This sounds a lot like Redding Rancheria. They have harassed, threatened & beat up employees, customers, their own tribal members & other Indian people who have been invited to participate in events or have come to put their money into the casino.
It is a very shameful time for tribes and their citizens who have allowed this type of behavior. The dictatorships and the bullying that is taking place is so outrageous and it really looks bad on American Indians everywhere.
I never thought I would see it all come down to this. I was always proud to be a part of what I felt was a historic time in this country when I witnessed my dad, who was our Tribal Chairman at a gathering of all Tribal Leaders at a Senate meeting in Washington, DC. I witnessed the Tribal Elders along with other Tribal Leaders who fought in the Vietnam war tell stories of their tribes and how they struggled with poverty, etc. I watched grown men cry as they testified on why Indian Gaming was going to help Tribes with economic development for their people to be able to have education, housing, health benefits through self reliance.
I believed in this vision and was proud to see it all come to life. I stood in the field with other Indian people and Mark Macarro when we filmed for Prop 5. I participated along with other California Indians in San Francisco when we all demonstrated for Indian Gaming in California. I will never forget the march to the steps of the Ninth Circuit Court with all the other Native men, women and children.
And now to see what has become a terrible disrespect to some tribes not only to their tribal citizens, but to our elders who have passed on and fought to live to see their children survive and make something of themselves through education. I was going to college when my rights and my family's rights were violated. I lost my education as the tribe was paying for it. Many other family members lost the same rights to their education.
I am appalled that those rights and other rights have been stolen by people who have no right to take the most sacred part of our being away from us. This is such a crime and the criminals have to answer for it. The fact that the loophole of "sovereignty" has allowed them to push their crime to other levels is a joke.
This is a major crime to any human being. Sovereignly is not for committing crimes against humanity, it is to be used as a protection for people. Whoever thought of using sovereignty as a way to protect their crimes has a very dark and evil mind. It is as evil as the mind of Hitler and other evil dictators throughout the world.
The victims need to stand up for their rights and continue to protect what is rightfully theirs. Teach your children to stand for their rights. There is nothing wrong when it is right. The only wrong is letting the criminals continue to commit crimes against the victims. In this case, the criminals have been given fame, when they deserve shame.
Greed, power and corruption has ultimately become a way of life for some of these tribal leaders and as long as they get away with it without justice, more tribal leaders will figure out that they can do the same to any tribal member, because they are untouchable. I never thought I would ever see such injustice in this time in our lives. Shame on those who don't stand for the innocent victims.
I would like to see a hero rise up and take a stand for our American Indians who have lost their voices and their rights.
Peace & Love
Carla Foreman-Maslin
14 comments:
Carla,
Thank you for your powerful words. It is shameful what is happening in Indian Country right now. I urge you to continue your fight. There are many in our nations with their heads bowed in shame, and unfortunately silence as to the abuses that you speak of. I stand with you.
Thank you Carla.
It's time for those tribes that realize that these rogue tribes like Redding, Pechanga, Picayune are making the rest of Indian Country look bad.
They definitely will be responsible for erosion of tribal sovereignty.
Couple that with the egregious actions of the Cherokee tribe vs. their Freedmen relatives and I'm thinking there will be a LOT of activity in the courts, AND our Democratic friends in Washington DC who KNOW what is happening is WRONG.
SETTLE this tribes, and do the right thing.
Settle it, do the right thing, these are words of citizens, not ousted, disgruntled tribesman.
Even strangers can see there's a big problem!
The tribes, as the Republicans, really NEED to see you will NOT continue to get away with abuse and misuse. How much does it take to wake you up!!
Settle it, do the right thing!
Your politicians may not be there to protect you soon. This new group might not be bought off so easily. They are very sensitive to the abused.
The CBC has now gained strength with a President Obama. He will side with them in next session of Congress.
As we stood with those who lost their rights with Prop. 8, we should stand with ALL who are losing their rights in Indian country.
Mrs. Maslin has been working to end the abuse of civil rights for her family for too long.
Please help all disenfranchised CA Indians by sending letters to tribes with Casinos telling them you will not support their business enterprises that practice apartheid..
I don't think President-elect Obama sided with the Congressional Black caucus in their support of the Cherokee Freedmen.
If Mr. Obama didn't sign on in support of them, then how can we be sure he will help us?
Plus the fact that none other than Pechanga tribal chairman Mark Macarro, a huge violator of Indian Civil Rights, was on the 2008 national democtratic platform committee representing Indian issues.
Additionally most of the democrats in the California state legilslature supported Pechanga in their drive for the expanision of their casino.
Despite the fact that they are well aware of the abuses tribes like Pechanga have perpetrated on their own people.
The democratic party likes to fancy itself as the party of civil rights.
BUT I SAY, DEMOCRATS PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS OR ARE YOU TOO BUSY TAKING CAMPAIGN MONEY FROM BIG GAMING TRIBES AND THEN LOOKING THE OTHER WAY!
Carla's words are powerful and they hit home.
The Foreman family have been put thru hell by the shameful actions of the Redding Rancheria Tribal
Criminals of the Pit River Tribe.
These criminal actions have been repeated over and over again by
Pechanga, Enterprise, Mooretown,
Laytonville, Santa Rosa and so
many other Tribes who violated
and denied human and civil rights
and caused so much suffering to so many Native American's.
We, who have been wronged, need to stay focused on our goal to expose these Tribes and their corrupt actions as much as we can.
Carla Foreman-Maslin is a true woman warrior she chairs the
Airro Board.
"This is a major crime to any human being. Sovereignly is not for committing crimes against humanity, it is to be used as a protection for people."
Peace & Love
Carla Foreman-Maslin
That's my point as well. Good words.
Allen L. Lee
To 'aamokat,
I think Barack Obama needs to be presented with an alternative scenario to the Santa Clara v Martinez case. Just replace Julia Martinez with Barack's American mother and the Navajo father with Barack's Kenyan father and the whole dis-enrollment thing should hit home for him. How would he like it if Santa Clara v Martinez was a U.S. policy and cost him and his children their citizenship.
Allen L. Lee
‘U.S. Supreme Court
SANTA CLARA PUEBLO v. MARTINEZ, 436 U.S. 49 (1978)
436 U.S. 49
SANTA CLARA PUEBLO ET AL. v. MARTINEZ ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT
No. 76-682.
Argued November 29, 1977
Decided May 15, 1978
“…Respondent Julia Martinez is a full-blooded member of the Santa Clara Pueblo, and resides on the Santa Clara Reservation in Northern New Mexico. In 1941 she married a Navajo Indian with whom she has since had several children, including respondent Audrey Martinez. Two years before this marriage, the Pueblo passed the membership ordinance here at issue, which bars admission of the Martinez children to the tribe because their father is not a Santa Claran. 2 Although the children were raised on the reservation and continue to reside there now that they are adults, as a result of their exclusion from membership they may not vote in tribal elections or hold secular office in the tribe; moreover, they have no right to remain on the reservation in the event of their [436 U.S. 49, 53] mother's death, or to inherit their mother's home or her possessory interests in the communal lands. “
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=436&invol=49
Mr. Lee, that is what people don't seem to get, that enrollment issues in Indian country is not membership in a club it is citizenship in a nation that we, the disenrolled, have lost without due process.
My scenario is similar to yours except my analogy will use U.S. citizenship as the example.
Imagine you were a United States citizen your whole life but all of a sudden other citizens turn in statements to the U.S. government saying that you are not a U.S. citizen, just statements with no facts to back up their assertions.
You are then summoned to a government committee who will decide your fate.
Before your appearance in front of the committee you receive a letter that says you can't bring an attorney to the hearing that your legal representive will not be allowed to attend.
At the hearing you are not told why your citizenship is being questioned.
All you are told is there are questions about your qualifications to be a U.S. citizen but you are not told what those questions are.
You are just given the statements that were submitted by the other citzens who had questioned your citizenship.
Again, just statements that have no basis of facts to back up their claims.
The statements say that they have never recognized you as being a U.S. citizen and none of their statements are notarized.
By the way, some of the statements are from family members of the government committee members who are going to decide your fate.
The government committee gives you a list of documents that you must submit within 30 days and all of those documents must be certified or notarized.
You ask for official copies of the transcripts of the hearing with the government committee but you are told you cannot have any copies which hinders your defense right from the start as you have no proof that the government committee didn't even follow their own written procedures, which you have strong reasons to believe that they didn't.
You turn in the list of documents within the 30 day period and they include ceritified red ribbon census records, probate records as you are a land owner of a family parcel that was given to your family over 100 years before by the government, as well as notarized statements by other U.S. citzens who say they have always recoginized you as being a U.S. citizen that directly contradicts the citizens that say you are not.
In the probate records and other testimony in your support are statements from citizens from the founding of the nation that gave notarized testimony that they recognized you as being a U.S. citizen.
Also, the government committee hires an outside expert on U.S. citizenship and he rules that you indeed meet the requirments for U.S. citzenship.
You think you have a very strong case and your hopes of retaining your U.S. citzenship are increased when the people vote to outlaw taking away people's citizenship, that everyone who is a citizen as of the day of the vote will remain a citizen and the evidence you turned in easily refutes the statments by the other citzens who say you shoudn't be a U.S. citizen.
SO THE CASE AGAINST YOU IS OVER, RIGHT? WRONG!
Regardless, eight months after the people voted to outlaw taking away citizenship, you have your citzenship taken away anyway.
You appeal the decision to a board of appeal and although you are allowed to have an appeal hearing, you again receive a letter that says you can't have an attorney present with you and that you will not be allowed to even take notes, as note taking implements will not be allowed in the hearing room.
You are also told you cannot have any copies of the transcripts of the appeal hearing.
Your appeal is limited to what was presented at the initial hearing in front of the committee and to what you turned in during the 30 day period after the initial hearing and you only have 30 minutes in which to present your appeal and although you were allowed to turn in a written statement of appeal, it is limited to 25 pages and also is limited to what was presented at the initial hearing and to what was turned in during the 30 day period.
You are not allowed to challenge the findings of the committee which were not presented to you until the Record of Decision that took away your U.S. citizenship even though the government committee never told you why you were losing your citizenship until then.
But even then the committee's reasoning is vague and the committee ignored every piece of evidence in your favor including the findings of its own hired expert of U.S. citizenship.
NOW JUST SUBSTITUTE U.S. CITIZENSHIP FOR PECHANGA CITIZENSHIP!
There are also other examples equally grievous that show how our rights were trampled on that will have to be continued on another post.
Part two continued from my last post comparing disenrollment with losing one's U.S. citizenship:
Before you were called in front of the government committee your family members had found evidence that the committee members weren't doing their job so your family notified the powers that be that there were ample reasons to investigate the committee members for wrong doing.
Your family members also found evidence that some of the government committee members might not qualify for U.S. citizenship themselves.
Those committee members are cleared from losing their citizenship by less than a legal quorum of their committee, a violation of the rules governing reviewing citizenship cases, and you never find out if the powers that be ever investigated the allegations of wrong doing on the part of the committee members because if there was an investigaion, it was done in secret and the findings, if there were any, were not made public.
By the way, the members of the government committee's citizenship case was taken first, out of the order the cases were filed as your family had been filed against first and once those committee members are illegally cleared, they are allowed to vote on your family's case.
You had asked the powers that be to have those committee members your family had accused of wrong doing on the committee and who your family members had filed a challenge to their citizenship not be allowed to rule on your citizenship case because they couldn't be counted on to make an unbiased decision on your citzenship case.
And also because some of the people who had submitted statements against your citizenship were related to those committee members your family members had made allegations of wrong doing against as well as challeging their citizenship qualifications.
But those government committee members are allowed to vote to take away your citizenship anyway despite the obvious conflict of interest.
FOLKS THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED TO US WHEN WE WERE DISENROLLED FROM THE PECHNAGA TRIBE AND NOT ONLY DID THE TRIBE VIOLATE THE INDIAN CIVIL RIGHTS ACT (ICRA), THAT SAYS WE HAVE THE SAME RIGHTS ON THE RESERVATION AS ANY OTHER AMERICAN CITIZEN, THEY ALSO VIOLATED THE PECHANGA TRIBE'S OWN CONSTITUTION THAT SAYS AN INDIVIDUAL'S RIGHTS ARE TO UPHELD WITHOUT MALICE OR PREDJIDUCE.
The Pechanga tribe's only response is that as a sovereign nation they have the right to determine who their citizens are.
But as I and others have said, if a tribe doesn't follow their own laws, who because of sovereignty can make them do so!
I know I have posted similar comments several times but maybe new readers, who haven't read my earlier comments that are now in the archives, will want to read these comments.
'ammokat
Great interpretation of what really happened to us. Maybe the public/Pech members can better understand why we Won'T/CAn't GO AWAY!!!
Make thing right with your people Pechanga!! It's never to late!
Thank you Anonymous, Nov. 17, 2008, 1:54 PM.
Most of the current tribal members have no idea what went on behind closed doors and the gross unfairness of the proceedings.
A lot of them also may not want to believe that their leaders could violate people's rights the way they did otherwise how can it be explained how people like Mark Macarro and Butch Murphy keep getting re elected year after year.
I don't believe most of Pechanga's people are bad people but like I said, most don't know what happened and while there are some who believe that we were wronged, they don't know what to do about it.
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