I don’t know how difficult it is to get raw, objective data on this answer but the blog, Original Pechanga, has given us a guess: $500 million dollars.
The blog keeps contact with many disenrolled Indians from several tribes and based on their former monthly payments from their former tribes’ casinos multiplied by the amount of months they’ve been disenrolled.
Check it out: http://www.originalpechanga.com/2011/09/follow-money-per-capita-theft-by-tribal.html
wayne mong
December 13, 2011 at 7:19 am
Smokeybear said, on the originalpechanga.com blog:
When is this going to….”STOP?” This is happening “OVER AND OVER AND OVER…AGAIN!” And there is no “End In Sight!
Erick Rhoan, you have been very good at showing us what has been going on here in “Indian Country,” and, initially, who is to blame for the majority of the “Injustices” that are happening to the “Native American Indian,” and to your credit, “Why!” Your clarity and insight into the problems that face us all, who have been wronged is “Commendable.”
Now how about taking another approach, or “Putting the Shoe on the Other Foot,” so to speak, and try to give us a little “Insight” into what we can “Do About it?” You seem to be in the “Know” when it comes to “Indian Law,” and the workings of the “Government(Indian Affairs), Congress, and the Like.” For you have got to know that we are in “Serious” trouble here in “Indian Country” and it’s only going to get worse. These “Corrupt and Criminal Tribal Leaders” are routinely “Disenrolling and Banishing Legitimate Members of their Memberships,” and “Sovereingty” being their “Tool Of Choice!” I guess what I’m asking is: “Are you up to the task?” Or will the “Heat” you will have to “Endure” helping the “Oppressed Native American”..”Unsustainable?” Go “Anonymous” if you have too, but we need “Help” here.
December 13, 2011 6:12 AM
The New York Times will have a complete story out tomorrow, here’s a preview:
The bottom line of the six-page, single-spaced letter that Nancy Dondero and about 50 of her relatives received last month was brutally simple: “It is the decision by a majority of the Tribal Council, that you are hereby disenrolled.”
And with that, Dondero’s official membership in the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians, the cultural identity card she had carried all her life, summarily ended.
”That’s it,” Dondero, 58, said. “We’re tribeless.”
For centuries, American Indian tribes have banished people as punishment for serious offenses. But only in recent years, experts say, have they begun routinely disenrolling Indians deemed inauthentic members of a group. And California, with dozens of tiny tribes that were decimated, scattered and then reformed, often out of ethnically mixed Indians, is the national hotbed of the trend.
Clan rivalries and political squabbles are often triggers for disenrollment, but critics say one factor above all has driven the trend: casino gambling. The state has more than 60 Indian casinos that took in nearly $7 billion last year, the most of any state, according to the Indian Gaming Commission.
For Indians who lose membership in a tribe, the financial impact can be huge. Some small tribes with casinos pay members monthly checks of $15,000 or more out of gambling profits. Many provide housing allowances and college scholarships. Children who are disenrolled can lose access to tribal schools.
The money and the immense power it has conferred on tribes that had endured grinding poverty for decades has enticed many tribal governments to consolidate control over their gambling enterprises by trimming membership rolls, critics and independent analysts say.posted by O Pechanga at 5:16 PM on Dec 12, 2011
Leave your comment