One Little Indian Reports

And the Band Played On...

In a recent decision handed down by the federal appeals court, the judges determined that the Pechanga Tribe has complete authority to decide who will and who will not be a Tribal member.  The interesting part about this decision was the language.  The court stated flatly that the Tribe also did not have to follow any laws, including their own, when making enrollment decisions.

I would like to request a drug test for this particular Appellate Court.  Clearly, these guys are not thinking about what impact their decisions will have on the rest of Indian Country and the thousands, even tens of thousands of Native Americans that are now at greater risk because the Courts have now emboldened those Councils that may have been sitting on the fence on the issue of disenrolling some members.

What is even more disturbing is the fact that an American Court is openly stating that a sub-group of people who are American citizens are above the laws of the United States and even above the laws of the Tribe if they should so choose.  What?  Where did the idea of total immunity from everything for the Tribes come from anyway?

The fact of the matter is, most Tribes are operated by people that have no training in governance, no background in creating governmental infrastructures, or in public relations.  The Tribes tend to be autocratic, authoritarian, and even dictatorial in their postures towards the general public and especially towards their own people.  The Court system just keeps giving them more freedom to do more damage to their own Tribes and to the reputation of Tribes everywhere.

It is a sad day in America when I can identify more fascist governments within 30 minutes of my home in California than exist in the Middle East.  In another case from Washington state, their Supreme Court ruled that sovereign immunity extends to all businesses owned and operated by a Tribal government.  This decision flies in the face of everything that I hold dear.

In the lawsuit, the Plaintiff worked for a business owned by a Tribe.  During his employment, he was spit on by Tribal members who also worked there.  He was taunted with comments like "can't wait to roast the white whale."  He brought this clear violation of his civil rights to the attention of the bosses and they just laughed it off.  After eight months on the job, he quit and filed a lawsuit against the company.

In their stunning decision, the Washington state Supreme Court has opened the door for unchecked violations against the citizens of the United States, citizens that are subject to the laws of this country and to the Constitution.  Now, if this decision is allowed to hold up, Tribes can purchase major sized business ventures (such as the $965 M purchase of the Hard Rock Cafe's by the Seminole's of Florida) and suddenly everyone that works for this company has just lost all of their GUARANTEED CIVIL RIGHTS.  How does any court in this country reconcile this huge, glaring and dangerous contradiction?

It has been a pet theory of mine that the government is all too aware of the damage being done by the Tribes.  The policy that continues to grant the Tribes more authority with less accountability is causing many of them to run amok, abusing their authority at every turn, blackmailing their members with economic gains or losses, all the while the feds just sit there, watching and claiming ignorance or immunity.  I think its ignorance.

While the Tribes are decimating themselves for the casino gold, the government has once again failed to fulfill its trust obligations to the Tribe and to the Individual Indians.  This is the final act of the termination era when the government empowers the captives to turn on each other.  Its a perfectly engineered plan, which means it happened by accident.

And all the while, the government, the public in general and the Tribes themselves play out their parts in this sad and perplexing drama and in the background the band just plays on...

California State Universities Must Draw the Line

The following text is a letter that I dispatched to the CSU Board of Trustees concerning a huge donation from Table Mountain Rancheria ($10M) for their new library complex.  The President of the University has announced he wants to get permission from the CSU Board to name a portion of the building after the Table Mountain Tribe.  This is unacceptable as long as the Tribe continues to deny their own people a place at the table.  This is unacceptable as long as Tribe's like Table Mountain and Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians continue to disenroll and ignore their brethren so that they can make more money.

And, it is even more unacceptable that public institutions like CSU Fresno turn a blind eye to the plight of the Native American's who have become victimized by these gaming Tribes.  These Tribes are not pillars of the philanthropic community.  They are only interested in their long term public relations goals: keep the public eye away from disenrollment, immunity from federal labor laws, immunity from federal civil rights laws and immunity from financial accountability laws.  The only way to do that is to keep giving spectacular amounts of money to the local communities so that they look like benevolant benefactors to the general public.  WELL, I'M HERE TO TELL YOU THAT THIS IS PURE FANTASY!  The Tribe's couldn't care less about the general public.  The only value any of the public has to a Tribe is the money they leave in the slot machines!  These Tribes don't care about their own, why would they care about anyone else?

To the CSU Trustee Board:

I want to address the upcoming request from CSUF President John Welty to name a portion of the new library after the Table Mountain Tribe.  This is a dishonor to the people of the Table Mountain Rancheria that are still denied membership in the Tribe.  It is not acceptable for the city and state agencies to accept large sums of money from the Tribes and not take into consideration the fact that these Tribes are dictatorships.  They do not stand for anything other than the status quo on the Rancheria’s.

In the case of Table Mountain, the current leadership under Leanne Walker Grant is one that is very well defined.  If a member of the Tribe speaks out against her in any way, they are promised to be bounced out permanently.  If a member of the Tribe talks publicly about the FACT that the Tribe will not acknowledge all of its legally qualified members, that member is promised to join their relatives on the outside looking in.  The members of TableMountain have an average income of nearly $1 million per year per member.  The 77 members of the Tribe are living like kings while their own family members (mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandma, and grandpa) are left to live in poverty.  The remaining 120+ Mono/Chukchansi descendants aren’t getting a dime from the Casino.

At the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians, the Tribe has spent the past three months holding “kangaroo court” hearings to disenroll members of the Tribe.  The total of disenrolled members to date is almost 25% of the total membership.  The Tribe states that they aren’t doing anything wrong and that the members who are being disenrolled don’t meet the qualifications of the Tribe.  That’s funny; these very members met those qualifications for the first fifteen years while the Tribe used their names for head count and federal dollars to operate the Tribe.  The Tribe currently has $50-$70,000,000 in the bank, and the Tribal Council along with a small faction within the Tribe has bent over backwards to trim the numbers down.  The urgency of their actions has been in anticipation of per capita distributions to the remaining membership.  Every member of the Tribe that has been disenrolled has added money into the pot for everyone else.

So, do you see why it is imperative that you do not acquiesce to the public relations payoffs of the Tribes?  I cannot emphasize this to you enough!  It’s bad enough that the CSU system is taking their blood money; it would be incomprehensible if you allow their name to go on any part of that building.  These Tribes practice “genocide on paper” with their actions and it’s up to the people of California and the US to not allow them to become glorified while doing it.

In the event that you aren’t aware of this, when a member of a Tribe is disenrolled, they lose their Tribal membership AND their federal recognition status.  This means that they are no longer eligible for federal Indian housing, education or health benefits.  They are now off the books.  In the meantime, their brethren are immune from any type of lawsuits against them.  Their brethren are allowed to discard any rules that the Tribe has followed in the matter of enrollment issues.  They are authorized to violate the civil rights of the Tribal member they are disenrolling.  They are insulated from public scrutiny by claiming “sovereignty.”  They are destroying families and they are destroying what remains of Native culture in California.

If you want to know how I know so much about this, it’s simple.  I was the Chairperson of the Enrollment Committee/Dept. for the Picayune Rancheria from 2003-2005.  My brother served on the Tribal Council from 2004-2006.  While I was on the Committee, I was given direction to begin an audit on the membership that would eventually lead to disenrollments.  We were supposed to utilize a new checklist format that was developed by my Committee for future applicants. This order came within weeks of the opening of the Chukchansi Gold Casino.  I refused to follow such a heinous order.  The committee wrote its legal opinion on why we could not apply rules that were written in 2003 to members who were accepted into membership in 1994.

The Tribal Council responded with silence for nearly one year, and then removed two of us, including me, from the Committee.  By 2006, the new Committee had completed their task of finding any reason or excuse to remove members from the Tribe.  Beginning in October 2006, the first 26 people were disenrolled and the disenrollments have continued ever since.  On October 30, 2006 I was disenrolled along with five of my seven immediate family members.  Two of my cousins aren’t being disenrolled (yet).

The Tribe cannot deny our Chukchansi lineage.  Our great-great-grandfather was a Treaty of 1851 signer for the Chukchansi.  The Tribe doesn’t have to give any explanation at all as to why they are doing what they are doing.  They are above the laws of the United States.  They are above the concept of human kindness and decency.  They are no longer living the way of our ancestors.  They are now fully converted capitalists who have no sympathy for the families that they are tearing apart.

What they do have are public relation firms that advise them on the best ways to win public support and admiration even while they participate in such vile activities.  I want you to consider whether you would name a wing of the library after a government that practiced apartheid, or ethnic cleansing?  Don’t be fooled into thinking that this isn’t the same, because it is.  What the Tribe’s are doing is “genocide on paper.”  The results are the same: fewer Natives to count and to provide services too but with less blood on the ground.  It’s a disgrace that cannot be honored with their name on a public building!  I can only hope that you can see past their smoke screen and prevent their name from adorning a public building in this State for as long as they continue to leave their own out in the cold.

Thank you.

BRYAN GALT

--If you agree with this statement, I ask that you write to the Board of Trustees, John Welty and the Fresno Bee to express your opinion.  The Native people who are being hurt by their own need your support!

BOARD OF TRUSTEES: '[email protected]'  JOHN WELTY: '[email protected]'  FRESNO BEE: [email protected]  BRYAN GALT: [email protected] (to let me know you support this stand!

Monteau and hypocritical speech

Harold Monteau of the law firm Monteau and Peebles has been very active in recent months speaking out against the federal government and the way that they have been treating Indian Tribes.  His latest diatribe is against the state of Connecticut and its Congressional Delegation for allowing the state to "de-recognize" two Indian Tribes, apparently through the use of questionable federal laws.

What we never hear Mr. Monteau speaking out against is the continuation of "genocide on paper" whereby Tribes are disenrolling their memberships in favor of smaller groups who collect large sums of money for per capita distributions.  What we never hear Mr. Monteau admit is that his law firm represents many of the Tribes that partake in disenrollments, including the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians.

When Mr. Monteau's law firm works for Tribe's that actively discard their own memberships, it seems that the real hypocracy is being exposed for what IT is.  After all is said and done, the members of the Tribes who are disenrolled are in the same position as those Tribes the Mr. Monteau is lamenting over in his most recent article (Indian Country Today).  Why doesn't he come out against disenrollments too?

The reason behind his stance may be that his firm has nothing to gain by speaking up for those that have been disenrolled.  After all, the Tribes that pay his salary are gaming Tribes.  The people that have been disenrolled are usually poor and unable to afford real legal representation, much less the former head of the National Indian Gaming Commission.

If Mr. Monteau really believes in the rhetoric that he has been spreading lately concerning the horrible treatment of Indians in the United States, I challenge him to come out against the disenrollments of Native people around the country.  Otherwise, his speech just doesn't add up to someone that is truly concerned about Indian rights in Indian Country.

Funny, I think Not~

On Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" the program made light of the article in USA Today concerning the issue of disenrollments.  Although the show was a parody, it made light of an issue that is hurting tens of thousands of people.

Can you imagine what kind of backlash the show would have recieved if it made light of the Jewish Holocaust or the situation in Rwanda?  What this show didn't consider is that the disenrollments are actually a euphemism for terminations and genocide, which was the official policy of the US until the early 1900's.

What seems to be a well kept secret is the facts that surround California Indian Tribes and their historical interactions with the US Government.  In 1948 the California territory began to be settled by immigrants from the US and other areas after having been taken from Mexico at the conclusion of the Mexican American War.  In 1849, the discovery of gold created one of the largest movements of human beings in world history as people from around the world rushed to California to prospect for their personal fortunes.

In 1850, California became a state.  It was one of the fastest statehood approvals in US history, largely because of the gold.  Also in 1850, the new governor of California authorized the payment of cash rewards for the killing of California Indians.  Yes, you heard it right.  The state of California used its money to pay anyone who had a gun to kill as many Indians as they saw fit, and these new settler's did the best they could to collect that money.  These murderers were able act without any fear of justice being brought to bear against them

What resulted was the reduction of the California Indian population by nearly 50% in just one year. That was an estimated 177,000 Indian men, women and children slaughtered at the behest of the government.  The monetary reward system was abandoned in a couple of years, but the decline in Native populations continued to slide at an alarming rate.

By 1900, the estimated population of Native peoples in California finally bottomed out at 10,000 people.  The Native's that were left alive were still considered to be a nuisance to the fine men and women of the state, so the government purchased small parcels of lands for northern California Tribal people and negotiated some treaty reservations for some Southern California Indians and sent the survivors to them by force.

This wasn't the end of the saga either.  The government still wasn't satisfied with letting the Native people live in peace.  In many cases, the children of the Native people were forcibly removed from their homes to be sent to places with fancy names like "The Sherman Indian School," so that they could be properly educated as civilized people.  The government's plan was to brainwash the children of the surviving Native's so that they could break their will once and for all.

Today, the government doesn't actively attempt to murder, enslave or brainwash the Native people.  Instead, the government is allowing the Tribal people to do it on their behalf.  The disenrollments are simply an extension of the genocidal termination policies of the past, but with less blood on the ground.  The results are still the same though, because once a Native is disenrolled from a Tribe, he is no longer considered eligibile for the programs designed to help Native Americans.  His stastistical expense to the government is eliminated.  The Tribal authorities that did this to him are rewarded with casino profits and immunity from lawsuits for violating his civil rights.  The Tribes get to do whatever they want to their own people without fear of any justice being brought to bear against them.  Hmm, doesn't that sound familiar?

Genocide Light is what we have here today.

To view the Comedy Central clip, click here.  For the record, regardless of how inappropriate I personally find the clip, I would never support any type of censorship to prevent it from being shown. It's just unfortunate that such an important issue finally gets national attention in such a disrespectful manner.

Can You Lose Your Citizenship?

One of the ironies facing the Native peoples today is the issue of membership.  The Supreme Court has made it clear that only a Tribal government can determine who is qualified for membership and the Tribe's determination cannot be challenged, even if the determination is wrong.

This legal handicap makes it excrutiatingly difficult for Native American's who are about to lose their membership with their Tribe, especially when they know that the Tribe is disenrolling them for monetary gains or for political revenge.  Who can these disenrolled Native American's turn to in their time of need?

To put this matter into better perspective for the non-Native reader, imagine this scenario being played out on you.  Today, you opened your mailbox and discovered a letter from the Immigration Service.  You open it and find that the Immigration Service has determined that your citizenship with the United States was given to you mistakenly and now they are going to terminate that citizenship.  In their graciousness, the Immigration Service shall grant you a single hearing to explain why you should not lose your citizenship.

You prepare your hearing materials to prove that this is some kind of mistake.  You gather family tree information, birth certificates and the like in preparation.  The day of the hearing arrives and you march in to present your case, confident that having been born here in the United States is more than enough qualification for you to win.  When its your turn to present your evidence, the Immigration Service lawyers simply say, "We don't accept that evidence."  The judges in your case side with the Immigration Services.  You are now a non-citizen.

As you wonder out of the hearing, you don't know what just happened or how it could happen.  You consider the ramifications of what just happened over and over, but it only makes you more confused.  You receive a notice from the hearing that confirms the decision to remove your citizenship from you and it also instructs you to move from your current location to make room for "real citizens."

This is the real life scenario facing Native Americans today.  It is most likely to happen to a Native American once their Tribe opens up a Casino operation.  In California, disenrollments are an epidemic.  They have become "paper genocide" against the people who belong with these Tribes.

One has to ask the question: where is the Federal government and why aren't they stepping in to stop this nonsense?  The answer to these questions are almost as strange as the fiction that the Tribe's try to spin with their Public Relations apparatus, but these answers do fit all the questions like a well formed leather shoe, one that doesn't fit anywhere else...

The Tribal government will state that they have the "sovereign right" to determine who will be a member in their Tribe.  The Supreme Court will state that the Tribe is more than capable of making these decisions.  The Bureau of Indian Affairs will state that they are restricted from even commenting on the issue, much less getting involved in the discussion.  The general public only notices something is going on if the Senior Lunch Buffet prices go up to $5.99.

What the Tribe and the federal government isn't telling you is the real truth.  Once the Tribe disenrolls a member from their rolls, this member now becomes an unrecognized Native American.  What this means is that the disenrolled Tribal member is no longer considered a federally-recognized member of a Tribe and therefore doesn't qualify for further benefits in education, housing or health care.  This disenrolled Tribal member can no longer call upon the BIA for assistance.

It is this fact that the federal government and the Tribes have been keeping away from the press and from the public at large.  One of the primary reasons that a Tribe is granted federal recognition is for them to provide for their own people.  The Casino's are given to the Tribe's to provide the economic engine to make this happen.

However, what is actually happening is the Tribal governments are taking advantage of the laws that protect them from lawsuits so that they can disenroll their own people from their Tribes for the sole purpose of reducing the number of members on the books when the time comes to pay out the profits from the Casino operations.

The federal government is standing by in the wings doing nothing about this blatant grab at the money because it is serving their financial interests as well: less federally-recognized members equates to less federal outlays to subsidize their care and upkeep.

The fact that the federal government is allowing the Tribes to be operated as dictatorships is a clear indication of what their opinion on the matter is.  The federal government even allows the Tribes to violate the civil rights of their non-Native employees that work in the Casino's.  Yes, the federal government will even allow a Tribe to violate your rights as a visitor and guest to a Casino.

In recent months, the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians from Southern California has petitioned the US Federal Court for complete immunity from all labor laws, specifically immunity from laws that favor unionization of their workers.  Currently, Indian Tribes are already immune to just about every labor law on the books, but this is the last little thorn in their side that they had to agree to to get their Compacts approved and now this case could jeopardize what little oversight exists to protect American workers in any Indian Casino.

The next time you visit a Tribal Casino, you should keep this in mind: you aren't worth anything to the Tribe except the money you plan on losing.  The Tribe you are supporting with your gaming dollar is using that money to exploit their own people and to buy politicians who will keep them in the money for as long as the public allows it to go on.

If you don't feel it's wrong to violate the rights of Native Americans, American workers and the American public, then by all means, keep spending your money at the Casino's.  However, if you do see that what is going on is wrong, and you do think something should change, then stop spending your money with the Indian Casino's.  Take a trip to Vegas and spend it at a corporate Casino instead.  You'll feel better about it!

William Walker Remembered

On May 20, 2006, 52 years will have passed since Mr. William Walker passed away in a Fresno, California rest home.  Times have changed quite dramatically since his day, when being an Indian was not something many people would openly brag about.

His father, pioneer Charles Frank Walker, who came to the Central Valley via the Sierra Mountain pass that bears the family name "Walker Pass," married into the Chukchansi people in the mid 1860’s.  His bride was a young girl named Sah-wa-yok, who was later given the Christian name of Mary.

As a “half-breed” Indian, William was subjected to rejection from the white society and from the Indian society as well.  But, he did not let that deter him from working for what was right for his chosen people, the Chukchansi’s and the rest of the Indian people in California.

William became the Director of the Indians of California, Inc., who’s lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C. were instrumental in obtaining an interest payment to the Indians by the federal government based upon the land agreements found in the Treaties from 1851 and 1852.  These concessions would lead to further reparations on behalf of the US government, paltry as they were.

When these efforts are placed into the historical context of the early 1900’s, they show themselves as being not only determined, but even heroic.  William, a half-Scottish, half-Chukchansi, traveled many times to Washington to bring his cause to the gates of the Capitol.  The frontier was still open, Indians were still the enemy and he still went anyways.

William’s efforts would have a ripple effect that is still resonating in California and the rest of the Nation even to this day.  If it weren’t for courageous men like William, the Tribes might still be kept in virtual prisoner of war status, locked away on reservations far from the rest of the world.

When William retired, he spent most of his spare time working as an unpaid representative for Indian groups, doing everything he could to make a difference.  His dedication to helping others lasted throughout his life.

In 1952, William was in a serious auto accident that left him debilitated for the remaining years of his life.  His passing did not go unnoticed, and his achievements were noted in the papers of the day.

But, did they actually capture the true spirit of his triumphs and tribulations?  The writer who wrote his obituary couldn’t have known that William placed himself into mortal peril by asserting the needs of the Indian Country into the spotlight.  And, the many states that he would travel across were not any friendlier to Indians either.

An example would be the state of Virginia, which borders Washington D.C., and had laws on their books that made it illegal to refer to any Native American in the state as an Indian on any official document (birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates, etc).  This policy lasted from the 1920’s through the late 1960’s.  The state even made a conscience effort to destroy historical documents in an effort to wipe out the history of the Indian people.

When William died on May 20, 1955, he left behind a large footprint to fill.  He has been greatly under appreciated and under celebrated by the Chukchansi people or any other Tribe that would have come to benefit from his efforts.  But, I believe that he wouldn’t mind that at all.  He was a Chukchansi Indian and proud of it.  He wasn’t afraid to take on those that didn’t like him for it, and he prevailed against their racism, bigotry and callousness in a time when it wasn’t even thought possible.

What I do believe he would find shocking is the new age of Indian affairs that allows Tribal governments to disenroll their own people.  It dishonors his memory and the work he placed so much value upon when the people he was working the hardest for spend more time trying to screw each other than they do trying to give each other a helping hand.

Thank you William, for risking it all to create hope for a future when no one else believed it was possible.  Perhaps one day the Native people will come to see the vision that you laid out for all of us to see, harmony and unification of the Native People of California.