Tribal Disenrollment Retrospective: Pechanga Disenrolls EN MASSE, The Manuela Miranda Descendants TENTH is A SERIES

 MARCH 2004 the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indian's Enrollment Committee authorized the first mass disenrollment of a Pechanga Family, the descendants of Manuela Miranda.  This was purely a POLITICAL action, as a cousin to Miranda, Frances Miranda was one who voted to disenroll, her OWN FAMILY.

Manuela Miranda

You can read the chronology of the Pechanga Disenrollment actions at this post:  Pechanga Indian Removal Acts it's a sordid list.

As I mentioned above, some family were removed others weren't touched.  Read how Law & Rules Apply to SOME in Disenrollments, not all

John Gomez Jr found the Pechanga Enrollment Committee was shuffling papers from the Tosobol family applictions.  The EC didn't want 80 or so rightful candidates to belong to the tribe, even though their Munoa cousins were in.   An excerpt from a Vince Beiser piece on the disenrollment is here   Pechanga's Paper Trail of Tears

The disenrollment of Manuela Miranda descendants happened just before tribal elections, the timing was NOT coincidental.  The same will happened two years after this disenrollment, with the expulsion of the Paulina Hunter descendants, which we will document in a subsequent post.

My cousin Kent Appel, whose song Paper Genocide, laments the disenrollment,  lays out the tribe's constitution on this:

Article V of the Temecula Band of Luiseno Mission Indians’ constitution and bylaws, sometimes referred to as the Pechanga Band of Mission Indians (title from the Band’s constitution and bylaws preamble), states the following

“IT SHALL BE THE DUTY OF ALL ELECTED OFFICERS OF THE BAND TO UPHOLD AND ENFORCE THE CONSTITUTION, BYLAWS, AND ORDINANCES OF THE TEMECULA BAND OF LUISENO MISSION INDIANS; AND, ALSO TO UPHOLD THE INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS OF EACH MEMBER WITHOUT MALICE OR PREJUDICE.”

So how was allowing biased enrollment committee members with a clear conflict of interest who were very close relatives of key witnesses against the disenrolled and who made statements prior to the disenrollments such as, “it doesn’t matter what you turn in you are being disenrolled anyway,” not a violation of the Band’s equal protection clause under Article V and how did the families get due process?

GOOD QUESTION