UN calls on US to halt evictions by Native American tribe

[ripcord]

Source: Star Tribune

"We appeal to the U.S. government to respect the right to adequate housing … and to ensure that it abides by its international obligations, including with respect to the rights of Indigenous peoples," experts from the U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a news release.

The Nooksack government has made efforts for years to expel more than 300 of the tribe's roughly 2,000 members, including 21 families who live on tribal property held in trust by the U.S.

"We are also concerned that the forced evictions will deny them the possibility of enjoying their own culture and of using their own language in community with others," the special rapporteurs said.

Galanda's clients are at a disadvantage because the tribe's government has barred Galanda and other adversarial lawyers not employed by the tribe from representing the families in tribal court.

Read more: https://www.startribune.com/un-calls-on-us-to-halt-evictions-by-native-american-tribe/600142779/

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Forcing people to use only lawyers paid by the tribe is outrageous, talk about an abuse of power. Moves like these call into question all the actions by the tribal council.

[llashram]

1. from day one

when Miles Standish screamed, "after the savages" METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING, and outright genocide of First Americans commenced this bs has been going on. Native-American peoples have been made to pay for the defense of their homelands every day since the genocide of those peoples began.

[cinematicdiversions]

5. You do understand it's the native Americans evicting people

The UN is trying to prevent the native Americans from proceeding.

[llashram]

8. yeah I understand this point

hell, it's on par with POC faces peppering a trump rally. Always had that. Divide and conquer.

[Hortensis]

15. No, that's not what this is about either. Indian tribes are

mostly self governing and set their own membership requirements. Their right to decide who is a whatever and is entitled to share in the benefits, social and economic, of membership, is long established in law.

[llashram]

16. yeah, yeah okay

[Bayard]

2. Can't read the article

Why is the tribe trying to evict these people?

[TheRickles]

3. The next few paragraphs from the article:

"Ross Cline Sr., who chairs the Nooksack Tribal Council, didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from the newspaper or The Associated Press on Thursday. He has said the families known as the "Nooksack 306" were incorrectly enrolled in the 1980s, cannot prove their lineage adequately and were disenrolled in proceedings in 2016 and 2018.

According to the U.N. commissioner's office, 63 people who self-identify Nooksack are at risk of eviction from homes they've lived in for many years, which were developed with federal funding.

Many are "elderly, women and children — some with disabilities and chronic diseases," and being evicted could impact their health, especially during the pandemic, the experts said."

[Bayard]

4. Thanks

Wonder what would be considered adequate lineage proof? I would think, given the circumstances, they could get compassionate consideration. Sounds like this has been going on for a long time.

When I lived in eastern CA, there was some turmoil within the Mono tribe population with talk of building a casino. Some people getting perturbed when told they didn't have a high enough percentage of Mono blood to receive any of the income.

I don't want it myself, but maybe genetic testing could put a lot of these situations to rest.

[wnylib]

9. Each tribe has its own criteria

for tribal membership. The federal government accepts the criteria set by the tribe.

DNA testing would not necessarily solve the problem. Among the tribes who were forced to move west on the Trail of Tears, membership requires proof of direct descent from names on the government list of those removed, called the Dawes Roll. But some Cherokee evaded the Army removal by hiding out in the NC and TN mountains. They applied for and received separate federal recognition as the Eastern Band of Cherokee.

Among some tribes like the Seneca and Mohawk, matrilineal descent is the criterion. If your mother is not Seneca, then neither are you, even if your father is 100% Seneca. So you could have generations of direct line Seneca maternal descent with non Seneca fathers in each generation and still be Seneca.

Besides biological descent, some tribes also require a genuine commitment to the well being of the tribe and cultural involvement with it.

I don't know the details of requirement for this tribe.

One problem that sometimes develops in smaller tribes is that a source of income, like a casino, can cause rifts in a tribe over different views. Traditionally oriented people might object to a casino. Others support it because of the income. Politics and greed can develop in any nationality or race. If the casino faction gains political power in the tribal government, they can try to force the others out. In a smaller tribe where just a few families can gain the upper hand, this can create serious problems.

But in other tribes, even when there are differences over such issues, the differences do not go to such an extent. It depends, too, on outsiders who are the casino developers that can rile up divisions, or communities near tribal land who hope to benefit from a casino near them.

Eviction of elderly and sick people sounds cruel and unnecessary. Seems like, if there is legitimate concern about membership eligibility, the people could be removed from tribal rolls without evicting them from their homes.

[Bayard]

10. Thanks you for good information

[wnylib]

12. Combination of anthropology courses and

personal experience. I have some Seneca ancestry through my grandmother, but she was my father's mother.

[ripcord]

6. I not sure how much I would trust Cline

He says the attorney hired by the people being evicted is meddling, I'm not sure how having legal representation would be consider meddling. I do know that any government that denies people an attorney of their choice can't be trusted.

[TheRickles]

7. Yes, it sounds very shady, using legalistic tactics to shut the door on any possible opposition.

[pfitz59]

11. Just DNA test everyone

would resolve kinship issues

[hunter]

13. Not really. There's a lot of people like my wife who do not identify as Native American...

... who have more Native American ancestry than people who do identify as Native American; people who have lived in Native American communities their entire lives and may even speak the language.

My wife's Native American ancestors lived along what is now the U.S. border with Mexico. They were forced into Mexico by the U.S. Army and other violent forms of discrimination. They later returned as ranch hands and farm workers, some of them freely traveling across the border whenever economic times in the U.S. were favorable. My wife's father was born in a tent in a labor camp near a small farm my parents used to own, but by that time his family spoke Spanish and identified as Mexican immigrants. My wife's grandfather eventually became a U.S. citizen, but her grandmother did not, although she had a green card and had worked in the U.S. her entire adult life. It was a matter of pride with her even though she'd chosen to have her children in the U.S.A..

When my wife worked in a Native American community she looked like everyone else but was still an outsider. She would have been rejected by that community if she'd presumed to be anything else.

My daughter-in-law and one of my nieces still maintain some loose ties with their own Native American communities, but grew up outside those communities.

My ancestors are White Wild West. When my wife and I announced our engagement my grandfather had a fit since men in his family didn't marry, in his words, "Mexican girls." That was in spite of the noble savage bullshit he believed and his tolerance of all races and creeds in the workplace, including his support for desegregation in the military. He boycotted our wedding, but to his credit he got over it, possibly because she was better at math than he was and had just as many friends in the aerospace industry.

[ripcord]

14. The problem is that is not how the tribes handle membership

They usually trace membership back to a list compiled by government officials at some point in the tribes history. The problem is that the lists were notoriously inaccurate.

This also wouldn't help the Freedmen with their cases, the Chickasaw, Muscogee, Seminole and Choctaw nations disenrolled the Freedmen members of their tribes in because they weren't of the blood. Maxine Waters even threaten those tribes with the loss of funding over their racism. The tribes bought black slaves from Americans, they supported the Confederacy in order to keep slavery legal and forced them to follow the tribe on the Trail of Tears and the deal at the end of the Civil War was that the tribes would absorb the Freedmen as members. Around a century later the started disenrolling Freedmen because the full bloods were worried about losing power.

[apnu]

17. How/why is the UN involved?

This is a small tribal spat. Others have covered the ins and outs of it already, but how and why did the UN get involved to the point of imploring the U.S. Government to get involved?

Is this some kind of an appeal on the part of the Nooksack 300?

It certainly puts the tribe in a bad light knowing this group of people are elderly and/or sick.