Loretta Lynch: Send THIS Letter Requesting She Protect Native American Civil Rights

It's been over 13 months Loretta Lynch has been confirmed  by the U.S. Senate to succeed the ineffective Attorney General Eric Holder.   Please get a letter to her, so that she can begin to understand the abuses happening, NOW ON HER WATCH, in Indian  Country. 

The Honorable Loretta Lynch
United States Attorney General
Department of Justice Building
950 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20530

Dear Attorney General Loretta Lynch:

I respectfully submit this letter urging the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division to commence a full-scale investigation into the gross civil and human rights violations which have infected Indian Country for over a decade.

Throughout Indian Country, tribal officials including Robert Smith (Pala), Mark Macarro (Pechanga), and Chad Smith (Cherokee) have taken actions which have denied and/or stripped over 10,000  individual Indians of their citizenship rights and privileges as tribal members and denied them access to federal benefits and programs in the areas of housing, education, health, voting and public works assistance. Pechanga, Pala, Redding, Hopland, Nooksack, Chukchansi, Enterprise, San Pasqual and Grand Ronde are just a few tribes which have terminated the rights of their people. 

In some instances, the illegal actions occurred a decade ago, however, there has been a marked increase since Indian Gaming has evolved into a multi-billion dollar business. Tribal leaders justify their right to systematically deny and/or strip basic rights and privileges from their citizens under the guise of tribal sovereignty.  We cannot allow sovereignty to be used as a club to beat the oppressed. The time is right for your department's civil rights division to use it's full force on the corruption that has spread throughout Indian Country.

Tribal leaders have routinely committed acts to deny Indian individuals due process; equal protection of tribal, state, and federal laws; property interest rights; and voting rights. Theses actions have been carried out in gross violation of tribal and federal laws, such as the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968, which were specifically enacted to guarantee and protect the rights of the individual Indian.  
If you will recall, in President Obama's 2015 State of the Union, he said this: but surely we can agree that the right to vote is sacred; that it's being denied to too many.   Well it certainly is TRUE in Indian Country where up to 50% of a tribe is denied their right to vote.

Using sovereignty to abuse the weak and render them helpless is abhorrent.The federal government can no longer allow the offending tribes and tribal officials to claim that this is a sovereignty issue that rests solely within the domain of tribal courts and tribal law. Few Tribes actually have tribal courts. and, in most cases, the tribal government officials responsible for the violations of law are the very same people who pass judgment as to whether or not laws have been violated - they are the judge, jury and alleged criminal all rolled into one.  In the Nooksack matter, in Washington State, the tribal council refuses to follow their own court's decisions, choosing instead to fire the judge and get one who will rule the way they want.
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The United States has a trust responsibility to the thousands of individual Indians whose basic rights have been infringed upon. Unfortunately, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has determined that their trust responsibility extends only to the tribal government and government officials and not to the thousands of individual Indian victims and their ancestors. Therefore, I believe that the DOJ has the legal and moral responsibility to investigate and prosecute such violations of basic rights.

Justice shouldn't be denied as a result of political wrangling by politicians fighting to protect their tribal “clients” who funnel millions of dollars into their campaign coffers as we've recently seen in the release of the DNC emails.

I urge you to direct the DOJ Civil Rights Division to initiate an investigation into the growing number of human and civil rights violations described above. In addition, I hope that any investigation would not be short-circuited by those who would claim tribal sovereignty as a justification for inaction.