Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Lawrence Baca on The Scourge of Tribal Disenrollment and BIA INACTION by CHOICE

Lawrence Baca
courtesy GBroadmanblog
An informative article, for those who haven't lived it by attorney Lawrence Baca, former President of the National Native Bar Association. 

The piece begins on page 135 here but the MONEY:   Solutions to the Problem Tribal Sovereign Immunity While the federal courts have thus far avoided becoming involved in intra-tribal membership disputes, that will not last forever. When courts become frustrated enough with the inability to address cases involving tribal disenrollment, they will take action


IF  we can't make the courts FRUSTRATED enough, it's OUR FAULT.  OUR silence to our OWN abuse, means NOBODY will speak for us.
 Tribal membership for Indian people is more than mere citizenship in an Indian tribe. It is the essence of one’s identity, belonging to community, connection to one’s heritage and an affirmation of their human being place in this life and world.

In short, it is not an overstatement to say that it is everything. In fact, it would be an understatement to say anything less.

Tribal membership completes the circle for the member’s physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of human life.21 The importance of tribal membership and tribal citizenship to Indian people cannot be easily captured in words.
The loss of citizenship is equally difficult to quantify. Solutions that will allow challenges to the tribe’s power to remove your citizenship, to disenroll you, are even more difficult to come to conceive. Being a member of an Indian tribe brings with it many benefits. Some are social and cultural, some are physical and fiscal, and some are spiritual and psychological. Having those taken from you can be devastating on many levels. 

5 comments:

Correy Alcantra said...

I'm with Coyote Valley tribe in northern California. My 180 members have attempted to be disenrolled. I say attempted because we haven't given up. It was illegal but who do I prove it to. The illegal tribal council runs from us. They have everyone else say we aren't members. The tribal administrator, election service. I have been arrested 5 times for going to my membership meetings and then no one shows up to court. The federal officer had falsified evidence against me. FBI did nothing. I have so much proof it's stupid. But what do I do with it. The regional director wont meet with me. She even lied to my congressman's person. The illegal tribal council violates the bylaws and federal law and gets away with it. BIA needs to be sued and held accountable.

Anonymous said...

Write to everyone...Write to Tara Sweeney the assistant secretary, write to the Indian Senate, write to the House Of Natural
Resources. Make sure it's to every member of those committees. Good luck in your fight

Anonymous said...

You are not clear who the federal officer is but if he falsified evidence and you have prof send it to the D.O.J. and the Washington D.C. D.O.J.. You should also try to get some news coverage and have all your documentation ready for them

Anonymous said...

@ 2:06 PM.
It doesn't do any good.
I have given so much evidence to all of the departments that you have mentioned showing the truth about how the Pala chairman disenrolled my family members because of hate
and showing that they the chairman and the EC was at fault.
And the first thing that these departments did was to contact the chairman and the EC members
and tell them that they received this information regarding their wrong doings and the chairman wrote back to them stating that they had evidence that proves other wise and that was the end of it.
These departments didn't even request the chairman to send their so called evidence to them for review they just took his word over our government documented evidence and that was the end.

PISSED OFF said...

PS to above post.
So now we are looking into finding a news outlet that is willing to investigate all the evidence and report the findings to the general public being that the U.S.Government has turned a blind eye to it.
Contacted all of the TV news media in San Diego county and Riverside county along with
a couple of major news outlets like 20/20 and a few more.
Its been about 3 weeks and have only received a received a reply to say that they have received the packet.
Still waiting and waiting and waiting.