REDDING RANCHERIA: WIN-River Casino Tribe Celebrates 12 Years of Disenrollment, Stripping of Citizenship and Disenfranchisement Of the FOREMAN FAMILY

Chairman Robert Foreman

January 27, 2004 is a sad date in California History.  12 years of living with disenrollment, the stripping of tribal citizenship by corrupt leaders of the Foreman family, including the first chairman of the Redding Rancheria.

All 76 members of the “Foremans” were removed from the Redding Rancheria tribal rolls based on nothing more than a conjured up rumor alleging my mother Lorena Foreman-Butler was not the daughter of her mother Virginia Timmons, one of Redding Rancheria’s 17 Original Distributees.


As former Chairman Bob Foreman wrote:

Tribal Officials never produced a single piece of evidence to dispute my mother's maternal lineage and my family provided reams of legal and contemporary documents proving her mother was Virginia Timmons. Tribal Council still required my family to provide genomic DNA from my deceased mother and grandmother to retain our tribal citizenship

Despite my family providing Tribal Council with DNA test results from two separate labs of 99.987%  and 99.890%, proving by the legal standards established by the American Bar Association and the American Medical Associations that Lorena Butler and Virginia Timmons were mother and daughter, Tribal Council still stripped my family of our tribal citizenship



Using the lure of increased casino per capita payments, the conspiracy to disenroll my family happened under the watchful eyes of the Tribal CEO Barbara Hayward-Murphy and Tribal Chairwoman/*Tribal Attorney Tracy Edwards.
Both of these individuals lacked moral character to protect my family’s civil rights.

Barbara Hayward Murphy

Murphy - who wouldn't say how she had voted - said that just because the Foremans are no longer in the tribe doesn't mean they stop being Indians, or lose their capacity to go out and work. She added that every tribe restored after termination is going through similar power struggles and membership disputes.

Tracy Edwards

RETALIATION the Cause?

Tribal Attorney David Rapport was quoted in the August 2006 Harpers magazine stating, “Part of the impetus for the Redding Rancheria disenrollment, according to the tribe’s own lawyer, was “all kinds of interpersonal things. There were a lot of things family members did to others that were resented.”

I can only assume Mr. Rapport’s was referring to the things my family brought to the tribal council table that officials wanted to keep hidden. Often times these “interpersonal things” were brought to my family’s attention by family members of former Tribal Chairwoman Tracy Edwards’ family the “Benners” and family members of current Tribal Chairwoman Barbara Murphy’s family the “Haywards.” These “interpersonal things” were brought to my family's attention after these tribal officials tried to sweep the corruption under the rug.
One such example was when members of Tribal Attorney Tracy Edwards' family were upset when they found out their brother and uncle Jim Benner, who was the tribe's Gaming Commissioner at Win River Casino, had fraudulently enrolled his adopted daughter into the tribe years earlier. 

Read more at TribalCorruption.com