Local tribal disenrollment challenged
OROVILLE >> A man whose grandmother married into a local tribe is contesting being disenrolled from the tribe.
A disenrollment complaint against Mooretown Rancheria was announced Monday and sent to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Sacramento.
In the formal letter to the bureau, Malcolm Davis Jr. said in
February he contacted the rancheria, one of several Maidu tribes in the Butte County area, about membership and election representation after years of seeking answers for why his family has not been allowed to vote in several past elections of the Mooretown Tribal Council.
The contention Davis is filing on, disenrollment — when a tribe ejects a member — remains a long standing issue in many tribes that continues to cause internal conflict often resulting from disputes over past decisions on land distribution and recognition by the bureau.
Davis, who currently lives in Oklahoma, said Monday his family’s disagreement with the tribe has been going on since a dispute was first filed in 2005. He discovered his side of the family was reclassified as not being full members of the tribe, due to what he says was a mistake in how his grandmother was granted property under the tribe.
He said the tribe claims his family, descendants of Ina Martin Jackson, are not distributees, or claimants of property under the tribe, which is needed to be members and therefore have the ability to vote members into power. The tribe’s federally recognized status was reinstated in 1983, and he said his grandmother was found listed in the Mooretown Rancheria Plan of Distribution from 1961 only as a wife, and her husband and tribal member Robert Jackson was the distributee to receive land. But the tribe claims because his grandmother was listed as a wife, she would be considered a dependent, and her children from another marriage cannot be tribal members.
Davis has not yet received a response from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
In an official statement provided to this newspaper on Thursday, the Mooretown Tribal Council upheld findings which disenrolled Davis’s side of his family from the tribe.
The council holds that in 2005 an independent anthropologist was hired who determined Ina Martin Jackson, Davis’s grandmother, was not a Tribal member by birth — and although married to a member, her children from other marriages, one of whom is Davis’s ancestor, do not qualify as members. The council stated there “was no evidence” of Jackson or her descendants, from marriages to non-tribal members, being tribal members, and reiterated the ability to determine members internally as a recognized sovereign power, acknowledged by the federal government.
In California, which has a different process for tribal membership and often fewer judicial processes for contest than in other states, disenrollment by small tribes with casino income like Mooretown Rancheria can be a particular source of contention. The New York Times reported in 2011 at least 2,500 natives have been disenrolled by at least two dozen California tribes in ten years according to estimates by advocates and academics. Nearly all of these cases involved tribal governments determining individuals did not have proper ancestry, with the power to do so recognized, although not granted, by the federal government.
According to the Times, tribal governments universally deny that greed or power is motivating disenrollment, saying they are simply upholding membership rules established in their constitutions. But losing membership in a tribe can be financially devastating as well as personally, and in Davis’s case, resulting in a lack of representation in elections.
“Their standing is her husband was the distributee,” Davis said — adding this standing would make it seem as if wives of tribal property owners are not equal to them, and “that she was property to Robert and couldn’t hold property.”
He is also filing for a clarification of the definition of “wife.”
“Family removal can lead to more money to another family per capita, as well as power and control of the tribal government,” Davis said. According to data from the National Indian Gaming Commission, gaming revenue for tribes with active casino income increased more than 4% in 2016 to $31 billion, supplementing federal funds with “per capita” payments to tribal members, which disenrollment takes away from former distributees.
The issue for his own family revolving around his grandmother’s status with claim to land is not consistent with how the tribe has viewed the position and power of women, he said.
“Our tribe has never treated women as second class.” he said. “They’ve never treated women (as if) that they couldn’t hold property. That wasn’t the way of life. Women did own things; women did hold power.”
Davis said the Election Tribal process had his family excluded from elections and they did not receive ballots for five or six cycles. He claims even if his grandmother were found to be a dependent, “by our Constitutional laws, we are still eligible to vote in tribal elections.”
Davis is also filing in his complaint that the 2014 tribal constitution was therefore passed illegally because his grandmother was no longer listed as a member or distributee.