Pechanga Water Rights Bill S1983 Should NOT pass out of Senate Indian Affairs Committee: Please, Sen. John Barrasso, do the RIGHTTHING

Today, I sent this letter to Senate Indian Affairs Committee Staffers please help Pechanga Reservation Allottees whose water rights are being usurped, by sharing this on social media:

Dear Committee Member:

Over the past 12 years, Pechanga officials have disenrolled over 400 previously recognized tribal members. Additionally, hundreds more have been denied membership in the tribe under an illegal moratorium enacted to limit the number of people who benefit from the tribe’s economic development ventures. READ( Pechanga's Paper Trail of Tears and Paulina Hunter Ancestry )

Those who have been disenrolled and denied membership include many allottees that would be adversely affected by S1983 as they provide that the very officials who have stripped or denied the allottees of rights set forth in tribal and federal law shall be responsible for satisfying the very same allottees’ entitlement to water.

Additionally, the Acts fails to provide adequate protections for allottees against future abuses by Pechanga tribal officials in the settlement and allocation of their rights under the Acts. Stronger safeguards and greater penalties are needed to deter tribal officials from once again taking or denying ownership rights vested in allottees and others who may have rights under the settlement agreement and the Acts.

I also oppose S 1983 as they fail to provide and protect the rights of the Temecula band or village of Indians, and their descendants. The Reservation was set aside by Executive Orders dated June 27, 1882 and August 29, 1893, for the use and benefit of the Temecula Indians and the Pechanga Tribe NO LONGER provides those benefits for allottees still living on the reservation. Additionally, NO member of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Pechanga Tribal Council or it's water committee, nor the local water district, has contacted Hunter allottees still residing on their original 1895 alotment. 

How can we expect fair and equitable treatment?  How can you TRUST Pechanga, whose chairman Mark Macarro has lied to congress before?  ( READ: Pechanga's Golf Course is on Land They Told Congress Was Culturally Significant. Department of Interior, House Natural Resources Committee )  

 

PLEASE, DO NOT SEND THIS BILL OUT OF COMMITTEE