Indian Country Today, Owned by Civil Rights Abusing ONEIDA Nations, Donates Operation to Civil Rights Abuse Ignoring NCAI

Wonderful news!  Oh, wait.  Word is out that the Oneida Nation, which bulldozed the chairman's own family's homes (under his orders) will donate their assets of Indian Country TODAY to the National Congress of American Indians which studiously and repeatedly IGNORES the issue of tribal disenrollment.  

Can we even HOPE to see stories on the abuse of Indians....BY INDIANS?    Wonder if the new owners will report on the TAMMY MAHONEY investigation?



The defunct Indian Country Today Media Network will remain in Indian Country's hands thanks to the Oneida Nation.

Disappearing Indians: Carving Up the NEW Buffalo. Steve Russell's Take on Disenrollment for Greed, Power and Money

Steve Russell has a good piece up in Indian Country Today called CARVING UP THE NEW BUFFALO.  Which is about how greed is leaving many Natives high and dry and fighting for scraps, while others are trying to have their own buffalo stand, where piles of money  take the place of a pile of bones.   I will follow up this piece with an article about MONEY and what has been at stake.

The New Buffalo took its first shaky steps on February 25, 1987, when the U.S. Supreme Court told California it could not shut down card games and high-stakes bingo on the reservations of the Morongo Band of Mission Indians (less than 1,000 citizens) and the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians (less than 50 citizens).

Just as buffalo "hunters" slaughtered animals creating this pile of bones
Tribes have eliminated members to pile up the money.

California is a PL 280 state, meaning that Congress has given it the power to pass criminal laws binding on tribal land. However, gambling was legal in California at that time, just heavily regulated. The state allowed bingo with much smaller cash prizes than the Indians offered and even had a state lottery.  The Supreme Court, consistent with prior decisions, held that state regulations held no force on Indian land.

He gets deeper into the matter with IGRA:

Wherever you see non-Indians organizing to stop this or that Indian casino, there will always be somebody denouncing Congress for gifting Indians with the right to run casinos in IGRA. They are misinformed. IGRA was not the source of Native gaming rights. The source was that part of tribal sovereignty not taken away by the U.S. IGRA was enacted to limit Indian gaming and give states a mechanism to profit from it

Finally, he gets to the MONEY QUOTE:

Indian Country Today: Loss of Citizenship via Disenrollment is a DISASTER

What is happening at Nooksack is making the national stage.  It helps those who have been victims of corrupt activities to keep bringing their stories forward.   Pechanga, Chukchansi, Redding, Pala, Cherokee Freedmen all have disenrollment stories, and they are not alone. Moratoriums have harmed hundreds, and loss of federal recognition, like the Mixed Blood Uinta Utes are stories that also need to be learned.

Read this opinion piece from Indian Country Today:

Prof. David Wilkins is dismayed by language chosen by the Chief Judge of the Nooksack Tribal Court in a disenrollment decision.

His dismay is directed not at the holding of the case, which supported the sovereign authority of the Nooksack Nation to be stupid, but to the Chief Judge’s assertion that tribal enrollment is of less legal import than loss of US citizenship.

Nowhere in Prof. Wilkins’s critique of the opinion does he touch the essential argument the judge made: “While the impact on the disenrollee is serious and detrimental, it is not akin to becoming stateless.”

I propose a thought experiment. Suppose that the persons subject to disenrollment by the Nooksacks had US citizenship not by the right of birth set out in the Fourteenth Amendment, but rather a derivative citizenship based on the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.

Suppose that upon disenrollment, US passports had to be surrendered, Social Security numbers cancelled. Would that not be at least a different kettle of fish, if not two seasons ofThe Deadliest Catch?

Disenrollees would be insulted and diminished. They may have lost affirmative action consideration if it existed anymore. They would have lost any benefits that flow though membership in the Nooksack Social Club—for so it will render itself by its own actions.

Disenrollees are not stateless persons in two senses. The first is that they still have passports and the consular rights those passports confer. They still have Social Security cards and access to the anemic social safety net those cards confer.

The second is that they are still citizens of the Nooksack Nation to the degree it still exists, as the Cherokee Nation does, as the Six Nations do, as the Navajo Nation does…I am not fully informed how many tribal nations survive, but I’m certain that it’s a substantially smaller number than can be found in 25Code of Federal RegulationsPart 83.

You don’t get your tribal citizenship from the US government.

Either something of your tribal identity, your peoplehood, survives as more than family folklore or it does not.