Disenrollment Demands Serious Attention from ALL SOVEREIGN NATIONS, Including the Federal Government

Attorney Ryan Seelau had an essay in Indian Country Today  in 2013 on the issue of the harmful action of tribal disenrollment foisted upon thousands of Native Americans by their own tribes.  How much has changed? Graton Rancheria has ended disenrollments, Enterprise Rancheria and the Robinson Rancheria have brought people home where they belong.   Still, 11,000 are without justice, and tribal people are either unwilling or afraid to DO THE RIGHT THING.......what is the answer?

Before I go any further, let me be very clear about something. 

Support FEDERAL RECOGNITION for the NEWE TONGVA NATION. Gabrielino was erroneously omitted from the list of entities eligible to receive services

FIND THE GOFUNDME Page HERE

The Newe Tongva Nation, a band of Gabrielino Indians, led by Chairman Ronnie Fierro is seeking federal recognition, demanding in the California Southern District Court for federal recognition of the Tribe.

The Tribe is not requesting review under the acknowledgement process at 25 C.F.R. Part 83 because the Tribe was and continues to be federally recognized. Gabrielino was erroneously omitted from the list of entities eligible to receive services from the BIA brownshirts in error.

Barbara Murphy, Architect of the Redding Rancheria's Disenrollment of the FOREMAN FAMILY, WALKS ON

Barbara Murphy

Barbara Murphy, a former chairwoman and respected elder of the Redding Rancheria, passed away on May 8. She was 79.  May her soul find the peace that in life, she ripped away from Bob Foreman and his family, via disenrollment

Murphy served as chairwoman for several years and as chief executive officer of the tribe for 16 years, according to a tribal press release.

Murphy also was a reminder of a darker era in federal policy. As the last living survivor of the termination era, she was one of the 17 original distributees who helped keep the community together after the United States ended its government-to-government relationship with the tribe.

Darker STILL was the fact that she was a leader in the movement to disenroll the family of the tribe's FIRST Chairman, Robert Foreman  whose story we tell often.

It's not honorable to disrespect the dead. but it's also dishonorable to not tell the truth about what happened.......

RIP Barbara Murphy, may nobody EVER ask to dig up your body, like you had Virginia Timmon's remains exhumed for a DNA test, and then disregarded the information......

RIPPING CHILDREN from their Parents is NOT a New Phenomenon. Native Children were STOLEN and FORCED to ATTEND BOARDING SCHOOLS

In the news is the stories of children of illegal immigrants being "RIPPED" from their families by Donald Trump.  Missing from those news stories is that his predecessor Barack Obama ripped thousands of children from their parents too.

Carlisle Boarding School

CA Senate Candidates WOEFULLY IGNORANT of Native Issues in Their State

This past week, we learned how WOEFULLY IGNORANT many of California's Senate Candidates are about Native American Issues.


Interesting project from AC that I found on Facebook, he's kindly given permission to post.  He reached out to a number of candidates for U.S. Senator in California's upcoming primary election. Here is what some of them had to say about the government-to-government relationship between Indian tribes and the United States, of which CALIFORNIA has 109:

Really Tom?  How so?

Admitting you know nothing is honest

New Nooksack Chairman: 306 should QUIT fighting for THEIR RIGHTS, THEY Ain't GONNA GET THEM

Nooksack 306
compared to DOGS by new chairman

As far as I’m concerned, the battle with the 306 is now over,” said the Nooksack’s new chairman, speaking of the hundreds of people the tribe considers disenrolled. He now plans to get them to “move along,” even as they continue fighting and making startling allegations.

Ross Cline Sr., embezzler and felon, two weeks into his new role of Nooksack tribal chairman, knows things have been bad.

Council members stopped holding public meetings. The previous chairman was nowhere to be seen. And he could feel the tension as he walked around tribal neighborhoods east of Bellingham.


“You’re afraid to say hi. You don’t know who’s your enemy.”  (how about LOOKING IN THE FREAKING MIRROR, Mr. New Chairman, SAME as the OLD CHAIRMAN....


The reason for all this is the long-running fight in this tiny tribe of roughly 2,000 over whether some 300 members should be kicked out. The tribal government’s attempt to do so became a symbol of tribal disenrollment nationwide and unraveled in such a tumultuous and legally suspect way that federal and state authorities paused millions of dollars in funding.

GO HERE FOR THE FULL STORY:  SEATTLE TIMES
Learn More on Disenrollment and Ethnic Cleansing in Indian Gaming Country at these Links:
Gaming Revenue Blamed for Disenrollment
Disenrollment is paper Genocide
Read the ICT article on NOOKSACK here
CA Tribal Cleansing
TRIBAL TERRORISM includes Banishment
Nooksack Disenrollment

FAKE Indian Elizabeth Warren SUES a REAL INDIAN. FREE SPEECH?

TOO GOOD NOT TO POST the only thing missing is another democrat calling Shiva a (red dot Indian, not a whoo whoo Indian) :

A self-described "real Indian" who is running against Mass. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren is suing after city officials demanded he take down his signs calling her a "fake Indian."

The upstart independent Senate challenger, Shiva Ayyadurai, on Sunday filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the demand from the city of Cambridge violates his constitutional free speech rights, according to The Washington Times.

Since March 17, Ayyadurai's campaign bus has sported two identical signs picturing himself and a rendition of Warren wearing Indian attire. Emblazoned next to the images are the words: "Only a REAL INDIAN Can Defeat the Fake Indian."


The bus has reportedly been stationed in a parking lot in front of an office building owned by Ayyadurai, who faces exceptionally long odds, for more than a month -- just a mile from Warren's home.

Tribal Membership: It's NOT the P.T.A or Kiwanis, Yet Tribal Leaders Revoke Memberships Like it Doesn't Matter

Me and Mrs. OP are on vacation for three weeks, I will try to post new articles, but will bring some older articles forward for our new readers.  PLEASE, visit my blog often, share on social media and ask family and friends to do the same:  


From 2011:

The process of determining who is a legitimate member of an Indian nation is inherently an emotional one, and never more so than when tribes are expelling members, as has been happening quite a bit of late locally.
At those tribes with successful casinos, quite a bit of money can be at stake (in addition to issues of self-identity and family ties) ---- and so it's no surprise that lawyers are getting involved. Or at least wanting to get involved.
Outside of tribal courts, each of which sets its own rules, those being expelled have no legal right to appeal ---- something a group of recently expelled members from Pala want Congress to change.
We believe this would be a mistake.
The Indian tribes are best suited themselves to determine their own eligibility standards and rules. Just as it would be highly inappropriate (not to mention unconstitutional) for the government to pass laws determining how religions admit (or expel) members, so should tribal membership be left alone. 

B.I.A. Director Bryan Rice RESIGNS after Only 6 Months

Bryan Rice has resigned just six months after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke appointed him to lead the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

 It is our policy not to discuss DOI personnel matters in the press,” BIA spokeswoman Nedra Darling said in an email. She ignored follow-up questions about whether Rice was still employed.

The resignation comes roughly two weeks after the agency’s internal watchdog concluded that poor Interior Department staff record keeping made it impossible to determine if the reassignment of dozens of senior agency staff last year was legal. 

Zinke's Comment doesn't Age well:

When Zinke announced Rice as his choice to lead the bureau in October, he said the veteran Interior official “has a wealth of management expertise and experience that will well serve Indian Country.”

“I have full confidence that Bryan is the right person at this pivotal time as we work to renew the department’s focus on self-determination and self-governance, give power back to the tribes, and provide real meaning to the concept of tribal sovereignty,” Zinke said.


Rice is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and previously led Interior’s Office of Wildland Fire beginning under the Obama administration in 2016.

9th Circuit RULES NLRA APPLIES to TRIBAL CASINOS in Casino Pauma Case

A U.S. appeals court says employees at Native American casinos can receive protection under a federal labor law.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously on Thursday that federal officials reasonably concluded that the National Labor Relations Act applies to tribal employers. The judges said the law does not violate tribes' right to self-government.

The decision came in a fight over efforts to unionize employees at Casino Pauma, a Southern California casino owned by the Pauma Band of Mission Indians. A judge ruled in 2015 that the tribe committed unfair labor practices under the NLRA when it tried to stop the distribution of union leaflets.

The 9th Circuit upheld that ruling.

Trump To Strike a BLOW at Tribal Sovereignty in Medicaid Requirements?

Trump Administration LOGO

After over a decade of disenrollments, abusing over 11,000 Native Americans (Tribes saying, THAT's okay, WE can do it) Now they don't like it when someone else is doing the abusing.




In this Teen Vogue op-ed, Ruth H. Hopkins (Cankudutawin-Red Road Woman), a Dakota/Lakota Sioux writer, biologist, attorney, and former tribal judge, explains how the Trump administration is trying to remove the classification that designates Native tribes as unique nations

Under the guise of Medicaid reform, it was reported by Politico on April 22 that the Trump administration is considering steps that would undermine the United States Constitution and upend hundreds of years of federal Indian law court precedent by dismantling federal recognition of tribal sovereignty, which acknowledges tribes’ right to govern themselves.

They have denied requests by tribal leaders to grant natives exemption from new Medicaid work requirements by disregarding tribes’ distinct political status as native nations and changing their designation to a racial group only, thereby making such an exemption a potential illegal racial preference. This action breaches the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, that says that treaties with tribes are the supreme law of the land, and shirks the government’s legal responsibility to provide health care for tribal citizens.

Native nations have existed for millennia on the North American continent as distinct Indigenous groups. The federal government currently acknowledges the existence of at least 567 tribes located in the U.S., although there are more that are recognized by states. The federal government officially recognizes these tribes’ through treaty, and most recently, through a regulatory process established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1978. 

Trump’s apparent decision comes from the President’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and would suddenly eliminate treaty and trust obligations owed these tribes by removing their distinct classification as sovereign political entities and instead recategorize natives as a race only.

READ THE OP ED HERE:

Organized Labor DEFEATS TRIBAL LABOR BILL

Another crack in the sovereignty dam. 

Organized labor managed an increasingly rare feat on Monday — a political victory — when its allies turned back a Senate measure aimed at rolling back labor rights on tribal lands.

The legislation, called the Tribal Labor Sovereignty Act, would have exempted enterprises owned and operated by Native American tribes from federal labor standards, even for employees who were not tribal citizens.

The A.F.L.-C.I.O. said passage of the measure, the subject of several years of tribal lobbying, would have amounted to the most aggressive erosion of labor protections since 1940s.

A package of bills containing the measure fell five votes short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster.

CATHOLIC CHURCH and Native American Tribe Reach Consensus

After centuries of abuse of Native Americans, Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez signed 17 new protocols in March that serve as guidelines for churches and their institutions to welcome and include Native Americans of California.


The protocols include a range of topics, including the prohibition of using Native American burial sites as construction sites, allowing events that involve the formal participation of Native Americans to use a traditional blessing with a sacred herb, and specifically stating that Native Americans are not to be invited to events "merely for purposes of demonstration or cultural expression but for appropriate, full and active participation."

Twice the church has apologized for the treatment and punishment of Native Americans by Catholics, as well as the spread of disease to tribes by Westerners.

Read MORE of the story HERE

Courts SAYS NO to Disenrolling Tribe: GUIDIVILLE RANCHERIA WILL NOT GET CASINO 100 Miles Away From Ancestral Lands

Despite the fact that its reservation is situated 100 miles to the north, in Ukiah, Mendocino County, the Guidiville Rancheria claimed the Point Molate promontory should be transferred to the tribe under the “restored lands” provision of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. The tribe said its ancestors had once inhabited the Bay hundreds of years ago.

Read the whole story here

CA Senator Dianne Feinstein and former Senator Barbara Boxer were against the casino plan for Point Molate, which we wrote about in 2009.

Guidiville is a tribe, one of many which has disenrolled over 11,000 Native Americans, stripping rightful members of their Native identity.