It is becoming more and more common for gaming tribes that are bringing in millions of dollars from casinos to cull their membership rolls, a process known as disenrollment.”
In Oregon’s Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, for example, the tribe is trying to dis-enroll 79 members that it claims no longer meet requirements for being members.
A member of the tribe observed, “In my entire life, I have always known I was an Indian. I have always known my family’s history, and I am so proud of that.”
Critics of the practice say that greed is at the bottom of it, and that tribal members want to keep more gaming profits for themselves.
However, it may be more complicated than that. The Star Tribune interviewed David Wilkins, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota, who is a member of the Lumbee Tribe. He explained, “It ultimately comes down to the question of how we define what it means to be Native today. As tribes who suffered genocidal policies, boarding school laws and now out-marriage try to recover their identity in the 20th century, some are more fractured, and they appear to lack the kind of common elements that lead to true cohesion.”
Across the nation thousands of tribal members are being dis-enrolled, he said. The process is often used to resolve what are often more like disputes within a family.
Enrollment is based on ancestor rolls, or percentage of Indian blood or census rolls. The courts have ruled that except in extreme cases that the federal government should allow tribes to determine their own membership.
However, the practice began to skyrocket when billions of dollars became available to gaming tribes, some of which was distributed among individuals of the tribe. Currently 240 tribes operate over 420 casinos of some time in more than half of the states. Half of the gaming tribes pay individual members some stipend. But being dis-enrolled also can mean losing pensions or scholarships.
Sometimes disenrollment disputes lead to violence, as happened in California’s Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians, where hundreds of members have been dis-enrolled. Last year police were called in to get between factions that had clashed in an encounter where several were injured.
No tribe will admit that disenrollment is done for anything other than to keep the rolls legitimate.
