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Health & Fitness

Pechanga's Shame: Moratorium People, Of Pechanga, Not FROM Pechanga How Disenrollments Started

A Decade of Disenrollment, detailing what our Tribal Neighbor has done to HUNDREDS of Native Americas is coming to you as this is the TENTH year of the first disenrollment.   WHY, because Apis/Hunter members of the enrollment committee tried to get THIS FAMILY, enrolled as they fit ALL the requirements.  Their family was even on the Pechanga Tribal Council.  They are not related to EITHER Apis or Hunters, but it was the RIGHT THING to do and Mark Macarro's Council made us PAY for the effort.

There will be a takedown on Mark Macarro's statement after the Hunter Disenrollment tomorrow, please SHARE on FB and Twitter.

The Rios/Tosobal Family has ties to the Pechanga tribe, from his mother back to his great-great-great-grandmother, born in 1811. (That’s when Abe Lincoln was 2 years old!)

So, when his mother died in 1978 and left him a piece of reservation land, Manuel Rios Jr. began trying to make arrangements to bring water and electricity to the plot so he could set up a home there. 30 years later, he has yet to get tribal approval to do anything with the land.
Tribal officials had told him he and his family are not on the rolls, he said, and they won’t get considered for membership until a moratorium on new enrollments is lifted now extended past 2010. His family members, who number more than 100, have stacks of documents that they say they submitted to the enrollment committee 15 years ago.  

The Tosobol descendents belonged in the tribe.   Two enrollment committee members were concerned that the right thing be done and brought this family's paperwork forward.  This led to the families of those two members being terminated from the tribe.  Over 300 men, women and children, losing an estimated $300 MILLION in per capita, which the remaining members divvied up amongst themselves.   Imagine that, denied your heritage for honoring the ancestors of the tribe.

In 2003, new members of the Enrollment Committee, including family members from the Hunter and Manuela Miranda famlies, who had been elected to the committee in 2002 sent a letter to the tribal council informing them of corruption on the Enrollment Committee.

The letter detailed how members of the Enrollment Committee had acted to deny enrollment to lineal descendants of enrolled members. These members would require DNA tests, delay meetings, and misinform parties before the Enrollment Committee.


So the Enrollment Committee prior to 2002 dominated by people from the CPP faction very well could have sat on applications of people who ended up in the moratorium and these and other irreularities were pointed out to the tribal council by people who ended up being disenrolled.


And the fact that those Enrollment Committee members who had been accused of not doing their duty by members of disenollee families were then allowed to vote on the fate of those families is a violation of Pechanga's own constitution that says under Article V, "It shall be the duty of all elected officers of the Band to uphold and enforce the Constitution, Bylaws, and ordinances of the Temecula Band of Luiseno Mission Indians; and also, TO UPHOLD AND ENFORCE THE INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS OF EACH MEMBER WITHOUT MALICE OR PREJUDICE."

Any reasonable person can clearly see that those Enrollment Committee members who had been accused of wrong doing by family members of the families who ended up being disenrolled should have been made to step aside from ruling on the disenrollees cases
As  nonmembers, the Rios family has no recourse against the sovereign nation.  He can’t sue the tribe in an outside or tribal court, and he can’t vote on the moratorium or cast a ballot against the elected tribal leaders.

READ MORE:  http://www.originalpechanga.com/2011/11/tosobal-familypechangas-moratorium.html 

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