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 the formal repudiation of numerous Native nations’ recognition and benefits and constituted an abrupt cessation of the trust relationship; tribes that have instituted disenrollments effectively repudiate an individual tribal citizen’s recognition and benefits and crush the nation’s trust relationship with that person. Federal termination of Native nations was the intentional destruction of the political and economic identity of an indigenous people; tribal termination via disenrollment of bonafide native individuals is the purposeful destruction of the political and economic identity of a tribal citizen...