NCAI: Will They FINALLY Stand UP AGAINST Tribal Disenrollment ANSWER: NOPE

For years, we have reported that the National Congress of American Indians has stood by in silence, while over 10,000 American Indians have had their civil and human rights abused by Tribes who have disenrolled their people.  

Related Links:   NCAI Silent over a Decade  and NCAI, NIGC and NARF MIA on Dismemberment

September 28th is the deadline for submitting resolutions to the NCAI for the 2019 year and THERE IS NOTHING ON THEIR AGENDA on TRIBAL DISENROLLMENT of NATIVE AMERICANS
They found some time for

Native America Calling: Disenrollment and Re-Enrollment Show 3/15 SHOW EMBEDDED

Native America Calling is doing it's annual show on Disenrollment on 3/15 at 10 am PDT.   This years episode includes Robinson Rancheria Chairman Eddie Crandell, who brought back members who were disenrolled under the late Tracy Avila.  The restoration of the tribe's honor is good for Indian Country.

LISTEN HERE NOW:

Call in:   1-800-996-2848


The Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians granted tribal membership back to 60 people who were disenrolled nine years ago. The action is a departure from a recent wave of disenrollement among some tribes in the west. 

Disenrolled members are no longer federally recognized tribal citizens and as a result lose benefits like health care, percap income and even housing. The Nooksack Indian Tribe is suing the federal government over sanctions imposed over election disputes stemming from disenrollment. 

Sovereignty gives independent tribal nations the ability to determine their members. But campaigns against disenrollment are aiming to change opinions on this perfectly legal act. Is mass disenrollment an idea whose time has come?

FOR MORE ON TRIBAL DISENROLLMENT,   CLICK THIS LINK

Despicable Tracey Avila, Robinson Rancheria Tribal Chair Accused of THEFT May have Trial Delayed

The theft trial of the Robinson Rancheria Pomo Indians tribal chair, set to begin next week, appears to be heading for a delay because of the defendant's health.   OP: She was perfectly healthly enough to OVERSEE some evictions last month.

Tracey I. Avila was at the Lake County Courthouse Tuesday afternoon for pretrial matters when her attorney, R. Justin Petersen, told a judge Avila's doctors diagnosed her with kidney failure earlier this month.

As a result, Petersen plans to file a motion asking for a continuance of the trial, which is scheduled to begin Feb. 27.

Avila, 51, of Nice pleaded not guilty to one count of grand theft.

Authorities allege she stole tens of thousands of dollars from the Elem Indian Colony of Pomo Indians and the federal government while serving as that tribe's fiscal officer between February 2006 and September 2008.

Avila, who was arrested in September 2011, was ordered to stand trial following a preliminary hearing last October. Her subsequent arraignment was delayed while she recovered from a partial foot amputation.

Upon learning of Avila's latest medical issue Tuesday, Judge Richard C. Martin ordered Petersen to file a written continuance motion by Wednesday in advance of a hearing set for Friday.

Martin indicated he planned to make sure the trial would not get postponed for an unnecessary amount of time, pointing out that Avila's case was "substantially older than most of the cases coming through here."

"I've seen homicide cases quicker than this," the judge added.   OP:  This is a case of Justice delayed, Justice Denied.

Robinson Rancheria Disenrollments: Purges in Indian Country

Will Parrish writes about disenrollment at Robinson Rancheria and other northern California tribes at COUNTERPUNCH. For as far back as Clayton Duncan can trace, the maternal side of his family has belonged to the land in and around Robinson Rancheria: a federal Indian reservation near the sleepy Lake County, Northern California, town of Nice, a 107 acre parcel that resulted from the 1978 federal court case United States Government vs. Mabel Duncan (Clayton’s grandmother). For thousands of years, the family was part of a thriving complex of cultures that white anthropologists dubbed “Eastern Pomo.” In the past 160 years or more, they have been key figures in keeping alive what remains of those cultures.

Duncan’s great grandfather, Solomon Moore, grew up in the Eastern Pomo village of Shigom, on the east side of Clear Lake. Clayton’s grandmother, Lucy Moore, hailed from the village of Danoha, situated along an eastern affluent of lower Scott Creek, near where Highway 29 curls around Clear Lake on its way to “Kelsyville,” so named for a notorious mid-19th century butcherer, enslaver, and rapist of Indians.

The Danoha village of Lucy Moore prefigured the location of the old Robinson Rancheria, where Duncan and his siblings grew up. It was also roughly the site of one of the most grisly episodes of genocidal violence that white invaders wrought on Northern California’s native populations during the Gold Rush era: the 1850 Bloody Island Massacre.

These are the barest details of that gruesome episode: A US Cavalry regiment under Lt. Nathaniel Lyon shot and butchered as many as 400 Pomo people in a retaliatory rampage after a group of Native people rose up and killed their brutal enslavers, ranchers Charles Stone and Andrew Kelsey. It was an incident in which the victims at Bloody Island had no involvement. The vast majority of those whose lives the US Army laid down were women and children.

Lucy Moore was present at Bloody Island on that day. She eluded a gruesome and utterly senseless death by hiding underwater, breathing for many hours through a tule reed. She was six years old at the time. Clayton Duncan has lived his whole life acutely aware that his very existence is a miracle.

One of the greatest measures of redemption for the Eastern Pomo and the Duncan family was the David vs. Goliath battle with the US government that Mabel Duncan carried out in the 1970s in an effort to restore federal recognition of the Robinson Rancheria. Congress had “terminated” the rez in 1956, as part of a legislative push to dismantle the reservation system as a whole, which was curtailed only after the American Indian Movement arose in the ’70s. Mabel Duncan was more than 70 years old at the time a federal judge ruled in her favor, creating a new sanctuary for her people.

Clayton Duncan became the Robinson Rancheria’s inaugural vice chairperson, helping the people who moved their secure homes, sanitation, and housing. He has worked in countless ways to preserve and extend his people’s cultural traditions and values on the rez ever since.

As UC Santa Barbara sociologist George Lipsitz has written, however, “In its terminal stages, genocide can look like suicide.” Nowadays, the main barriers to justice that people like Clayton Duncan face frequently come from within their own ranks. The official power structure on innumerable Indian reservations are made up of self-interested carpetbaggers. As many observers and supporters of traditional native people’s values have pointed out, these are often the people who have most adapted themselves to the materialistic values of the dominant society, and who are best equipped to manipulate the reservation system’s dysfunctional power relations for their own personal gain.

Read more on TRIBAL PURGES

Elizabeth Larson Reports: Robinson Rancheria Tribal Members Convene to Kick Out Tribal Council

Our friend Elizabeth Larson has the story of BIG HAPPENINGS on the Robinson Rancheria, a COMPLETE change in the tribal council. You will recall that tribal chair Tracey Avila was just arrested on embezzlement charges.

After four years of strife resulting from overturned or delayed elections and the disenrollments of dozens of tribal members, a majority of the members of the Robinson Rancheria Band of Pomo decided they had had enough.

Meeting on Sunday afternoon at Elem Colony in Clearlake Oaks, tribal members acted, in their words, to take back control of their tribe by kicking out the sitting council, installing a new one and voiding the tribal government structure.

“It just shows that we're all fed up,” said EJ Crandell, who by meeting's end would find himself among the newly elected council members.

According to the organizers of the Sunday meeting, based on Bureau of Indian Affairs guidelines and the tribe's own constitution, approximately 75 enrolled members – or 51 percent of the tribal roll – needed to take part in the voting to make it valid.
Of the close to 100 people present, it was determined that 79 enrolled members were present, clearing the way for them to move forward on a slate of 12 resolutions.

And move they did, swiftly voting unanimously to nullify a 31-year-old tribal constitution and removing from power the sitting tribal council, which includes Chair Tracey Avila and members Curtis Anderson Jr., Michelle Monlo, Kim Fernandez, Stoney Timmons and Nick Medina.

“It's a new world. It's a new path,” said Clayton Duncan, who was elected the interim tribal chair.

Along with Duncan, the new interim council will include Bruce White, Nathan Solario, Monty Orozco, Rosita Anderson and Crandell, a slate accepted as part of the agendized resolutions.

The new council will spend the next 90 days working to get the tribe's operations back up and running, appointing new committees and setting up an election for permanent officers.

Click this link for the rest of the story at the Lake County News

We invite all other tribes to stand up to those corrupt tribal councils that act outside their tribal constitutions.

Elizabeth Larson Reporting: Robinson Rancheria's Tracey Avila Faces Three Years If Convicted

UPDATE:   SacBee finally gets the news.... a little late

Elizabeth Larson of Lake County News gets deeper into the Tracey Avila embezzlement case.  Interesting to note that investigators interviewed Avila at a meeting at the Pechanga Resort & Casino. 

An investigation initiated more than two years ago and carried out by federal officials has led to the arrest of Robinson Rancheria's tribal chair on a charge of felony grand theft for allegedly stealing tens of thousands of dollars from another Lake County tribe.
Tracey Isabelle Avila, 50, of Nice was arrested on a felony bench warrant on Friday, Sept. 9, according to jail records. She posted bail, set at $20,000, and was released later that same day.

Avila is alleged to have taken more $60,000 from Elem Indian Colony of Clearlake Oaks between February 2006 and September 2008, during which time she worked as the tribe's fiscal officer and also was Robinson's tribal chair, according to Deputy District Attorney Rachel Abelson, who is prosecuting the case.
Abelson said Avila is due to appear in for arraignment in Lake County Superior Court's Clearlake division before Judge Stephen Hedstrom on Oct. 31.
According to the case file, the Berkeley firm Karshmer & Associates, Elem Colony's general legal counsel, sent a letter dated June 1, 2009, to Laura Yoshii, acting regional director for the US Environmental Protection Agency's Pacific Southwest Region 9, requesting an investigation into the alleged embezzlement.
The letter, written by attorney Sarah Dutschke, said that after Avila's termination as bookkeeper the tribe uncovered evidence which they alleged showed that during her 30 months of employment Avila had taken funds from the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act grant as well as from grants the tribe had received from the US EPA and US House and Urban Development.

Elem's own investigation led to the conclusion that Avila had allegedly taken the funds through three principal methods – increasing her hourly pay rate without authorization, giving herself unapproved pay advances and signing several of her family members up for health care coverage but not having the required premiums deducted from her paycheck, Dutschke's letter stated.

On June 15, 2009, the US EPA's Grants Management Office opened the investigation, which later was taken over by special agents with the EPA Office of the Inspector General and HUD's Office of the Inspector General, the documents state.
A review of Avila's pay records conducted as part of the investigation revealed that Avila is alleged to have given herself just over $44,000 in unauthorized pay raises, as well as more than $16,000 in additional paychecks and annual leave.

During the same time a check for more than $14,000 was stolen from the tribe and cashed by a Hispanic male suspect in the Chico area, where Avila is reported to have family, according to case file.

According to the investigation, Elem alleged that Avila hired auditors from Robinson Rancheria to conduct an audit of Elem's financial records. The audit reportedly came back clean.  OP:  Uh, looks like a duck and quacks like a duck..

Avila's work records showed she was frequently late or ill, and rarely worked entire weeks, yet still drew full wages, the report said.  OP:  And certainly worth giving a raise to?

The special agents interviewed Avila on June 9, 2010, at Pechanga Resort & Casino in Temecula.   OP  BIRDS OF A FEATHER?

During the interview Avila said that Elem's system for receiving the grant funds was a “mess,” and that others were writing checks on tribal accounts without her knowledge. She said that she eventually quit her job after becoming increasingly frustrated with the situation.
Avila also told the agents that she paid back the pay advances, insisted that the tribal council had authorized her pay raises and accused another tribal leader of taking the missing funds.
Elem tribal members the agents interviewed stated that Avila had threatened to implicate others if she got in trouble, and that over time her work hours dropped from eight hours a day to four. She also allegedly got a better car and started wearing more expensive clothes.

Abelson said Avila could face a maximum of three years in state prison if convicted. Due to the state's realignment, Avila's time could be served in the county jail, which is where prisoners convicted of certain felonies will be housed.

PLEASE read the Elizabeth's full story at Lake County News

Robinson Rancheria Disenrollment Story: 25% of Tribe Terminated Redding Rancheria, the same disgraceful Story

We are on vacation this week and we are pulling stories of disenrollment forward, since there is a protest June 2 at the Pechanga Resort & Casino.  Pechanga is a tribe that practices apartheid on their reservation.  These tribes deserve your moral outrage.    Join the protest at Pechanga, 4500 Temecula Parkway, Temecula CA


Our friend, Elizabeth Larson has the story  on The Robinson Rancheria and Redding:

Late last month, the Robinson Rancheria Band of Pomos Citizens Business Council informed several dozen members of its intent to remove their tribal membership, an action taking place not just locally but around California and the nation.

Between 60 and 74 members have reportedly been told they will be removed from the tribe's rolls unless, as a result of a half-hour appeal hearing granted to those who request it, the council chooses to let the members remain.
The appeal hearings to determine the future for these potential disenrollees began this week.
Tribal Chair Tracey Avila said this week that questions surrounding these tribal members and their entitlement to be included among the band's number have been an issue for years, going back to 1990.
This is the largest disenrollment action the tribe has ever taken, she concedes, as the tribe prepares for a January election to determine who will be tribal chair, as well as two other seats
A June 14 election was decertified, and the tribe's election committee – dominated by Avila's family – has ruled that her challenger for the seat, EJ Crandell – who won the June election – has been disqualified from running.
Crandell and other tribal members, including potential disenrollee Luwana Quitiquit, say the disenrollments are purely political and retaliatory.
The tribe's own enrollment ordinance states that disenrollment is possible on three grounds: the person obtained enrollment by error, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation; they became a fully recognized member of another tribe without relinquishing their Robinson Rancheria membership; the person is a descendant of a disenrollee and doesn't otherwise meet membership requirements.
The ordinance doesn't allow for disenrollment due to adoption, which traditionally has been a common practice among American Indians.
However, the tribal council has passed a resolution to strike the adoption process, which Quitiquit and Crandell say is an ex post facto law, which is prohibited in the tribe's 1980 constitution, just as it is the US Constitution.

If it's truly the case that Robinson's disenrollment is born out of politics and animosity toward rival families, the Robinson band wouldn't be unique. That's because attempts to reduce tribal membership through these types of actions aren't new to Lake County, California or the nation.

On Nov. 10, 2007, 25 members of the Elem Colony were removed from that tribe's rolls, including the last native speaker of the tribe's language. Then-chairman, Ray Brown Sr. acknowledged the move to County News in a previous interview, saying that the move was justified because many of the people were adopted into the tribe and weren't blood relations.

To date, an estimated 2,000 Indians have been disenrolled by 15 California tribes – not including those currently proposed at Robinson, according to John Gomez, president of the American Indian Rights and Resources Organization (AIRRO), a group that focuses on human and civil rights issues.

Bureau of Indian Affairs Deputy Regional Director Dale Risling, based in Sacramento, said “quite a few” tribes are going through disenrollments currently.
He said his agency hears about most of them through the media, and not directly, since they don't usually have a role in settling the disputes because of tribal constitutions. “The ones that we really get are the ones that require our involvement.”

Tony Gonzales, spokesman for the American Indian Movement-West, said gaming tribes decertifying members has become a big problem nationwide as well.That's because a lot is at stake, with gaming tribes across the nation generating revenues in the realm of $46 billion.

“Unfortunately, in the process to gain more money for themselves, they are decertifying members,” said Gonzales. “The irony, too, is they're adopting non-Indians into their tribes.”
Some blame gaming for disenrollments
In California, Gomez said the vast majority of disenrollments have occurred since the passage of Proposition 5, the Tribal Government Gaming and Economic Self-Sufficiency Act of 1998 that allowed gaming on tribal lands, and Proposition 1A, passed in 2000, allowing tribes to operate slot machines and banked and percentage card games.

He said it's mostly the gaming tribes who carry out reducing membership in this way. “I don't believe it's just about greed. I think it's about greed and retaining political power.”

Gomez was among 200 people disenrolled by the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians in 2004. Two years later, as many as 175 more Pechanga tribal members saw their membership disappear. “Both times it just happened prior to regularly scheduled elections for tribal council.”

The Redding Rancheria's first tribal chair, Bob Foreman, and his family – all 76 members – were disenrolled in 2002 after their lineage was questioned. Despite providing DNA samples to prove their ancestry, Foreman – who had been tribal chair for 20 years – was pushed out of the tribe.

Gomez said Foreman, who incidentally was born in Nice, went on to be a founding member of AIRRO.

Foreman died Nov. 19, and Gomez and other AIRRO members are traveling to Redding for his funeral this weekend, at which time they're expected to discuss possible action in response to Robinson's disenrollment move.

He said disenrollments often evolve around election disputes, as in Robinson's case. Similarly, Gomez said the Mooretown Rancheria of Oroville reclassified 30 percent of its membership and denied them voting rights so they couldn't participate in an election planned four days later. “The tribe still counts them as members but they're members without rights.”

Many tribal members will attempt to justify disenrollment actions saying that there is a question about ancestry, but he points out that such questions didn't arise when the tribes were counting members for federal government assistance.

As tribal rolls dwindle, federal funding also can go away, he said. However, the larger gaming tribes can afford to fund their own programs.

Quitiquit and some other tribal members facing disenrollment, many of whom asked that their names not be used at this time due to fear of retribution, said they felt Robinson Rancheria's casino and gaming had given rise to many of their current problems.

Rather than helping Indians get a leg up, they say that gaming is leading to expulsion of tribal members – among them veterans and elders – who may face a life on welfare without the support of their tribal communities.

Some Indian activists have even gone so far as to call disenrollment the “new Indian genocide.”

The problem is such a concern in Indian Country that last year, American Indian Movement activist Dennis Banks said that the Bureau of Indian Affairs needed to intervene to stop the California disenrollments.

A Government Accountability Office report issued last month, titled “Confirmation of Political Appointees: Eliciting Nominees' Views on Management Challenges within Agencies and Across Government,” also recognizes the problem.

The report urged political leaders to ask the following question of nominees for the Secretary of the Interior, which includes the Bureau of Indian Affairs: “Tribal membership disputes and tribal leadership disputes seem to be occurring more and more frequently. What experience do you have in working with tribal leadership and trying to resolve these types of disputes or in trying to prevent them?”

Far-reaching implications for loss of tribal membership

Gomez said AIRRO is seeing the same thing happening around the state – Indians stripped of lawful citizenship and all of the associated rights – from housing to education to health care to jobs.

When membership in a federally recognized tribe is lost, federal help goes away, he said. “It cuts across everything that has to do with their lives.”
The affects aren't just social or economic, but emotional and psychological as well, said Gomez. Being put out of a tribe has serious implications about identity for people who are being told they are no longer Indian.

If Robinson Rancheria goes through with its proposed membership reduction, Quitiquit said the implications could be devastating.
Among the first acts she expects is for disenrolled members to be banished from the rancheria. That would mean leaving their homes; Quitiquit's own family stands to lose two of an estimated 10 homes at stake.

Being cut off from the land also would mean they could be prevented from visiting the graves of their family members at the rancheria's cemetery, said Quitiquit. Gomez said that's happened in other areas.

There would also be a loss of education opportunities and funding, as well as Indian health services,which are critical due to the high number of tribal members suffering from diabetes and chronic diseases, particularly elders.

Those who hold jobs with the tribe also could be fired. She said some of the members in question already have been put on administrative leave from their jobs. A “no gossip” memo also was reportedly issued by Avila to staff, warning that discussion about the disenrollments would result in termination.

Quitiquit, who recently left her job as a cook for a program that provides meals to 24 homebound elders, said 20 of those elders are facing disenrollment. The four who would be left would not be enough to justify continuing the federally funded meals program.

Elders would lose their monthly retirement payments of $400, said Quitiquit. “All the elders are suffering right now because we don't have it.”
All members currently on the disenrollment list have had their payments suspended, including the $300 per capital payment plus a $2,000 Christmas bonus, funded through federal grants and revenues from the tribe's casino on Highway 20.

One elderly woman who is a caretaker for her grandchildren told Quitiquit she won't be able to make ends meet outside of the tribe.

Quitiquit said the tribal council, in its attempt to maintain power, can take these actions under the guise of sovereignty. “Forget about our civil rights.”
In the last election, many people voted for Avila because she said she was not for disenrollment, said Quitiquit. “We were completely fooled.”

She added, “If this is what happens to us, then down the road it's going to happen to the other tribal members they don't like.”

Increasing Efforts to Draw Attention to Disenrollments In Indian Country and Boycotts Of Offending Tribes

Elizabeth Larson of the Lake County News has another story on the protests of Tribal Disenrollments in California, this time on the Robinson Rancheria. Read the Full Article


Throughout the day Friday, about two dozen American Indian community members and their friends stood alongside the entry into Robinson Rancheria Resort & Casino, holding signs, shouting slogans and trying to bring attention to the situation of local tribal disenrollees.

The action comes in the wake of a Bureau of Indian Affairs decision last month to uphold the December 2008 disenrollment action carried out by the Robinson Rancheria Citizens Business Council against a total of 67 tribal members, as Lake County News has reported.

Members of the Quitiquit family, several dozen of whom were disenrolled from the tribe, were back at the scene on Friday, a day they picked because it also was the fifth annual National Indian Day.

The group called for a boycott of the casino and demanded a hearing on what they argue are civil and human rights violations.

They carried signs with slogans that accused the tribe of offering the disenrollees no due process and misspending tribal and federal funding.

But the main issue was the disenrollment action, which has cut off the now-former tribal members from the rancheria and their cultural ties. They say disenrollment is an attack on their identity as American Indians.

“Why is the government backing this genocide on paper?” asked Wanda Quitiquit, one of her family's most vocal members.

A message left at the tribal office seeking comment was not returned.

Quitiquit, ironically, worked for years as a member of the American Indian Rights and Resources Organization (AIRRO), to bring attention to the growing number of disenrollment actions across California and the nation before she herself became a target of it.
AIRRO has estimated 3,500 Indians have been disenrolled in California, with a total of 11,000 civil and human rights violations across the United States as a whole.


During the Friday protest, American Indians from other tribes – including Dry Creek in Sonoma County, and the Apache and Passamaquoddy, the latter from Maine – stopped in to ask questions, as did other community members.


Natives from other areas agreed that many of the problems facing tribes is all about money.

The Quitiquits and others whose names were removed from the tribal rolls say they are planning to appeal the BIA decision, with a letter expected to go out to the agency announcing that intention this week.


“We really don't want to go into court, but if that's the last thing we have to do, that's what we'll do,” Quitiquit said.


Even a favorable court decision doesn't guarantee a welcome back into the tribe, she said, pointing to court rulings in other states that still left disenrollees without resolution.


However, there are efforts to draw attention to the disenrollment problem, both from other activists and from Lake County's congressman, who is calling for a congressional hearing on the matter.


On April 29, North Coast Congressman Mike Thompson wrote a letter to Congressman Nick Rahall, who chairs the House Committee on Natural Resources, which includes the Office of Indian Affairs.


“Disenrollment of tribal members is an issue among tribes in my district and throughout California, as well as in other parts of the United States,” Thompson wrote. “In some cases, members are voted out of tribes for bona fide reasons such as their lack of relative bloodline and/or failure to meet membership or residency requirements in accordance with tribal constitutions. However, in other cases, there appears to be arbitrary removal of entire families for obscure reasons.”


Thompson explained that when Congress passed the Indian Civil Rights Act in 1968, tribal members who believed that their civil rights were abused had no legal recourse except to turn to the tribal bodies that were accused of civil rights infringements.


“On behalf of the growing number of disenrolled Native Americans, I believe this issue merits a congressional oversight hearing be convened to review enforcement of the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968,” he said.


Late last week, Thompson's Washington, DC office told Lake County News that there had been no formal response to, or acknowledgment of, the letter yet.

Quitiquit said she and the others impacted by the disenrollment action are looking to Thompson for leadership at this time.

Worthless BIA Upholds Tribal Disenrollments at Robinson Rancheria.

The worthless Pacific Regional Bureau of Indian Affairs Continues to disappoint:


Robinson Rancheria announced Thursday that the Pacific Regional Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs has upheld the disenrollment of 45 people who were improperly enrolled as members of the tribe.

"The federal government has long recognized that a tribe's right to define its own membership is central to its existence and must be dealt with internally," Tribal Chair Tracey Avila said. "The regional director was right to leave this matter to the tribe. In upholding the Tribal Council's decision to disenroll the 45 people, the regional director also recognized that the disenrollment process was done fairly and in accordance with the requirements of both tribal and federal law. The tribe provided those who were disenrolled with due process by giving them notice of the disenrollment and an opportunity to challenge the decision."

The disenrollment of the former tribal members resulted from the discovery by the Tribal Council in 2008 that a provision added to the tribe's enrollment ordinance in 1982 expanded the criteria for tribal membership beyond that permitted by the tribe's constitution. The Tribal Council struck down that provision and notified people who were enrolled under the unconstitutional provision that they had to demonstrate that they were eligible to be members of the tribe under the criteria set forth in the tribe's constitution. The Tribal Council held hearings on the disenrollment at which the people subject to disenrollment

were permitted to demonstrate that they were eligible for enrollment under the tribe's constitution. Most of the people subject to disenrollment did not attend the hearings. A number of people who presented evidence that they were eligible for enrollment were successful and remain members of the tribe. Forty-five of the people who were disenrolled appealed the Tribal Council's action to the regional director. On April 9 the regional director denied the appeals.

Robinson Rancheria Disenrollment Demonstration

We discussed the disenrollments of some members of the ROBINSON RANCHERIA of POMO Indians HERE Now, there is a way for you to help by standing in unity at their demonstration that is detailed below. Welcome to those members who were disenrolled. Please feel free to comment.

JOIN US IN A PROTEST TO STOP

HUMAN & CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
Occurring at
Robinson Rancheria


Saturday, January 17, 2009 at 9:30 a.m.
Entrance to Robinson Rancheria Casino
Hwy 20 NICE, California


This is an urgent plea to all Indian and non-Indian people alike to join us in a demonstration to focus attention on Robinson Rancheria Tribal Officials who are violating the civil and human rights of several Robinson Rancheria families.

Help us stop these tribal officials who are manipulating the tribe’s rolls and elections in an effort to avoid relinquishing their positions of power.

Robinson Rancheria Officials are ruthlessly using employee termination to take away the livelihood of the Robinson Rancheria membership. They have created an atmosphere that oppresses their people from expressing opposing viewpoints, disregarded tribal traditions and laws to deny members their tribal identity and inherent rights.

Please join us in a demonstration to highlight the need for basic Human and Civil Rights protections for all American Indians.

For more information contact:
Mark and Carla Maslin
maslincarla@earthlink.net

OR
Eddie J. Crandell
eddie.crandell@att.net

Julie Moran
Jmm3331975@yahoo.com

Robinson Rancheria to JOIN Pechanga, San Pascual, Picayune in Termination of Indians from Tribes.Will President Obama look into these outrages?

Rather than looking at the good a tribe can do for its people, the Robinson Rancheria is now looking at termination of over 20% of it's adult membership. Denying them the right to vote, homes, health care. And ALL during Native American Heritage Month

UPPER LAKE – The Robinson Rancheria Band of Pomos Citizens Business Council this week is holding hearings that could have serious implications for the future of dozens of people whose lives are shaped by their unique identity as native Pomo.
Of the tribe's 347 voting members, 60 have been notified that they are being considered for disenrollment, according to Tribal Chair Tracey Avilia.
Other sources within the tribe estimate the number of potential disenrollments to be as high as 74.
Whichever number is correct, both sides agree that this is the largest disenrollment action the tribe has ever attempted in its history.
The action's results could be devastating for those who find their names removed from the tribe's rolls.
Entire families face the loss of their homes, jobs, health care, education and a sense of their own identity. Homebound elders may no longer receive much-needed meals or monthly retirement checks. A daughter of the tribe's last chief also is reported to be up for dismissal.
Those up for disenrollment may have a slim hope of recourse, as the tribe's constitution contains an appeals process involving the Bureau of Indian Affairs which, in many tribal disenrollment cases, can't get involved, said Bureau of Indian Affairs Deputy Regional Director Dale Risling.
Potential disenrollees said the move is based on politics and greed, and that it's arisen out of a disputed June election that was decertified. They say they're being removed from the tribal rolls before a January election is planned so they can't vote to replace key council members trying to hold onto power.
John Gomez, president of the American Indian Rights and Resources Organization (AIRRO), agrees with those assessments of the Robinson Rancheria situation.
In California to date, an estimated 2,000 Indians have been disenrolled by 15 California tribes – not including those currently proposed at Robinson, said Gomez, noting that disenrollments often evolve around political issues and elections.
Avilia, the tribe's current chair, denies those allegations, saying that the disenrollments are a matter of tribal housekeeping, and merely an attempt to deal with longstanding questions about the validity of some members' claims.
The tribal members proposed for disenrollment received certified letters dated Nov. 20 – ironically, during the midst of Native American Heritage Month – notifying them that they were proposed for removal from the tribe's rolls, according to a copy of such a letter obtained by Lake County News.
Further, they were told they could request an appeal hearing with the Robinson Rancheria Citizens Business Council, during which they would have a half-hour to make their case for keeping their membership in the tribe. However, they had five business days to respond to the letter, and many tribal members live out of state.
Those appeal hearings began on Monday and have run throughout the week, according to tribal members.