in-it

From 2003 to 2006 I served as the Enrollment Chairman for the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians. The Tribe's casino (Chukchansi Gold) would be in operation in June 2003 so the Tribe started to unravel thanks to greed and absolutely no recourse from ANY government agencies when political faction in the Tribe finally wrestle control of the Council. I was directed to conduct an audit of every Tribal member with the end goal of giving that person the boot for any anomaly. I warned the council and the tribal members that what they were asking and forcing me to do was a slippery slope that once disenrollment start and gets easier and easier and harder and harder to stop. Well this romance got started all right by the time the casino opened it was mayhem. Tribal council meetings would be screaming matches about why I had people been disenrolled it they didn't belong here. This happens because there's millions of dollars at stake for the remaining tribal members. According to the law no court can intervene on tribal matters for any reason. They have to go to Congress to get the law changed if anyone wants to try to force the tribes to take care of their own people. The palmaris Congress gets 20 30 40 50 million dollars from tribes for political donations every year. News in the local areas won't report what's going on because the tribes spend millions of dollars on advertising so TV stations won't Rock the boat. A tribal member could be running down the street with their hair on fire and it wouldn't show up on the news that's how scared they are. We the former tribal members need the public to understand that this is genocide on paper. Well they're not physically killing us they are taking away our heritage because once you're out of a tribe you are denied any recognition of your Native American lineal to censorship and you denied any services that might be available through the bureau of Indian affairs. In California the casinos were supposed to be built to encompass all the tribal members and all the Native Americans that way they could be pulled out of poverty. Instead small groups have centralized their power always casinos and in some cases they're getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year due to the whole situation being so screwed up. This documentary has hit home on what is actually going on and it made me so mad I almost beating out my tongue.