Another story appeared about the disenrollment of King Freeman and eight of his family members that I talked about a while back.
No big surprise, the disenrollment was based on a personal grudge: http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/sdcounty/article_061c2929-ac32-5049-94ac-bc53ce6fe612.html
The thing that gets me is that tribes still use blood quantums. Why anyone would want to trust an outdated method to determine who is or isn’t Indian has never made sense to me. Maybe some could point me to some scholarly literature or critical analysis on why this method is still used.
Errors and conflicting information in the documents over the years have led to decades-old disputes among many tribes. Ousted members say those errors, omissions and missing information have been used to remove individuals for political and financial reasons.
There’s always a trouble with documents when it comes to proving Indian descendency. It’s funny how this didn’t stop anyone from maintaining their tribal membership until after the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed.
Peterr
September 7, 2011 at 9:29 am
I thought tribal enrollments and disenrollments were always political. But what do I know?
Anyway, aside from blood quantum, what would you propose for determining membership?
Erick
September 7, 2011 at 5:29 pm
I’ve given this some thought off and on, and I’ve wondered what kind of enrollment provisions I would draft for my own tribal nation.
Needless to say, a potential member must show that he or she is a direct, lineal descendent from an established member of the tribal nation. Next, this lineal descendency must be proven with as far back in time as possible. The enrollee’s records must comport as closely as possible to the tribal records as to who is currently a member. However, some deference needs to be given to the enrollee because of the historicity and accuracy of census records at the turn of the 20th Century when state and federal officials began keeping track of Native American peoples. In addition, an enrollment committee should take into account early anthropological and archeological biases inherent in the scholarly literature at that time when tribes were named. For example, the Miwuk Indians didn’t call themselves “Miwuk,” but rather someone else did. “Miwuk” means “people” in various Miwuk dialects, but when asked by early anthropologists like Kroeber, et al., what name tribal communities called themselves, they simply responded that they were “people,” and whatever that name was in their native language became the label of the tribe. (Another example: “Sioux” isn’t what the Sioux called themselves, but was a derogatory term applied to them by their enemies, the Ojibway: “You don’t want anything to do with those sioux, those little snakes.” The Sioux called themselves Lakota, Dakota or Nakota, meaning “allies,” or “friends,” but I can’t recall off the top of my head.) Simply put, an enrollee shouldn’t bear an extra burden in proving his Indian identity because early academics didn’t understand the socio-cultural background of his ancestors, or that they didn’t care to either. The evidentiary burden the enrollee must shoulder shouldn’t be too strict, but one of reasonable certainty or preponderance of the evidence.
No blood quantums. Lineal descendency only. What does it matter if you’re one-half, one-fourth, one-quarter, or one-whatever? The theory that racial purity imparts a greater sense of “culture” is logically unsatisfying, as if a one-sixteenth Indian does not how to participate and live his or her own ancestors’ culture more fully than a full-blooded Indian. There’s just so many variables (and volumes of academic literature) that go into how one interacts with one’s culture that setting a bright-line test is simply unfair and illogical.
Oh, and the last thing: once a tribe enacts an enrollment provision, then there should be a tribal constitutional provision or amendment that requires a near-unanimous vote of the entire membership in order to change it or remove it.
However, all of this voluntary on their parts. They could simply have as sparse of a provision as possible (and there are, I’ve seen some), leaving a tribal council plenty of room to let in or kick out anyone they’d like, and still be able to tell the BIA that they followed their constitution “to the letter.”
But, in short, that’s what I’d do rather than have blood quantums.
Guero Nunez
September 7, 2011 at 9:45 am
That sounds too familiar, I am a little surprised and dismayed that Pala would soil their hands in the manner that Pechanga has done. Nothing good will come of this action, for once the road is trodden, disenrollment’s for reasons of power and money, other acts against the people will occur. This trend that the modern, casino, Indian is taking will see the demise of a culture that once stood out as separate in manner and belief in all areas of society. The erosion of family, community, religion, can be seen in this modern time as a result of the sudden wealth and cultural assimilation into the world of individualistic capitalism witch is contrary to the communalistic nature that was once the Indian way that tribes fought to preserve through the last 400 years since the settlement of James town or the missionaries on the west coast.