We left it in December with the court enjoining Interior from removing the Alto plaintiffs from the San Pasqual Band rolls. Here are additional materials leading to last week’s order denying the tribe’s motion to dissolve the order:
San Pasqual Motion to Dissolve PI
Alto Response to Motion to Dismiss
San Pasqual Reply in Support of Motion to Dismiss
San Pasqual Reply in Support of Motion to Dissolve
DCT Order Denying Motion to Dissolve
And now pending responses:
Here.
Here are the Ninth Circuit briefs in Cahto Tribe of the Laytonville Rancheria v. Dutschke:
lower court materials here.
Here.
Here.
Matthew King has posted his paper, “Indian Gaming and Tribal Identity,” on SSRN. It was published in the Chicano-Latino Law Review.
Here is the abstract:
The article presents the significant developments in the law governing Indian gaming with a view to assessing gaming’s politicization of Native identity. By addressing the stereotypes and caricatures of Native Americans and tribes that animate legal and political change in the field, the article seeks to demonstrate the essentialism of Indian gaming and the consequent effect of gaming politics on Native identity. Key among the views expressed are that Indian gaming produces real, non-theoretical gains for tribes, which in turn creates new subject positions for Native Americans, and that gaming introduces substantial non-Native influence into the process of tribal government, thereby enacting a social and political cost to tribes. The article covers in separate sections the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, Tribal-State compacting in California, and critical responses to Native identity under an identity politics rubric.
Good news:
The swelling membership of the Tulalip Tribes, based near Everett, Washington, for example, is a point of pride for tribal member and state representative John McCoy, who believes improved health care and an above-average birth rate are at play.
“We’re living longer. Our babies are surviving birth,” says McCoy, adding that more jobs on reservations, led by tribal gaming, is another reason for the growth. “So we have our peoples coming back from other states. They’re coming home because there is an economy.”
At Tulalip, that adds up to a 22 percent growth rate over the past decade. Other tribes around the country have grown even faster.
And not so good:
At the other end of the spectrum are tribes whose enrollments are stagnating, including for example the Colville Confederated Tribes in northeast Washington.
Tribal councilmember Ricky Gabriel has proposed a referendum to relax the blood requirement in the tribal constitution so more children of mixed marriages can enroll.
“I’ve had a lot of very positive [reactions],” he says. “The elders are extremely happy about this. They’re pushing hard. They’re seeing their grandchildren not be able to be enrolled.”
Enrollment in the tribe currently requires a minimum of one-quarter Colville blood. But when you have intermarriage, that bloodline is diluted. It takes just a couple of generations of intermarriage to put the children at risk of being disqualified from membership.
Then the tribal population withers. The proposed referendum would change the rules to count any Indian blood toward the minimum.
Here is the agenda:
Here.
Audio here.
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