Pit River People

An Organization of Madesi Band Pit River Indian Descendants

Fighting for Traditional and Civil Rights

I. GREETING & THANKS

Good afternoon and thank you for attending this presentation.  My name is Carla Foreman-Maslin, I am a California Indian of the Pit River Tribe.  I am also Chairman of the Board of Directors for the American Indian Rights and Resources Organization. 

AIRRO is an organization which was established and is to dedicated protecting, preserving and enforcing the human and civil rights of Indian individuals throughout Indian Country.

On behalf of AIRRO and its membership, we appreciate this opportunity to present here at the 21st California Indian Conference. 

II. OPENING 

I would like to start this presentation by reading a quote by William B. Allen, who served on the United States Commission on Civil Rights.  Mr. Allen stated: 
    "The Government of the United States has failed to provide for (individual) Indians . guarantees of those fundamental rights it is obliged to secure for all U.S. citizens living on territory controlled by the United States and under the laws of the United States."

This quote clearly summarizes the problem many individual Indians face when trying to assert or preserve their basic human and civil rights against violations or infringements by tribal governments or officials. 

Indian People have entered a new period of their tumultuous history-one marked not so much by oppression or exploitation by outsiders, as by the spectre of greed and internal corruption. 

The lawlessness that has infected Indian Country has created an ever-growing population of individual Indians who have been subjected to and tormented by the unjust actions of tribal governments and/or tribal officials. 

III.  THE INDIAN CIVIL RIGHTS ACT

The United States Congress has enacted several laws which recognized and enumerated the basic rights of Indian individuals.

The Indian Citizenship Act of June 2, 1924 recognized all Indians born in the United States as Citizens of the United States, and as United States citizens, they were to be afforded the Constitutional protections provided to all other United States citizens.

In 1968, after an investigation by the Constitutional Rights Subcomittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary into the problems Indian individuals face when attempting to assert their constitutional rights, the Indian Civil Rights Act was passed. 

The ICRA  was intended to extend constitutional rights to individual Indians and thereby "protect individual Indians from arbitrary and unjust actions of tribal governments."  The ICRA was adopted to ensure that tribal governments respect the basic human and civil rights of Individual Indians and non-Indians.  Under the ICRA tribal governments were prohibited from enacting or enforcing laws that violate certain individual rights.

The rights afforded all Native Americans, as enumerated in the Indian Civil Rights Act, are the basic civil rights which all citizens of the United States, except Native Americans, enjoy.  These rights include, but are not limited to, (1)equal protection of the laws and (2) freedom from deprivation of liberty or property without due process of law, (3) freedom from any bill of attainder or ex post facto law; and (4) not having private property taken for public use without just compensation

IV. INABILITY TO ENFORCE THE ICRA
Unfortunately, the intent of Congress in enacting the Indian Civil Rights Act has failed to be met, and the very circumstances which necessitated its introduction and enactment have once again taken root in Indian Country. 

For example, save for a writ of habeas corpus, the ICRA failed to include an effective enforcement mechanism whereby the aggrieved individual(s) could hold the offending tribal government or official(s) accountable for violations of tribal and/or federal law. 

The ICRA was further neutered by the United States Supreme Court's decision in Martinez v. Santa Clara Pueblo which held that the ICRA, although a federal statute, was not enforceable in federal court.

The Court in Martinez based its decision on several assumptions: First, the Court assumed that tribal forums would be available for individuals to bring causes of actions for ICRA violations, and second, the Secretary of the Interior would hear ICRA claims in circumstances where secretarial authority was required to ratify changes in tribal governing documents.

Each of these assumptions is flawed and reliance on the existence of such forums as viable remedies has rendered the rights listed in the ICRA

meaningless. 

Many tribal governments, especially in California, fail to provide tribal forums, such as tribal courts, in which to have ICRA violations resolved.  In instances where tribal forums are available, they are very rarely, if ever, separate but equal arms of the tribal government free from the influence of tribal officials.  The absence of a independent tribal judiciary leaves review of such decisions in the hands of those who stand to profit from the outcome or who are the actual oppressors or violators of the individual's rights. 

The absence of independent tribal judicial forums further strips the victims of any opportunity for recourse consistent with basic notions of due process that would be available to any other citizen of the United States.  In this regard, Tribal governments and/or officials have used the United States Supreme Court's decision in Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez as a sword with which to fend off any challenge to their untrammeled power. 

To further complicate the matter, there have been instances where Tribal officials fail to recognize or comply with decisions of tribal courts which have ruled their actions have violated the individual's rights.  In fact, tribal councils or tribal chairs have thrown out decisions of the court, fired the judge or judges, and/or dissolved the court in its entirety where they do not agree with the court's rulings.

Additionally, the Secretary, or other authorized secretarial authority such as the BIA, has consistently failed to intervene or rule on ICRA violations citing the immunity of the tribe.  The Secretary's reluctance to intervene on behalf of the individual Indian to protect their federally recognized rights, coupled with the general lack of tribal forums defeats the beliefs of the Supreme Court as presented in the Martinez decision.  The result is a growing number of plaintiffs with no form of redress.

Absent any protections written into the law and the impact of the Martinez decision,  the ICRA has not only failed to meet its intended goal, it allows tribal governments/officials to violate the basic rights of its members and other individuals without fear of prosecution for such acts.  

The continued and unabated abuses of Federal, State and Tribal laws by tribal officials show complete disregard for Congress' desire and intent when passing the ICRA- to provide a means of redress to Indians aggrieved by tribal officials.

The most well known or written about result of violations of the rights enumerated in the ICRA is disenrollment. Disenrollment is the taking or stripping of ones membership in his or her tribe.

The economic motivation behind disenrollments is a national phenomenon.  Many of the tribes who have recently disenrolled significant numbers of their members: 
     "... perhaps ironically, are quite wealthy through casino revenues (like the Saginaw Chippewa) or, as in the case of the Oklahoma Seminole, were recently awarded millions of dollars in a land claim settlement."

This is taken from 'INDIAN BLOOD' OR LIFEBLOOD? AN ANALYSIS OF THE RACIALIZATION OF NATIVE NORTH AMERICAN PEOPLES, by Laura Kathryn Ferguson.  

Even in tribes that do not benefit from Indian Gaming dominant factions have succumbed to economic pressures to arbitrarily reduce the numbers on their rolls. 

V. BRIEF LIST OF PLACES 
The following is a list of places in California Indian Country where tribal officials are participating in actions to decimate their own people. 

The acts of the tribes or tribal officials involved are exactly the types of "arbitrary and capricious" acts that were the catalyst for the introduction and passage of the Indian Civil Rights Act. 

In most instances, individual members have been denied the due process and equal rights protections provided in the Indian Civil Rights Act, as well as language in their Tribe's governing documents which mandates that tribal officials uphold the individual rights of each member without malice or prejudice.

The victims have been denied access to fair and impartial forums in which to have their grievances heard, and the tribal officials have invoked immunity from suit to protect themselves from prosecution.
 
Pechanga Band of Luiseno Mission Indians

 In 2004, 130+ adult members and their immediate families were disenrolled from the Pechanga Band. The members were all descendants of Chief Pablo Apish, a historically significant leader of the Pechanga/Temecula people.

An additional extended family of approximately 100 adults was disenrolled in March 2006 when tribal officials determined that the ancestor from whom they are lineally descended from was not an Original Pechanga/Temecula person. This determination was made despite the fact that a report prepared by a well known anthropologist hired by the Band's Enrollment Committee concluded she was a Pechanga/Temecula person.

The most recent disenrollment of 100+ adults and children was especially egregious as the General Membership, the Tribe's governing body, had previously passed a law which (1) repealed the Tribe's disenrollment procedures and (2) made it illegal for the Enrollment Committee to disenroll members.

Laytonville Rancheria
In 1995 the Sloan/Hecker family was disenrolled when tribal officials intentionally misinterpreted a congressional act called the Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act. The reason for doing this was to punish the family as some of their members had reported to the FBI that an investor had misappropriated casino funds.

Despite the fact that BIA officials informed the tribal officials that their interpretation of the congressional act was wrong, tribal officials still severed the Sloan/Hecker family from the tribe.

Enterprise Rancheria
Over 70 tribal members, including the Tribal Council Vice-Chairman, were disenrolled when they signed a petition to recall 5 tribal council persons for misappropriating tribal funds.

Santa Rosa Rancheria
In June, 2000 two women were expelled from the tribe. One was ousted after talking with a lawyer about the possibility of bringing suit against a tribal member she alleged sexually assaulted her. Another was expelled because as the tribal treasurer she called for an independent review of income from the tribal casino.

Mooretown Rancheria
In March 2005, over 40 adult members were reclassified just 3 days prior to elections for tribal council.  As a result of their "re-classification" they were unable to participate in the tribal elections.  They can no longer receive benefits given to "lineal members" even though the tribal officials count them as tribal members in order to receive moneys from the federal government

Redding Rancheria
In January 2004 Tribal officials allege my grandmother mother was not the daughter of my great grandmother. Tribal officials produced no evidence to dispute the maternal lineage and the family produced reams of evidence to support the mother-daughter link including DNA analysis.

VI CLOSING

Until such time as the basic rights of  the individual Indian are recognized and upheld on par with those of other United States citizens, a growing number of individual Indians will be subjected to the same types of arbitrary and unjust acts Congress intended to outlaw decades ago.

At this point, I would like to introduce the members of our panel who will tell the story of how their rights have been violated by their tribe or tribal officials and how the Indian Civil Rights Act has failed to protect them from such acts or provide them with a means to assert or preserve their rights as Indian people.