tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887382220113280558.post7815703574855732367..comments2024-03-28T06:01:57.947-04:00Comments on <center>Original Pechanga Blog</center>: AIRRO will present Pechanga's Dishonor at the 22nd Annual CA Indian ConferenceOPechangahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10687743661360604165noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2887382220113280558.post-57510689638717329822007-10-27T03:34:00.000-04:002007-10-27T03:34:00.000-04:00Please know, dear Reader, that the individuals dis...Please know, dear Reader, that the individuals disenrolled from Pechanga lost their membership because they did not have the facts on their side. Hence, their disenrollment corrected an error in the membership roll. The dishonor here arises from the disenrollees knowingly taking on tribal identity with its rights, benefits, and privileges, but without their having a valid foundation to do so. They have no shame or scruples. In the case of Mr. Gomez and his kin, yes, they lost their enrollment, but they still may associate with another tribal people, the San Luis Rey Indians. After all, as Leland E. Bibb notes, “Pablo Apis, a Luiseño Indian, was born about 1792 at Guajome near Mission San Luis Rey.“ (http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/91fall/temecula.htm) Pablo Apis died circa 1852. Later, in 1882, President Chester A. Arthur, by Executive Order, created the reservation that became the Pechanga Indian Reservation. This chronology raises the issue of the status of Pablo Apis in relation to Pechanga. Clearly, having died 30 years before the formation of the Pechanga Indian Reservation, Pablo Apis could not have played a leadership role there. Insisting that he did, as the disenrollees do, creates a patent falsehood. As for human and civil rights, the disenrollees possess these rights as Americans, but they no longer may claim tribal rights for lack of tribal membership. As for “defining Indian identity,” both the courts and the U. S. Congress subscribe to and follow the longstanding legal doctrine that tribes determine their own membership in their own forum. Both authorities recognize the necessity and the validity of tribal identity staying in the hands of tribes. Now, bitter and disappointed, the disenrollees have begun a campaign of attack on Indian country, characterizing it as “an arena where the rights of the individual Indian are often trumped by the sovereign rights of the Tribe.” The disenrollees evidently cannot grasp that tribes function collectively or communally, not atomistically. In this respect, tribes do not set themselves against individual tribal members, and conversely, individual tribal members do not set themselves against the tribe. The tribe operates as a whole together. Tribal rights generally reside within a tribe while including the individual tribal members who comprise the tribe. Tribes resemble a large family. The disenrollees now find themselves external to this tribal community. But the disenrollees cannot accept this outcome. In turn, via the news media, the disenrollees have taken their plight to the court of public opinion, while beseeching politicians and others with little understanding of Indian matters. To listeners, the disenrollees argue by assertion, accusation, and innuendo, without worthy factual material. The disenrollees assert claims history cannot support. In addition, the disenrollees continue their lawsuits seeking a third-party forum, the courts, to intervene in tribal membership disputes so the courts may decide these internal tribal matters. The disenrollees aim to overturn the fundamental of a tribe as having the power, authority, and capability to conduct its own affairs in its own interest, including the determination of its own membership. The disenrollees sneer at tribal sovereignty as though it serves as an evil aspect of tribal government. Shortsightedly, the disenrollees cannot perceive this sovereignty as the intrinsic, central singularity guaranteeing life and survival to a tribe. Tribal sovereignty underlies and legitimizes the actions of tribal government, and furthers its autonomy. Interestingly, at bottom, the disenrollees wish to rejoin the tribe that ousted them. In effect, however, the disenrollees mean to dis-empower if not destroy that tribe by compromising its autonomy as expressed in determining tribal membership. Where would this compromise end? It would not, but would instead open the door for other future attacks, like a slippery slope. By this means, tribes as such in time would vanish. This contradiction shows the true feathers of the disenrollees as self-interested individuals bent on gaining their own ends, despite the harm to ancient tribal entities.anotherview2https://www.blogger.com/profile/06468100373053176225noreply@blogger.com