disenrollment

Thumbnail

A Conversation with Deron Marquez

Native Nations Institute (NNI) Co-founder Stephen Cornell sits down with Deron Marquez, former Tribal Chairman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians (1999-2006), to discuss hot topics in Indian Country today. Subjects covered include per capita payments, Tribal disenrollment, education,…

Thumbnail

Lenor Scheffler: The Lower Sioux Indian Community's Approach to Citizenship

Lawyer Lenor Scheffler (Lower Sioux Indian Community) provides an overview of the Lower Sioux Indian Community's approach to defining citizenship, which is predicated on residency within the Lower Sioux reservation's boundaries. She also discusses how eligibility for tribal social services is tied…

Thumbnail

Shawn Frank: Disenrollment: Considerations of Process

Attorney Shawn Frank stresses the importance of Native nations ensuring that they establish and operate processes for disenrolling their citizens that is fair and transparent. He also offers some strategies that a Native nation can follow in order to create that fairness and transparency -- and…

Thumbnail

Deborah Locke: Disenrollment: My Personal Story

Deborah Locke, adopted by a Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa couple when she was a small child, shares her heartbreaking story of how she and her adopted siblings were disenrolled by the Band decades later because they were not the biological descendants of Fond du Lac Band members and…

Thumbnail

Stephen Cornell: Creating Citizens: A Fundamental Nation-Rebuilding Challenge

NNI Faculty Associate Stephen Cornell discusses how colonial policies have distorted and corrupted Native nations' conceptions of identity, citizenship and nationhood, and stresses the need for Native nations to forge a strategic vision of their long-term futures and then work to create among their…

Thumbnail

David Wilkins: Putting the Noose on Tribal Citizenship: Modern Banishment and Disenrollment

The final speaker for the 2008 Vine Deloria, Jr. Distinguished Indigenous Scholars Series at the University of Arizona, scholar David Wilkins (Lumbee) shares his research into the recent and growing phenomenon of disenrollment that is occurring across Indian Country, and delves into the likely…

Thumbnail

Frank Pommersheim: Constitutions: Powers, Implementation, and Interpretation

University of South Dakota Professor of Law Frank Pommersheim discusses the fundamental difference between a plenary power constitution and a reserved or enumerated powers constitution, and recommends that Native nations think very carefully about constitutional implementation and…

Thumbnail

Deron Marquez: What I Wish I Knew Before I Took Office

Former San Manuel Band of Mission Indians Chairman Deron Marquez reflects on his experience as the chief executive of his nation, from his unexpected return to the reservation to building a sustainable economy essentially from scratch.

Thumbnail

Taylor Keen: The Disenfranchisement of the Cherokee Freedmen: Assertion or Abuse of Sovereignty?

Taylor Keen (Cherokee), a former member of the Cherokee Nation Council, discusses the stand he took against his nation's recent decision to disenfranchise the Cherokee Freedman. He offers a convincing argument against the move, explaining that taking away the citizenship rights of the Freedmen…

Thumbnail

Frank Pommersheim: A Key Constitutional Issue: Dispute Resolution

University of South Dakota Professor of Law Frank Pommersheim discusses the key constitutional issue of dispute resolution and presents three cases demonstrating how tribes are endowing their constitutions with legitimacy through the careful, thoughtful resolution of disputes.

Image
Indian Country Today Article

Disenrollment Is a Tool of the Colonizers

Our elders and spiritual leaders do not teach the practice of disenrollment. In fact, disenrollment is a wholly non-Indian construct. Indeed, when I recently asked Eric Bernando, a Grand Ronde descendant of his tribe’s Treaty Chief and fluent Chinook Wawa speaker, if there was a Chinook Wawa word…

Image
Indian Country Today Article

The Unintended Consequences of Disenrollment

For most of the modern tribal self-determination era, American Indian nations have emphasized inclusion. Starting in the early 1970s, higher tribal membership numbers equated to higher federal self-determination dollars. As tribes otherwise redoubled their efforts to reverse the destruction caused…

Image
Indian Country Today Article

Dismembering Natives: The Violence Done by Citizenship Fights

Outside Indian Country most don't realize that over the past 10 years, several thousand people have had their tribal citizenship status terminated. Most were not dismembered for wrongdoing or adopted by other Native nations. They were simply identified by their elected officials as allegedly no…

Image
Indian Country Today Article

How Do We Re-Member?

On July 2, the tribal council of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde held a special meeting to allow their citizens an opportunity to testify for or against a proposed emergency enrollment ordinance whereby the Council sought to delegate its constitutional authority to involuntarily…

Image
Indian Country Today Article

Tribal Per Capitas and Self-Termination

For many Indian families, tribal per capita payments help meet their most basic needs. They buy food, pay heating bills, make car payments, and open savings accounts. As a Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians leader explains, per capita monies have given historically impoverished Indian…

Image
Indian Country Today Article

Disenrollment Demands Serious Attention by All Sovereign Nations

For most people, their sense of who they are–their identity–is at least partially defined from connection to others and to a community. When individuals are forced to sever those connections, the consequences can be devastating. Unfortunately, all too often in tribal disenrollment conflicts–like…

Image
Indian Country Today Article

Two Possible Paths Forward for Native Disenrollees and the Federal Government?

Disenrollment, a seemingly innocuous term when used outside Indian country, has become a loaded word that rivals, if it does not surpass, “termination” as a concept that invokes fear and trembling in those natives who suffer its consequences. While the federal policy of termination in the 1950s was…

Image
A clear and present danger to our tribal sovereignty

A clear and present danger to our tribal sovereignty

Indian law, sovereignty and jurisdiction are not “one size fits all” issues in Indian country. There are too many variations in how different states view the Indian nations within their borders and even in how the federal government treats issues of Indian sovereignty. With the surge in Indian…

Image
Nooksack Tribe Cites ‘Missing Ancestor’ As Reason To Disenroll 306 Members

Nooksack Tribe Cites "Missing Ancestor" As Reason To Disenroll 306 Members

In Part Two of the KUOW story documenting the disenrollment of approximately 300 members from the Nooksack Tribe, Liz Jones takes a closer look at the Nooksack's process to disenroll members. 

Image
'We’ll Always Be Nooksack': Tribe Questions Ancestry Of Part-Filipino Members

'We'll Always Be Nooksack': Tribe Questions Ancestry Of Part-Filipino Members

About 300 members from the Nooksack Tribe, near Bellingham, provide their perspective of being disenrolled by Nooksack Tribal Council because of their Nooksack and Filipino ancestry.