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Indian disenrollments a statewide, nationwide issue
Written by Elizabeth Larson
Saturday, 06 December 2008

This is the second in a series of articles on Robinson Rancheria's effort to disenroll certain of its tribal members.

UPPER LAKE Late last month, the Robinson Rancheria Band of Pomos Citizens Business Council informed several dozen members of its intent to remove their tribal membership, an action taking place not just locally but around California and the nation.

Between 60 and 74 members have reportedly been told they will be removed from the tribe's rolls unless, as a result of a half-hour appeal hearing granted to those who request it, the council chooses to let the members remain.

The appeal hearings to determine the future for these potential disenrollees began this week.

Tribal Chair Tracey Avilia said this week that questions surrounding these tribal members and their entitlement to be included among the band's number have been an issue for years, going back to 1990.

This is the largest disenrollment action the tribe has ever taken, she concedes, as the tribe prepares for a January election to determine who will be tribal chair, as well as two other seats.

A June 14 election was decertified, and the tribe's election committee dominated by Avilia's family has ruled that her challenger for the seat, EJ Crandell who won the June election has been disqualified from running.

Crandell and other tribal members, including potential disenrollee Luwana Quitiquit, say the disenrollments are purely political and retaliatory.

The tribe's own enrollment ordinance states that disenrollment is possible on three grounds: the person obtained enrollment by error, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation; they became a fully recognized member of another tribe without relinquishing their Robinson Rancheria membership; the person is a descendant of a disenrollee and doesn't otherwise meet membership requirements.

The ordinance doesn't allow for disenrollment due to adoption, which traditionally has been a common practice among American Indians.

However, the tribal council has passed a resolution to strike the adoption process, which Quitiquit and Crandell say is an ex post facto law, which is prohibited in the tribe's 1980 constitution, just as it is the US Constitution.

If it's truly the case that Robinson's disenrollment is born out of politics and animosity toward rival families, the Robinson band wouldn't be unique. That's because attempts to reduce tribal membership through these types of actions aren't new to Lake County, California or the nation.

On Nov. 10, 2007, 25 members of the Elem Colony were removed from that tribe's rolls, including the last native speaker of the tribe's language. Then-chairman, Ray Brown Sr. acknowledged the move to County News in a previous interview, saying that the move was justified because many of the people were adopted into the tribe and weren't blood relations.

To date, an estimated 2,000 Indians have been disenrolled by 15 California tribes not including those currently proposed at Robinson, according to John Gomez, president of the American Indian Rights and Resources Organization (AIRRO), a group that focuses on human and civil rights issues.

Bureau of Indian Affairs Deputy Regional Director Dale Risling, based in Sacramento, said quite a few tribes are going through disenrollments currently.

He said his agency hears about most of them through the media, and not directly, since they don't usually have a role in settling the disputes because of tribal constitutions. The ones that we really get are the ones that require our involvement.

Tony Gonzales, spokesman for the American Indian Movement-West, said gaming tribes decertifying members has become a big problem nationwide as well.

That's because a lot is at stake, with gaming tribes across the nation generating revenues in the realm of $46 billion.

Unfortunately, in the process to gain more money for themselves, they are decertifying members, said Gonzales. The irony, too, is they're adopting non-Indians into their tribes.

Some blame gaming for disenrollments

In California, Gomez said the vast majority of disenrollments have occurred since the passage of Proposition 5, the Tribal Government Gaming and Economic Self-Sufficiency Act of 1998 that allowed gaming on tribal lands, and Proposition 1A, passed in 2000, allowing tribes to operate slot machines and banked and percentage card games.

He said it's mostly the gaming tribes who carry out reducing membership in this way. I don't believe it's just about greed. I think it's about greed and retaining political power.

Gomez was among 200 people disenrolled by the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians in 2004. Two years later, as many as 175 more Pechanga tribal members saw their membership disappear. Both times it just happened prior to regularly scheduled elections for tribal council.

The Redding Rancheria's first tribal chair, Bob Foreman, and his family all 76 members were disenrolled in 2002 after their lineage was questioned. Despite providing DNA samples to prove their ancestry, Foreman who had been tribal chair for 20 years was pushed out of the tribe.

Gomez said Foreman, who incidentally was born in Nice, went on to be a founding member of AIRRO.

Foreman died Nov. 19, and Gomez and other AIRRO members are traveling to Redding for his funeral this weekend, at which time they're expected to discuss possible action in response to Robinson's disenrollment move.

He said disenrollments often evolve around election disputes, as in Robinson's case. Similarly, Gomez said the Mooretown Rancheria of Oroville reclassified 30 percent of its membership and denied them voting rights so they couldn't participate in an election planned four days later. The tribe still counts them as members but they're members without rights.

Many tribal members will attempt to justify disenrollment actions saying that there is a question about ancestry, but he points out that such questions didn't arise when the tribes were counting members for federal government assistance.

As tribal rolls dwindle, federal funding also can go away, he said. However, the larger gaming tribes can afford to fund their own programs.

Quitiquit and some other tribal members facing disenrollment, many of whom asked that their names not be used at this time due to fear of retribution, said they felt Robinson Rancheria's casino and gaming had given rise to many of their current problems.

Rather than helping Indians get a leg up, they say that gaming is leading to expulsion of tribal members among them veterans and elders who may face a life on welfare without the support of their tribal communities.

Some Indian activists have even gone so far as to call disenrollment the new Indian genocide.

The problem is such a concern in Indian Country that last year, American Indian Movement activist Dennis Banks said that the Bureau of Indian Affairs needed to intervene to stop the California disenrollments.

A Government Accountability Office report issued last month, titled Confirmation of Political Appointees: Eliciting Nominees' Views on Management Challenges within Agencies and Across Government, also recognizes the problem.

The report urged political leaders to ask the following question of nominees for the Secretary of the Interior, which includes the Bureau of Indian Affairs: Tribal membership disputes and tribal leadership disputes seem to be occurring more and more frequently. What experience do you have in working with tribal leadership and trying to resolve these types of disputes or in trying to prevent them?

Far-reaching implications for loss of tribal membership

Gomez said AIRRO is seeing the same thing happening around the state Indians stripped of lawful citizenship and all of the associated rights from housing to education to health care to jobs.

When membership in a federally recognized tribe is lost, federal help goes away, he said. It cuts across everything that has to do with their lives.

The affects aren't just social or economic, but emotional and psychological as well, said Gomez. Being put out of a tribe has serious implications about identity for people who are being told they are no longer Indian.

If Robinson Rancheria goes through with its proposed membership reduction, Quitiquit said the implications could be devastating.

Among the first acts she expects is for disenrolled members to be banished from the rancheria. That would mean leaving their homes; Quitiquit's own family stands to lose two of an estimated 10 homes at stake.

Being cut off from the land also would mean they could be prevented from visiting the graves of their family members at the rancheria's cemetery, said Quitiquit. Gomez said that's happened in other areas.

There would also be a loss of education opportunities and funding, as well as Indian health services,which are critical due to the high number of tribal members suffering from diabetes and chronic diseases, particularly elders.

Those who hold jobs with the tribe also could be fired. She said some of the members in question already have been put on administrative leave from their jobs. A no gossip memo also was reportedly issued by Avilia to staff, warning that discussion about the disenrollments would result in termination.

Quitiquit, who recently left her job as a cook for a program that provides meals to 24 homebound elders, said 20 of those elders are facing disenrollment. The four who would be left would not be enough to justify continuing the federally funded meals program.

Elders would lose their monthly retirement payments of $400, said Quitiquit. All the elders are suffering right now because we don't have it.

All members currently on the disenrollment list have had their payments suspended, including the $300 per capital payment plus a $2,000 Christmas bonus, funded through federal grants and revenues from the tribe's casino on Highway 20.

One elderly woman who is a caretaker for her grandchildren told Quitiquit she won't be able to make ends meet outside of the tribe.

Quitiquit said the tribal council, in its attempt to maintain power, can take these actions under the guise of sovereignty. Forget about our civil rights.

In the last election, many people voted for Avilia because she said she was not for disenrollment, said Quitiquit. We were completely fooled.

She added, If this is what happens to us, then down the road it's going to happen to the other tribal members they don't like.

Tomorrow: Avenues of redress, government involvement and what the Bureau of Indian Affairs might do in the Robinson Rancheria case.

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at elarson@lakeconews.com

http://lakeconews.

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If you live in a house, as opposed to an apartment, you will need to install outdoor lighting. Now the biggest problem is to make sure that it is safe enough for people and animals. If you use overhead wiring, you run the risk of the wiring breaking in a high wind and falling to the ground. If you place the wiring underground, you run the risk that the insulation may get damaged by normal gardening activities, and the electricity may leak out. Your pet animals or your children can easily get a nasty shock if they come in contact with the exposed conductor. There is a chance that electrocution may take place. The basic reason is that the normal outdoor lighting system runs on high voltage electricity. You can eliminate any risk of shock or electrocution by installing a low voltage outdoor lighting system.
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DR CONGO: UN-MANDATED GROUP FINDS EVIDENCE RWANDA, ARMY AIDING RIVAL REBELS
New York, Dec 12 2008 8:10PM
A group of experts monitoring a United Nations arms embargo on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) reported today that it had found evidence that the Rwandan authorities and the Congolese army have aided opposing rebel groups in the war-ravaged east of the country. In its final report to the Security Council the Group of Experts, set up in 2004, said that while there is little documentation available to prove Rwandan material support to the rebel National Congress in Defence of the People (CNDP), it had found evidence that Rwandan authorities have been complicit in recruiting soldiers, including children, facilitated the supply of military equipment, and sent their own officers and units to the DRC to support the CNDP.It based its research on dozens of interviews with eyewitnesses, including former combatants and officers of the mainly Tutsi CNDP, members of the business community, regional intelligence officials and local eyewitnesses, all of them consistent and credible in describing the involvement of the Government of Rwanda.Given the nature, however, of the conflict in eastern Congo, much of the financial and military support is informal and does not leave a paper trail, the Groups Coordinator Jason Stearns told a later news conference.The Group recommended that the Security Council Sanctions Committee remind the Government of Rwanda of its obligations under which it pledged last year to prevent any support to CNDP, entry into and exit from its territory of CNDP members, use of Rwandan telephone networks and banking systems, and holding fund-raising meetings in Rwanda.With regard to the DRC authorities the Group said it had obtained strong evidence that the Government army, known by its French acronym FARDC, collaborated with the mainly Hutu Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), including through the provision of military equipment and in joint operations against CNDP.FDLR collaborated extensively with FARDC during the December 2007 clashes with CNDP in Masisi and Rutshuru territories and has continued to collaborate with FARDC during fighting that began this August, it added.An upsurge of fighting since August between the two rebel movements, the army, and various other militias in North Kivu province in eastern DRC has driven 250,000 more civilians from their homes, in addition to the hundreds of thousands uprooted in earlier clashes.The Group interviewed over 30 FDLR ex-combatants, of whom 15 provided first-hand, concrete testimony of FARDC-FDLR collaboration. It also interviewed several former and active FARDC soldiers who corroborated this information.The Group has identified at least three Congolese army commanders who are guilty of providing support to the FDLR, Mr. Stearns said. While this collaboration is widespread and regular, the Group has not been able to prove to what extent the top leadership of the army is involved in this practise but its cleat that they know and have done nothing to bring it to an end.The Group has put forward several FARDC commanders for sanctions for supporting FDLR and another group called PARECO, and recommended that the Sanctions Committee request the DRC authorities to issue clear directives to its troops that collaboration and cohabitation with FDLR and PARECO are prohibited. Appropriate disciplinary measures should be taken against FARDC soldiers collaborating with these armed groups. The report noted that the FDLR obtains millions of dollars a year from the minerals trade, mostly through taxation of mines and traders, and that many traders are complicit since they know the gold, cassiterite, coltran and wolframite come from FDLR-controlled zones.We believe that the burden should be on the Congolese buying houses as well as on international mineral traders to conduct due diligence into the source of the product, Mr. Stearns said of one of the planks in enforcing the embargo.The Group also pointed out that CNDP and FDLR leaders reside or travel through countries in Africa, Europe and North America where they rally support and funds. The Group believes that such political support is essential for their fund-raising and constitutes a violation of the arms embargo, Mr. Stearns said.
Dec 12 2008 8:10PM
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