Friday, January 8, 2010

Pechanga Indian Removal Case: Dissenting Opinion in Jeffredo v Macarro Decision Gets it Right

In a previous post U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Rejects... we wrote that it was rare to have the dissenting opinion published. Well, we have that for you here. We have bolded many of the pertinent portions where the dissenting judge points out the obvious to those justices that apparently too the "blind" portion of the justice is blind too seriously. Take a look.



Dissenting Opinion Jeffredo v Macarro

3 comments:

Allen L. Lee said...

Sounds familiar. I've never met this person in my life. Let's hope the next time it's the majority decision or even unanimous

'aamokat said...

"Access to and residency within the Pechanga Reservation is a privilege which may be granted or denied to an individual upon proper authority of the Pechanga Band.

Use by non members of roads within the Pechanga reservation is by permission of the Tribal Council and is subject to revocation at any time and for any reason."

Folks understand that Pechanga are masters at using any wording of any law, ordinance, or contract inside or outside of the reservation, to their advantage.

Ask any supplier or vendor who has done business with them.

So yes we are under detention as at any time for any reason we could be denied access to our land and for those of our family who live there, our homes.

Mr. Lee, understand why a lot of us use pen names like 'ammokat or remain anonymous when we post at this blog as being critical of our tribe's actions could cause our family members who live on the reservation not to be allowed to go home as it could be seen as "any reason" to deny them access to the reservation by the tribal council.

If that happend I guess the court couldn't say that our land was taken from us and that we still owned the land but what good is the land if we can't go to it?

The dissenting judge's opinion does have it right as we are under detention and even though we have a land patent from the U.S. government as Temecula Indians, the tribal government could deny us access, as stated above, for any reason at any time.

Allen L. Lee said...

I do understand and accept your reasoning for some of the anonymous postings 'Aamokat.
I'm just leery of those who have adverse agendas to the issue at hand who also post as anonymous.
There are envious people out there who resent any affluence that is not theirs to control, especially if it doesn't fit their racial expectations. They see an issue like this, a critical human rights issue, in my mind, and they try to manipulate it.
Back to the Dissent. I like that the topic of Santa Clara Pueblo v Martinez was included. I actually don't think it would be sustained under any critical review of Human Rights, but since it was an issue of U.S. Civil Rights, The federal courts yielded to tribal discretion.
The point that tradition and custom in the Santa Clara Pueblo decision can't be sustained in the Pechanga dis-enrollment based on Judge Wilkens dissent is well stated. Even if tradition and custom were founded, the ICRA and International Human Rights norms would make such dis-enrollments illegitimate.