Broadman and Miller: Native Lawyers say Disenrollment BAD for the BOTTOM LINE....REDUX

They've written before on the issue of  disenrollment and the costs to tribes, and now there's more in Indian Country Today:

First, disenrollment harms existing businesses. In Washington, a small faction of the Nooksack Tribe has unsuccessfully tried to disenroll a group of members known as the “Nooksack 306,” since late 2012. The nearly three years of upheaval has brought the Nooksack government’s operations to a screeching halt, and impaired all of the Tribe’s businesses.

In 2013, the faction fired dozens of disenrollees who, over the last decade, had helped build the Tribe’s two casinos and keep Nooksack gaming operations in the black. Within months, the Nooksack Tribal Chairman announced that the Nooksack River Casino might close because of a judgment against the casino of more than $20 million for unpaid debt. As reported by the Bellingham Herald, “the tribal council was too preoccupied with a controversial effort to disenroll hundreds of tribal members” to properly run the Tribe or its enterprises.

The Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians, which “has been disenrolling members for decades” for sake of larger Indian gaming revenue per-capita distributions to remaining tribal members, is in the same financial purgatory. Last year a federal judge shuttered its once lucrative casino, causing a catastrophic default on the Tribe’s $250 million bond issuance through Wells Fargo Bank.

Not only are both the enrolled and disenrolled Chukchansi Indians now suffering financially—the latter far more harshly than the former—but so are the bondholders and various other stakeholders—with the singular exception of the lawyers. Indeed, “the casino closure has significantly affected Madera County’s economy and the nearby communities.” In short, disenrollment bankrupts.

Second, disenrollment seems to attract entrepreneurs of chaos: investors, lawyers, and consultants willing to do business with regimes that terminate their own members for profit. Self-styled “enrollment auditors” will examine a Tribe’s membership records, for a price. Ask the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, which expended $900,000 for an enrollment audit and in turn put over 300 members on the disenrollment chopping block.


Learn More on Disenrollment, Ethnic Cleansing in Indian Gaming Country at these Links:
Gaming Revenue Blamed for Disenrollment
disenrollment is paper Genocide
CA Tribal Cleansing
Tribal terrorism
TRIBAL TERRORISM includes Banishment
Nooksack Disenrollment