, A PRIME EXAMPLE OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND BIAS!

Also, some of the so called evidence presented against us was from Basquez/Masile family members, another example of biased treatment against the M. Mirandas and Hunters.

In effect the accusers were acting in judgment of those that were disenrolled.

By taking the disenrollment cases out of order the decked was stacked against the families that were disenrolled, VERY UNETHICAL!

I believe that if the disenollment cases were taken in the order filed that we would have been cleared from disenrollment but if we had been cleared, our family members shouldn't have been allowed to vote on the cases of the families who had filed against us.

FAIR IS FAIR!

Anonymous said...

hi whatever happened to the soon indictments soon to come at pechanga casino? i read here where the tribal council of pechanga had meetings on future indictments coming soon. but no indictments to follow i have to question the credible source of these false statements still waitng on the future indictments to come at pechanga

t'eetilawuncha! said...

It is unethical to do something when you know it's wrong.

It is also unethical to do nothing when you know something is wrong.

Creeper said...

Yes, if you take the money out of the equation what you have left is pure evil, malicious action against people in the tribe
committed by
the Pechanga Enrollment Committee the Pechanga Tribal Council
and the Pechanga Tribal Chairman
Mark Macarro.
a gang of moraly bankrupt people.

Anonymous said...

...absolutely, pure malicious greed for power and money. The same we see in all of history's acts of enslavement, genocide, and abuse of human rights without recourse.
I cannot believe we, the American people, are quietly standing by while this happens again and again to our American Indians.
Is it different just because it is happening now from within the tribes? Does this give us excuse to passively allow the rights of a people, an American people, to be ripped away?
What is causing us to close our eyes to this moral and ethical rape???
The rights of Native American Indians are being once again being taken away without recourse!! While we once again stand idly by!!

Anonymous said...

If Pechanga doesn't act ethically with their own people, I wonder how ethically they run their own business?

Can we believe them if they say, "well, just because we backstabbed our own relatives, doesn't mean we will cheat our customers".

I wonder if they would be offended at the notion.

If they don't act ethically, would they act morally?

Anonymous said...

Bad business ethics is a good enough reason for me to no longer visit the Pechanga Casino.