From my mailbox:
A close friend told me that he ran into a Dry Creek member this weekend in Redding. This tribal member was bragging about how they were going to be getting alot more money once they disenroll over 100 of their tribal members. My friend told the Dry Creek member that he shouldn't be so proud about this and that someday this may come back on him. It sounds like there will be more disenrollments at Dry Creek once the first wave is done.
Dry Creek Rancheria tribal leaders are using the disenrollments to manipulate their tribal elections, using the casino money as a carrot. Shame on Dry Creek's GREEDY tribal members.
We will be having a demonstration in the future at Dry Creek that will focus on these disenrollments. Hopefully, the Dry Creek disenrolled can find an opportune time that will give us enough advanced notice so other disenrolled Indians up and down the state can attend.
Until you stop the disenrollments, these corrupt tribal leaders will continue to manipulate elections, have little or no oversight and will continue to rule regardless what the remaining tribal members want. It is high time the BIA stop funding and recognizing these corrupt tribal governments.
THERE IS A PROTEST Scheduled.
WHEN: Saturday, March 28, 2009 @ 10:30a.m.
WHERE: 190 Foss Creek Circle Healdsburg, California
Tribal Officials of Dry Creek Rancheria have lost their way and are in the process of turning their backs on their Indian brothers and sisters.
Dry Creek Rancheria Tribal Officials, blinded by greed and power, are proposing to strip 73 adults and 70 children of their tribal identity, culture and heritage. These are the rights their ancestors fought so hard to preserve for their future generations.
This is an urgent plea to all Indian and non-Indian people to join us at a rally to focus attention on Dry Creek Rancheria Tribal Officials that are manipulating tribal rolls and elections, oppressing their tribal members and ruthlessly terminating the employment of targeted members and their supporters.
13 comments:
I wonder if this tribal member will be singing the same tune if it turns out his family is on the chopping block?
He could be in for quite a shock if it turns out he is kicked out of his tribe.
If he thinks it can't happen to him, he is a dreamer.
When I was still in the Pechanga tribe my brother, my uncle, and I were talking one day to the infamous "Mr. Potato Head" and the grand potato told us he was going to get more money no matter what it took.
I think he may have been scouting out potential allies to go against other Pechanga families but he either decided that we were too honest to join in his scheme and/or he turned to the faction he thought would win, he sided with the people he thought could get him more money.
Ironic that before the casino existed he was against the so called CPP, the corrupt faction behind the disenrollment and the moratorium of hundreds of tribal members, when back in the 1980's as the Splinter Group, they tried to form their own tribal government but were turned down by the BIA.
"Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Dry Creek Rancheria Disenrollments: It's Not About the Money?
...A close friend told me that he ran into a Dry Creek member this weekend in Redding. This tribal member was bragging about how they were going to be getting alot more money once they disenroll over 100 of their tribal members."
"'aamokat said...
...When I was still in the Pechanga tribe my brother, my uncle, and I were talking one day to the infamous "Mr. Potato Head" and the grand potato told us he was going to get more money no matter what it took."
March 24, 2009 9:14 AM
"People on both sides of the issue say the fight is also about tribal politics -- the freedmen at times have been at odds with the tribal leadership -- and about money.
Advocates of expelling the freedmen call it a matter of safeguarding tribal resources, which include a $350 million annual budget from federal and tribal revenue, and Cherokees' share of a gambling industry that, for U.S. tribes overall, takes in $22 billion a year. The grass-roots campaign for expulsion has given heavy play to warnings that keeping freedmen in the Cherokee Nation could encourage thousands more to sign up for a slice of the tribal pie.
"Don't get taken advantage of by these people. They will suck you dry," Darren Buzzard, an advocate of expelling the freedmen, wrote last summer in a widely circulated e-mail denounced by freedmen. "Don't let black freedmen back you into a corner. PROTECT CHEROKEE CULTURE FOR OUR CHILDREN. FOR OUR DAUGHTER[S] . . . FIGHT AGAINST THE INFILTRATION.""
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/02/AR2007030201647_pf.html
"Termination by Bureaucracy by Valerie Taliman, Native Americas, Ithaca, Jun 30, 2002
Abstract...
...SHARED LAND, SHARED BLOODLINES
"...The federal government's role in forcing people from disparate heritages onto a shared land base has caused problems elsewhere in Indian Country. Two years ago, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma voted to strip "black Seminoles" of membership in the tribe under the guise of a broad reorganization of its government structure. But black Seminoles, as they call themselves, say money is at the heart of the issue, referring to a $56 million land claim settlement Congress paid the tribe in the early 1990s to compensate them for lands taken in Florida in the early 1800s.
...Chief Jerry Haney characterized the issue as political in nature, not racial. He says Interior lawyers agreed with the tribe that the $56 million was intended to compensate tribal members for land stolen and "the blacks were not landowners." It is up to the black Seminoles to prove their ancestors had Seminole Indian blood in 1823."
http://bellevuecollege.edu/diversitycaucus/AIFF/CBE.htm
In spite of what others have said about the glaring differences and complications involved between the California Indian dis-enrollments and the dis-enrollments of Seminole and Cherokee Freedmen descendants in Oklahama, I think the similarities speak for themselves.
The interesting thing is, it is not illegal, or even considered a civil or human rights violation to be greedy. What smacks at the very foundations of human and civil rights is the removal of another persons citizenship in the name of greed. The tribes could have just as well left the membership/citizenship status of the dis-enrolled intact and refused to give certain people any money, that would have kept it an internal tribal rights issue rather than one needing attention from external forces. What the greed does is show the motivation for the crime, and the motivation often determines what acts need to be taken to address the crime.
If a nation were desperate because of food or water shortages for example, and needed to force a population shift in order for others to survive, than the correct humanitarian act would be to provide food and water assistance to the nation until they can stop the population transfers. This is not the case with national greed. The greed can be addressed by a fair dispensation of the bounty, but fair people have to be available to facilitate this act.
Allen L. Lee
Mr. Lee, I know calling our tribal elder who is still in the tribe a name like Mr. Potato Head is silly but it keeps us from calling him something worse.
We could call him Benedict Arnold but that infamous name is already taken.
Does anybody see any similarities between what is happening in Indian Country and what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany where long time citizens of their nation were labled as being not of the people?
While the level of evil that is occuring over and over again in more and more Indian tribes is nowhere near the level of evil perpetrated on the Jews in World War 2 Germany and German held territories, wrong is still wrong, even if it is nowhere near as extreme.
People don't see it as any big deal as they don't see us being machine gunned or herded into gas chambers.
They also don't see us as being "rubbed out" by the Mob trying to control the vast wealth that Indian gaming has become.
But we have been rubbed out (at least for now) but in our case it is by the stroke of the pen.
I removed the previous comment as it was spam, not due to any editorial comment on our issues
i am a life long California resident enrolled in and very active in a tribe located in another state,i feel that in the Federal system,if we get into having Supreme Court or U.S. Congress intervene in our Soveriegnty in stepping in to decide for us how our citizenship is defined WE ALL LOSE,they would like to terminate us and take our casino revenue for themselves wich will be one possible result of this,California has one of the highest Indian populations of any state not because of the giant size of the California tribes ,so dont forget we are ALL IN THIS together we all are affected by one another descisions across the States so dont turn your backs on fellow Indians in your state from other places either and lets get together !
Aaron, the problem is that our tribe, Pechanga, didn't even follow its own internal procedures and laws in disenrolling hundreds of long time tribal members in good standing.
Are other tribes insisting that the tribe follow its own laws?
No, to date not one of them has put any pressure on not only Pechanga but on any other of the tribes who are behaving unlawfully.
The solution could be for tribes accross California or the U.S. having a sort of United Nations of tribes to sanction and be critical of tribes who violate their citizens rights.
Here in Southern California there is an intertribal court but Pechanga did not sign on to be a part of it.
Pechanga chairman Mark Macarro once said, "what goes on at Pechanga is no business of the white man."
The problem is that he also believes that what goes on at Pechanga is no business of other Indians as well.
I know you probably aren't blaming us for the possible erosion of sovereignty, but some do, when it should be the rouge tribal governments who should be blamed.
We would never have gone outside of our internal tribal system if that system had not let us down.
What else are we supposed to do?
Correction to my last post: it really wasn't the internal system that let us down it was the implemention of that system and the tribal authorities that let us down.
Hello Aaron,
So it's better that just some of you lose, being the dis-enrolled,
than everybody losing?
You can't tell people you have dis-owned to stick together and defend you after you have done the deed.
There is a knife in the back of the dis-enrollees placed there by their tribes. As a tribal member,do you plan to take it out, push it in further, or just say "Hey, do you know there is a knife in your back, does it hurt?"
The surviving Jews of the concentration camps don't wear those concentration camp tattoos on their bodies to remind them that they should protect German sovereignty, and the Native Nation dis-enrollees shouldn't be expected to point to the knife in their backs in defense of Native Nation sovereignty, makes no sense.
Your tribes ran your dis-enrollees into the hands of your enemies, and the tribes are responsible for that, not the dis-enrollees. Since you are so active in your tribe, you might want to make that point to those who still are recognized by the tribe.
Allen L. Lee
When I tell people, non Indians especially, what has happened to us and how unfair the disenrollment proceedings were, they can't believe something like this happened in the United States.
We were and still are citizens of the U.S. and no other place in the U.S. but in the kangaroo court proceedings that are occuring in tribe after tribe would it happen.
Beyond ignoring every piece of evidence that supported our claim of being legititmate members of our tribe we were were subjected to the following:
1. We were not allowed to have legal representation at any of the disenrollment hearings.
Question: where else in the United States of America are defendants denied attorneys to represent them at their hearings except in the the kangaroo court that our disenrollment proceedings were?
2. We were denied official copies of hearing transcripts-it was very hard to prove that the enrollment committee didn't even follow their own internal procedures without these transcripts.
Question: where else in the United States is one side of a legal proceeding not allowed a record of what transpired except in the kangaroo court proceedings that our disenrollment hearings were?
3. The people who filed disenrollment charges against my family were the same people who cast the deciding votes in kicking us out of our tribe and some of the people who submitted the so called evidence against us were family members of this slim majority on the committee, brothers, sons, daughters, nieces and nephews of said committee members.
Question: where else in the United States would any court allow our accusers to be our judges and jury in deciding our fate except in the kangaroo court that our disenrollment proceedings were?
4. We didn't even see some of the evidence submitted against us until the Record of Decision informing us we were kicked out of the tribe.
There were articles key to, what I believe is the enrollment committee's twisted interpretation of tribal history, that were on the list of evidence reviewed by the committee, that we were never given before their decision against us.
Question: where else in the United States is evidence denied to the defense except in the kangaroo court that our disenrollment proceedings were?
5. Prior to our appeal hearings to the tribal council we received letters that said writing implements of any kind would not be permitted in the hearing room and these letters again stated that our legal representatives would not be permitted to attend the hearings.
Question: where else in the United States would the defense not even be allowed to take notes but in the kangaroo court proceedings that our disenrollment hearings were?
Aaron, you seem like a reasonable person so I don't think you would truly support what has happened to us.
But what I have stated is exactly what tribes like Pechanga has done to their own people.
I know some Pechanga tribal hack may pop in here and say the facts really weren't on our side but without a fair trial, and we didn't get that by any stretch of the imagination, what our critics think is a foregone conclusion, hasn't been proven.
Aaron, we did all we could internally so what else are we supposed to do now?
Your supposed to curl up and die....
Anonymous of March 30, 2009, 4:08 PM said, "Your supposed to curl up and die..."
What a stupid comment and by the way, we will never give up and we will return and again have what is rightfully ours.
It is the evil people who are going to shrivel and die in their greed, not us!
Aamokat, where can one get a list of those legitimately excluded for fraud ?
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