Politics & Government

Indians Disowned by Pechanga to Protest

People plan to protest as Pechanga tribal leaders, members of Congress and White House officials will meet to discuss tribal governance.

Richard Cuevas is the great, great grandson of Paulina Hunter, who he believes was a member of the Pechanga tribe.

The Pechanga Enrollment Committee disagreed. It voted in 2006 to disenroll her and more than 100 of her descendants -- some of whom still live on the reservation -- from the tribe.

So, estranged former members of the Pechanga tribe plan to protest during a meeting of tribal government leaders.

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The demonstration’s planned for 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday at the .

Former members of other tribes will join disenrolled Pechanga tribe members to protest what they call “human and civil rights violations committed by tribal officials,” Cuevas said.

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Members of the Snoqualmie tribe, the San Pascual tribe and the Creek Freedmen – who descend from slaves of Creek Indians – are expected to join the protest.

The disenrollment of Cuevas' family has less to do with ancestry than politics, he said.

His family's votes often went against what the tribal heads wanted. So, the Tribal Council realized if they could show Hunter was not Pechanga, they would have a political advantage, Cuevas said.

“If the Republicans could get 25 percent of the Democrats not to vote, do you think (the Democrats) could get anything done?” Cuevas said.

The enrollment committee's decision had no legitimate foundation, Cuevas said. He pointed to the findings of an anthropologist hired by the committee as evidence. It showed evidence Hunter was Pechanga.

“The preponderance of the genealogical evidence contained in surviving records would indicate that she was a descendant of both Pechanga and Temecula ancestors,” wrote John Johnson, the head of Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History’s anthropology department, in a 2006 letter to the Tribal Council.

In fact, her father was the only Indian to be listed as a Pechanga in the earliest surviving records, he wrote in the letter.

He was “dismayed” by the committees decision, saying Hunter’s descendants have just as good claim to Pechanga ancestry than the tribal members who disenrolled them.

“I felt that many of the conclusions were either based on misinterpretations of the documentary evidence or unjustified by what had been presented earlier in the text of the (Enrollment Committee’s) Record of Decision,” he wrote.

To read the letter, click on the photo gallery above.

Pechanga tribal officials didn't return a call by the time of this story's publication.


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