Monday, September 27, 2010

How the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Tribal Council Corrupted The History of a Tribal Person

Hunter cousin A'amokat has put together some historical facts on the Disenrollment of Paulina Hunter to answer a frequent "drive-by" commenter that smoothly says we couldn't prove our ancestry.  Yet, we have more evidence than ANY other family currently enrolled in Pechanga.  And people want to boycott Arizona for civil rights violations?  Try Pechanga.


Our critic from the tribe says we never answer what he considers tough questions but we have done so many times but since he just pops in and runs, I will tackle those issues once again for all to see.

1. “Dear Reader, that the mouthpieces for the Hunter clan never address the fact that their declared ancestor, Paulina Walla Hunter, had no available birth record.”

While it is true we couldn’t find a birth record for our ancestor Paulina Hunter, she is not alone in this regard as Dr. John Johnson from the Museum of Natural History in Santa Barbara, Ca, commissioned by the enrollment committee to research the ancestry of Paulina Hunter, said in his report to the committee, “The original books of baptisms, marriages, and burials for Mission San Luis Rey have been lost for more than 150 years which hinders many Luiseno families in their search for documentary evidence pertaining to their ancestors.”

So a lot of today’s Pechanga tribal members also don‘t have birth records for their ancestors who were born during the period after the surviving San Luis Rey padrones (census records), which were recorded between 1811 to 1835. So the only thing this proves is that Paulina Hunter was in the same boat as a lot of other tribal members from the historical period.

2. “Or the fact that while the historical record lists the parents of PWH, nobody knows their ancestry.”
While Paulina Hunter’s maiden name is listed as Walla in some records Dr. Johnson in his report on her ancestry indentifies her family name as being Quasicac and that the man who was almost certainly her father, Mateo, was the only Indian listed in the pardrones as being born at the place known as Pechanga over 75 years before the Pechanga reservation was even created! Also the records indicate that her maternal grandmother, Restituta Quenix, was from the from the original Temecula Indian village.
So how can we explain the discrepancy of last names from one generation to another generation?
Again Dr. Johnson elaborates in his report to the enrollment committee on the ancestry of Paulina Hunter:
Many Indian families of this period (the 1800’s) were adopting the use of surnames, as was the Euro-American custom. The church records show that there was considerable experimentation with surname use by all former Mission Indians. A variety of surnames would be used, even within the same family, before one version was finally chosen that continued to be used as an inherited family name.”

So again the Hunters are in the same boat as a lot of other Pechanga families in proving with 100 percent certainty by today’s modern standards that their ancestors from previous generations, who often also had different last names from one generation to the next, are indeed their ancestors.

3. “Or the uncomfortable fact that the Bureau of Indian Affairs has no Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood on file for PWH, meaning the BIA never tracked PWH as an Indian.”

If the BIA never recognized Paulina Hunter as a Pechanga Indian or even an Indian at all, then why do Hunter family members have CDIB cards that say Pechanga and why didn’t the enrollment committee make it an issue during the Hunter’s disenrollments?
One would think that if, as our esteemed critic from the tribe tries to imply, that if we the Hunters weren’t even Native Americans that the committee would have stated this was the case. After all, a slim majority of the committee, as we have shown here on this blog many times, was biased against us and I am sure they would have jumped at the chance to try to even further discredit us.

In fact the enrollment committee in its Record of Decision against the Hunters of March 16, 2006 stated:
“Nothing in the Committee’s findings shall be construed or interpreted that the Committee is making a determination of the Indian or Native American status of Paulina Hunter or her descendants.”
Also, in addition to the fact that the Hunters do have CDIBs, Hunter family members who have gone through probate for their share of the Hunter family allotment have official probate documents from the United States Department of the Interior that name their loved ones as “deceased Luiseno Mission (Pechanga Band) Indians” including those who have gone through probate after the Hunter family disenrollment.
So clearly the United States government still considers us Pechanga Indians even if the tribe officially at this time does not.

4. “Hunter clan tried to bring politics to bear on the disenrollment process, to stop its proper function of removing non-members from the membership roll. This effort failed. The process went forward. Doing its duty, the enrollment committee disenrolled the Hunter clan, returning it to its true status as non-members.”

The Hunters played politics with the process? Nothing could be further from the truth as it was our opponents who played politics with the process by perverting the process by going against the wishes of the people.
Because on July 17, 2005 the general membership of the tribe, the final authority in all matters of tribal government and business of the Band under Article VIII of the Band’s constitution and bylaws, voted to outlaw disenrollment and to strike from the books the disenrollment procedures. This law stated that as of the justification date of the petition of the new law, June 19, 2005, that all tribal members in the Band would remain tribal members and could not be disenrolled. So the disenrollment of the Hunters on March 16, 2006 was clearly illegal. By the way, the Hunter family were not the ones who presented the petition to outlaw disenrollment to the people so no, we were not playing politics with the process.

And I haven’t even scratched the surface by showing here once again how the evidence was very much in our favor but instead of what our opponent would have you believe, the list goes on and on in our favor not the other way around.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ha ha. The absence of background info for PWH cannot prove her status. As well, speculation about the background and origin of PWH by an outsider claiming expertise cannot do it, either. A chain of errors arising from an early mistake about the status or identity of PWH does not create a legitimate basis for maintaining Pechanga tribal membership for the Hunter clan . The old people of Pechanga called PWH a white woman. PWH moved away to another community after suspiciously gaining an allotment of Pechanga land. The Bureau of Indian Affairs knows it erred in granting PWH this allotment. The Pechanga base roll, the oral tradition of defining tribal membership, does not include PWH as an original Pechanga Indian. Hence, the descendants of PWH could never establish lineal descent from one of these individuals for purposes of tribal membership. The Hunter clan also closes its eyes to the meaning of a letter from a PWH descendant, Emily Hunter Judkins, back in the 1950s, asking the BIA how to become a Pechanga tribal member, at a time when Pechanga operated by oral tradition. The Pechanga people then did not recognize EHJ as a Pechanga tribal member, meaning they did not recognize her ancestor PWH as such, either. The list goes on. Please know, Dear Reader, the Hunter clan does not come from Pechanga, no matter how much or how long its mouthpieces try to claim otherwise. The Hunter clan became disenrolled for sound reasons, yet it cannot accept its true status as non-members. As a result, the Hunter clan lashes out at others and bashes them while misconstruing the plain facts of its own plight. The Hunter clan has not suffered a cosmic injustice, only been properly defined as non-members. Finally, as a test, Dear Reader, you may ask yourself whether a real Pechanga tribal member would daily attack Pechanga and its people and its leadership, as does the Hunter clan? This kind of question answers itself.

Anonymous said...

That is why depositions taken from people who were alive at the time of Paulina Hunter and who knew her are so important. Statements that were both signed and witnessed, legal documents which were ignored by the enrollment committee. They repeatedly stated over and over that they knew her as a member of the tribe.

Anonymous said...

Dear readers, know that the Hunter clan does not attack Pechanga. It simple is shining a spot light on a group of Pechanga people who spew negative propaganda of their common ancestor.

There is no speculation of her background, as the poster would like you to believe. Hundreds of documents support their claim to be Pechanga. The arguments this poster try's to bring up resemble several statements this group submitted against the Hunter clan to start the disenrollment procedures. However the enrollment committee did not disenroll this clan for these reasons as the poster suggests.

Because this poster is likely the same mouth piece who stood up at tribal meetings and would not stop talking, you should do the same thing the tribe did and not give allot of attention to him. He likes to ramble on aand misconstrue facts that simply do not exist once a person looks further into the subject.

Thank you for watching as this important issue continues to unfold.

Hey Ed, what does the Dept. of Interior's Commerce clause say about their relationship with Federally recognized tribes? I believe it talks about “Plenary Power.”

Part of the CPP (concerned Pechanga People) have a history of falsifying documents while working at the BIA. Ed, do you think that a Federal investigation is in order?

Anonymous said...

"The Bureau of Indian Affairs knows it erred in granting PWH this allotment."

This is the one of the most blatant lie's so far. this is why so many people are in hiding today. They know these false lies will come back to them. The current water settlement issue has brought about curious eyes. How can the Federal Government handle the Allotment issue and Sovereignty issue fairly? We will see. The current council can revisit the disenrollment issue, and make a correction to this error anytime before someone else does.

OPechanga said...

Finally, as a test, Dear Reader, you may ask yourself whether a real Pechanga tribal member would daily attack Pechanga and its people and its leadership, as does the Hunter clan? This kind of question answers itself.

The ANSWER is YES, a REAL PECHANGA Tribal member would attack those that have done injustice to their ancestor. A man like Butch Murphy who is NOT Pechanga? Of COURSE WE WOULD. And will continue to do so until we regain what is rightfully our family's.

The question back is: Wouldn't YOU fight back if you were wrongfully terminated.

OPechanga said...

As well, speculation about the background and origin of PWH by an outsider claiming expertise cannot do it, either.

Thank you for giving us responses that are so simple to swat back in your face. This "outsider" was HIRED by the Pechanga Enrollment Committee to research Paulina Hunters history. This is the same expert who Jenny Miranda hired for her family.

Dr. John R. Johnson, Curator of Anthropology for the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History has spent more than two decades studying the rich archive of California mission documents, many of them conveniently found at the Santa Barbara Mission Archive just down the street from his museum. John has focused most heavily on the story of the Indians at the missions. In so doing he has helped many Indian people learn more of their own genealogy and connections not simply to the missions but to their own culture. In recent years he has been involved in major projects for the National Park Service and other federal entities to help recreate a map of Chumash villages extending from Paso Robles to Los Angeles County as it would have been in 1769.

However, the specific accomplishment that stood out in the decision to present this award to John was done outside of Chumash territory. While working on a project associated with the Camp Pendleton Marine Base in San Diego County, John and a colleague painstakingly recreated a version of the missing baptismal record of Mission San Luis Rey. The absence of this crucial record had been a major loss not only for researchers but for the descendents of the mission neophytes of Mission San Luis Rey. Using two of the existing padrones, or censuses, it was possible to re-establish much of the information that would have been in the missing document.


Let's have the qualifications of:
Frances Miranda
Ihrene Scearse
Ruth Masiel

'aamokat said...

“Ha ha. The absence of background info for PWH cannot prove her status. As well, speculation about the background and origin of PWH by an outsider claiming expertise cannot do it, either.”

The outside expert, hired by the tribe, not us, merely clarified certain issues regarding our ancestry and the fact that many other tribal members, and very likely our esteemed opponent, also have some of the same questions about their family histories as well.

“The old people of Pechanga called PWH a white woman.”

AND

“The Pechanga base roll, the oral tradition of defining tribal membership, does not include PWH
as an original Pechanga Indian.”

Seven current tribal elders, not from the CPP faction of the tribe, gave notarized statements that the Hunter family have always been recognized as Pechanga Indians and elders from the historical period of the late 1800s testified during both the probate hearings for Paulina Hunter’s land allotment in 1915 and before the first written enrollment of 1979, that she was indeed a legitimate member of the Band.

1.Antonio Ashman, called a vaunted (much praised) elder in the history section of Pechanga’s own official Web site where he recounted the tribe’s eviction from the old Temecula Indian village sites, said when asked whether he knew Paulina Hunter as a member of the Band, “YES, I KNEW HER AS SUCH.” So the tribe believes Mr. Ashman, who was the foremost expert on tribal history, about the eviction but not about our ancestor?

2.Dolores Tortuga said when asked by the probate examiner, “were you acquainted with the deceased PECHANGA INDIAN ALLOTTEE Paulina Hunter?” Tortuga responded, “yes, I knew her as a neighbor when WE PECHANGA INDIANS lived on the Pauba Ranch near Temecula, California. Clearly Tortuga was including Hunter in the inclusive WE PECHANGA INDIANS despite our opponent’s assertion that she was just saying they were neighbors.

3.Jose David Rodriguez verified Tortuga’s statements to the probate examiner and he added that he knew Paulina Hunter as his neighbor on the Pechanga Reservation.
So we have legal notarized statements in our behalf from people who would know who was and who wasn’t Pechanga and all our opponent is giving is hearsay that some elders said she wasn’t.
So yes the testimony in our behalf is a form of Oral Tradition and just because a minority of people alive today, who happen at the moment to control the enrollment committee, doesn’t change this fact.

Finally, if Paulina Hunter was wrongly given a land allotment, then why didn't the tribe contest her allotment?

They had 25 years after the allotments were given out to do so but they never did, why?

Anonymous said...

I love how the CPP (Jenny Miranda, Butch Murphy, Ed Burpy, Raymond basquez, Yollie, Gloria and Lisa Wright) say Emily Judkins tried to gain status in the 50's. Yes, Emily judkins was living on the Reservation in the 50's as Hunter's have ALWAYS lived on the Reservation since it was created. Emily Judkins was one of the original people to see that we needed tribal enrollment so that TRUE Indians could become eligible for grants, scholarships, and many of the benefits that YOU CPP enjoy today. Emily Judkins did much "honest and legal" work for the tribe, unlike Irene Scearce who was fixing documents at the BIA. Emily Judkins along with her Hunter relatives were eligible for tribal enrollment because they had ALL their documents when the first tribal rolls were started in 1979. Many of the CPP (concerned Pechanga people as they call themselves) were not eligible. Hence, their false statements and documents. The enrollment committee based Hunter disenrollment on a napkin submitted from a convicted child molester while he was in prison. Does this sound like a reasonable council?
Forget about the concerned Pechanga people, what about the TRUE PECHANGA PEOPLE.

'aamokat said...

How does our opponent explain the fact that in addition to elders from the historical period who verified who we are, seven current Pechanga elders submitted statements on our behalf during our disenrollment proceedings compared to three elders from the CPP faction and some other letters signed by people, almost all of them from the Basquez/Masiel Clan, who by the way had family members who were on the enrollment committee sitting in judgement of us?

Gentle Readers, it was only people from the so called CPP (concerned Pechanga people) who say we are not Pechanga.

So contrary to what our opponents would have you believe, the majority of the tribe didn't agree with our disenrollments but to this day don't know what they can do about it.

Anonymous said...

Thank you Pechanga hack for showing the readers of this blog how weak and frail your arguments are.

Certified documents vs. "old people said".

People living, whose depositions were taken IN THE LUISENO LANGUAGE vs. people who were born 30-50 years AFTER Paulina Hunter lived on the reservation.

And we haven't even touched on Manuela Miranda, who is claimed to have "cut her ties" to the tribe as a 5 year old, by living with Frances Miranda's ancestor.

Next, you'll say the Tosobols are in the moratorium where nobody is getting in, except...uh, Pechanga Enrollment Committee Leader Bobbi LeMere's relatives....

just do it said...

I noticed that our Pechanga Tribal Hack keeps repeatng the same thing over and over, is there a pre-written manuscript that was written by Corrupt Tribal Chair Mark Macarro and his Gangbanger{council}?

Anonymous said...

Anonymous at 10:53, I am assuming you have seen the documentation provided by the Hunter's, and I also would assume you know the criteria for enrollment. Are you also aware of the documentation provided by other families thats line was called into question, because I have seen the documentation provided by the Garboni family and Ihave also seen paperwork submitted by some of the other families facing disenrollment and the purponderance of evidence that we as Hunter's turned in in comparison to other families....is comical...We in 1979 met the criteria and we still meet the criteria for enrollment. I speak of 1979 because that was the base enrollment.

As far as the BIA not "tracking" Paulina Hunter I beleive the fact that she was on various census record would be considered how at that time the BIA would track native american people.

Why do you not speak of any families presently enrolled and the documentation they have provided? Obviously you must sit on the enrollment committe because I beleive enrollment paperwork was to be confidential??

Tell us what we lack in comparison to other families???

Anonymous said...

The BIA tracked the ancestor of the Basquez line, Francesca Leivas. You know the matriach of the crime family, she used 4 different numbers to try to get paid... THIEF.

'aamokat said...

"Thank you Pechanga hack for showing the readers of this blog how weak and frail your arguments are.

Certified documents vs. "old people said".

The thing is, we dont even know if any of the elders actually said we aren't Pechanga because it is the tribal hack saying they said it which proves nothing.

It reminds me of the statement turned against the Hunters' membership by Raymond Basquez Sr to the enrollment committee in which Basquez qoutes elders from previous generations who allegedly said the Hunters are not Pechanga.

Not only is there no proof to back up Basquez's claims, just him saying it, one of the elders he listed was Solida Stevenson who gave testimony in three of Paulina Hunter's children's probate for their shares of the Hunter allotment; George Hunter, Samuel Hunter, and Matilda (Hunter) Whitten.

One would think Stevenson wouldn't have testified in the Hunters' behalf if she didn't believe the Hunters are Pechanga.

So actually it was certified and notarized documents (us) vs what allegedly people not even alive anymore supposedly said (them).

Gentle Readers. what do you think?

Anonymous said...

So it's "certified documents of sworn testimony in the Luiseno language saying Paulina Hunter was Pechanga" vs. a note on a piece of paper, not sworn of hearsay from generations of crime family members?

stand your ground said...

ANYTHING GOES, that's the Pechanga way NOW, run by a corrupt committee and by a corrupt tribal chair.

Anonymous said...

Ha ha, What are you 10 years old?
1st you state that PWH cannot prove that she is from Pechanga, where have you been or do you have the intellience to do some investgating and the logic to comprehend the truth, do not allow the money deter your thinking, the truth is out there.
2nd. You sound as if you are from the Leiva family and if you are, I have a question for you.
If you are so righteous about your Families Lineage, Lets Compare legal documents (Paper Work).
I do not think you are brave enough or Intelligent to face the real truth that you are a true beed Mexican from Mexico with no Indian blood to prove. We from other Tribes have seen that you and Mark Macarro are Mexican, All Tribe in the area are Laughing at you and your paper work our should we say Green cards or Green paper work.
At the end we shall see who is Laughing.
If you were not worried about the outcome of PWH, then why come to this website, If i was you i would be travling and having a good life with out any type of worries about PWH or anyone.

Anonymous said...

WE all Know that this Tribal member can only throw sticks and stones at HUNTER CLAN AND CANNOT AND WILL NOT PROVE ANYTHING ABOUT OWN DESCENDENTS ALL he does is make all of the Temecula Indians FIGHT harder to unite and fight for justice SO BE IT
POLYSQWALIS

Anonymous said...

The enrollment committee has
dis-enrolled hundreds of people that they claim are not Pechanga. It is long over due to dis-enroll Mark Macarro, he is not Pechanga!!!
Also investigate all the enrollment committee, are they truly Pechanga???
Everyone involved in the lying, deception and greed will have to stand before Almighty God and give an
account for all they have done!!!