Tag: Nooksack disenrollment

Embattled Nooksacks win delay in loss of membership

 

By JOHN STARK

THE BELLINGHAM HERALD June 12, 2014

DEMING – The 306 people facing loss of Nooksack Indian Tribe membership have won a round in tribal court, getting a judge to order the tribal council to stop its latest effort to oust them.

The Thursday, June 12, ruling from Tribal Court Chief Judge Raquel Montoya-Lewis stems from a March 2014 Nooksack Court of Appeals ruling. The appeals judge panel had ordered a halt to the process of removing people from tribal enrollment rosters until the tribal council could draw up an ordinance spelling out the procedures for stripping people of tribal membership. Such an ordinance also would require approval from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, the appeals court ruled.

But in mid-May the tribal council began sending out new notices to some members of the affected families, scheduling July disenrollment hearings before the tribal council under the terms of a 2005 tribal membership ordinance that received BIA approval in 2006. Gabe Galanda, the Seattle attorney representing the threatened families, went back to court to challenge the legality of that maneuver.

After an earlier hearing, Montoya-Lewis agreed that the tribal council was out of bounds.

“This approach appears to be an attempt to circumvent the very clear holdings of the Court of Appeals,” Montoya-Lewis wrote.

While the judge’s ruling delays the move to strip the 306 of tribal membership, it likely will not stop it. There appears to be no legal obstacle to the process, once the tribal council passes the necessary ordinance and gets federal approval. Nooksack Tribal Council Chairman Bob Kelly, who has pushed for the disenrollment, was recently reelected and has the support of a majority of council members.

The disenrollment controversy began in early 2013 after Kelly and a majority of other council members agreed that members of the Rabang, Rapada and Narte-Gladstone families had been incorrectly enrolled in the 2,000-member tribe in the 1980s, and their enrollments should be revoked.

Since then, members of the affected families have mounted a vigorous legal and public relations effort to retain their Nooksack membership. That membership entitles them to a wide range of benefits, among them fishing rights, health care, access to tribal housing and small cash payments for Christmas and back-to-school expenses.

Those facing the loss of tribal membership have based their membership claim on their descent from Annie George, who died in 1949. Members of those three families have introduced evidence that Annie George was Nooksack, but those who want the three families out have noted that George’s name does not appear on a list of those who got original allotments of tribal land or on a 1942 tribal census, and those two criteria determine legal eligibility for membership.

Appeals panel says Nooksack ouster must get federal approval

By JOHN STARK

THE BELLINGHAM HERALD March 18, 2014

 

BELLINGHAM – Three days after suffering a setback in tribal elections, the 306 people facing loss of membership in the Nooksack Indian Tribe won a legal victory that promises to slow down the tribal council’s effort to remove them.

But the appeals court’s action may not stop that removal.

In a ruling delivered to the tribal court office on Tuesday, March 18, a three-judge Nooksack Tribal Appeals Court panel ruled that the procedures for removing the 306 from tribal membership rolls must be approved by the U.S. Department of Interior, which oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The tribal council, headed by Chairman Bob Kelly, had approved a resolution in August 2013 declaring that each individual facing loss of tribal membership would get a telephone hearing before the tribal council of no more than 10 minutes.

Attorneys representing the council had argued that the resolution did not need federal approval. Seattle attorney Gabe Galanda and his firm, representing the 306, convinced the court that the resolution was, in fact, an ordinance, and the tribal constitution requires Interior Department approval of ordinances.

Otherwise, the appeals court ruled that the short telephonic hearing was adequate protection of the affected tribal members’ legal right to due process before they are deprived of tribal membership, which members say has emotional as well as financial benefits. The judges’ ruling states that a more lengthy, in-person hearing would serve no purpose, because a member’s right to tribal status would hinge on documentary evidence of ancestry, not personal pleas.

The court ruled that the affected tribal members must have 21 days’ notice before their hearing, and they have a right to be represented by someone of their choice.

In an email, Galanda said it was significant that the appeals court ruling forces the Department of Interior to get involved. Until now, the threatened Nooksacks have been rebuffed in efforts to get the agency to weigh in on the membership controversy.

Galanda said he wasn’t sure whether the approval process would be handled in regional BIA offices, or whether it might be referred to Washington, D.C. He declined to guess how long the approval process might take, and whether there was any chance that the federal agency would deny the approval that the tribal council needs to get the membership ouster started.

In a Saturday, March 15, tribal council election, the 306 members and their allies managed to claim two of the four council seats on the ballot, but Kelly and another incumbent were re-elected, leaving the council with an apparent 5-2 majority in favor of the ouster of the 306. Kelly, the eighth member of the council, votes only when there is a tie, but he still plays a significant leadership role.

Kelly and council members who support the ouster have avoided making public statements outside tribal gatherings since the controversy began more than a year ago. Kelly did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Nooksack member Marie Witt, a strong Kelly supporter, said she understands why Kelly and the other council members are keeping quiet in public.

“We were raised to believe silence is a virtue,” Witt said.

As Witt sees it, Kelly’s reelection demonstrates that most Nooksacks support the effort to remove the members of the Rabang, Rapada and Narte-Gladstone families, who were admitted to membership in the 1980s. Those facing the loss of tribal membership have based their membership claim on their descent from Annie George, who died in 1949. Members of those three families have introduced evidence that Annie George was Nooksack, but those who want the three families out have noted that George’s name does not appear on a list of those who got original allotments of tribal land and or on a 1942 tribal census, and those two criteria determine legal eligibility for membership.

Many other tribal members opposed the three families’ membership claims from the beginning, Witt said, because they believe the three families have much stronger ties to Canadian tribes.

“It (the ouster) is something we all wanted,’ Witt said. “People in the tribe have been pushing for this for many years.”

Witt, 23, said she has friends and relatives who are faced with loss of tribal membership, and she regrets that. But she is convinced that the original enrollment of the members of those three families was a mistake that strains tribal resources. Among other things, she said members of the families are getting a significant share of the money available for tribal members’ health care, and there isn’t enough money to provide for those she believes have a better claim to membership.

Witt said she admires Kelly’s willingness to take on such a hotly contested issue, and she said it is a mistake to think that Kelly is solely responsible for a membership purge that has the support of a majority of the council. She added that Kelly has done a lot to improve tribal government.

“He’s trying so hard to make our tribe better,” Witt said. “We’re putting more of our trust in him because he’s not trying to hide anything from us.”

Reach John Stark at 360-715-2274 or john.stark@bellinghamherald.com . Read the Politics Blog at bellinghamherald.com/politics-blog or get updates on Twitter at @bhampolitics.

 

 

 

 

Ouster of Nooksack tribal council members triggers new lawsuit

 

By JOHN STARK

THE BELLINGHAM HERALD January 23, 2014

DEMING – Two members of the Nooksack Indian Tribe’s eight-member governing council have been replaced by Chairman Bob Kelly and the other council members who support the effort to strip 306 Nooksacks of tribal membership.

But Seattle attorney Gabriel Galanda filed a new lawsuit in tribal court on Tuesday, Jan. 21, to challenge the legality of the council’s action, taken Monday, Jan. 20.

In another legal development, the Nooksack Court of Appeals handed the challenged Nooksack tribe members a significant victory on Wednesday, Jan. 22. The court ordered the suspension of the tribal disenrollment process while the court continues its review of legal issues Galanda has raised on behalf of those facing loss of tribal membership.

Last week, after the same appeals court lifted an earlier stay of the disenrollment process, tribal police had begun serving disenrollment notices to affected tribe members, notifying them of the date and time for their telephonic hearing before tribal council.

In an email message, Chairman Kelly said Michelle Roberts and Rudy St. Germain were ousted from the council under a provision of the tribal constitution that allows removal of council members who miss more than three consecutive meetings without an excuse. The council then named Roy Bailey to replace St. Germain and David Williams to replace Roberts.

Roberts and St. Germain are among the 306 Nooksacks facing disenrollment.

In a sworn statement filed in connection with the latest lawsuit, Michelle Roberts accuses Kelly of calling three council meetings with little advance notice on Jan. 17, 18 and 20 – the Martin Luther King Day holiday. Roberts said she believed that Kelly had called the meetings so she and St. Germain could be served with disenrollment papers. Instead, she and St. Germain contacted Kelly via email to let him know that they would attend the meetings by teleconference, as council members had done on some past occasions. But when she called the chairman’s office to participate in the first two meetings, Roberts said there was no answer.

For the Martin Luther King Day meeting, Roberts said she phoned in again, and “the person who answered the phone said the council was already in session and that she was instructed to not patch me in to the meeting.”

Later that day, Roberts said she discovered that her tribal cellphone and email account had been shut down.

Roberts said she believes Kelly and his supporters on the council want to get her and St. Germain out of office so that they cannot participate when other challenged Nooksacks get their opportunity to argue their case for tribal membership before the council.

The current legal battle is rooted in longstanding resentment against three families whose members were admitted to tribal membership in the 1980s. The members of those families are descendants of Annie George, who died in 1949. Members of those three families – the Rabangs, Rapadas and Narte-Gladstones – have introduced evidence that Annie George was Nooksack, but Kelly and his backers say George’s name does not appear on a list of those who got original allotments of tribal land and or on a 1942 tribal census.

In his most recent court filings on behalf of the challenged Nooksacks, Galanda has argued that regardless of George’s status, members of the three families can meet one of the other membership criteria spelled out in the tribal constitution: They are descended from other people who were enrolled tribal members, and they possess one-fourth Indian blood.

The tribal courts have yet to address that argument directly, and it remains to be seen if those courts will take action to stop the tribal council from disenrolling members of the three families.

Four positions on the tribal council – including Kelly’s – are up for election this year, with a primary scheduled for Feb. 15 and a general runoff election on March 15.

The 2,000-member tribe operates two Whatcom County casinos. The February 2013 edition of the official tribal newsletter, Snee-Nee-Chum, reported that the tribe’s 2013 expenditures would add up to about $39 million, with about 24 percent of the available revenue coming from the casinos and smaller tribal enterprises.

While the tribe’s annual budget might seem like a lot compared to what comparable-sized non-Indian cities spend per year, it includes significant amounts for tribally run health care and social services that are supported with federal money. Those are among the benefits the families facing ouster could lose.

Reach John Stark at 360-715-2274 or john.stark@bellinghamherald.com . Read the Politics Blog at bellinghamherald.com/politics-blog or get updates on Twitter at @bhampolitics.