Disenrollment

>>Um. Are you seriously comparing tribal disenrollment to ethnic cleansing? <<

That's what it is. Ethnic cleansing / genocide spans all actions that lead toward a people ceasing to exist. That is the entirety of American history regarding tribal nations. It's not just about murdering hundreds of people in this or that massacre. It's about feeding them food that kills people, underfunding clinics, kidnapping their children, attacking their languages, stealing yet more land, and taking every possible chance to say by any means whatsoever that they're not "Indian enough" and therefore the government owes them nothing.

>> Because if so, and the First Nations folk hear of it, prepare to duck-and-cover against a shit-storm of accusations of racism.<<

Oh, they're saying it too. It is indeed starting a lot of fights. I prefer to call a spade a spade, and if it displeases some people, I prefer that to letting genocide go unchallenged. Some of the others are aware of it and trying to wake up more people before they're all dead. I will help when I can. I got the reference to this article off a tribal newsfeed I'm on.

>>Note, I'm not saying I disagree with you, but living in an area where the tribes are major property owners and job creators, I have learned to keep my white-bread opinions about how the First Nations roll to myself.<<

I'm anything but whitebread. I may look white, but I have very distant kin-by-marriage at Pine Ridge, and I'm still turning up fragments of Cherokee culture in my mother's family. Plus other things that aren't relevant to this conversation. Sure, if I go to a powwow, people think I'm white -- until they see me throw down four separate bills at the blanket dance. Then they can see me.

>> Yes, it's true: the American government has no power to regulate the standards of sovereign nations as to who is or is not a citizen. The fact that the Tribal corporations that comprise their governments have become greedy and corrupt, and are now disenrolling political opponents and "useless eaters" by droves, is in no way the fault of the U.S. government - unless you think it was a mistake for the U.S. government to allow the tribes to be 'sovereign nations' in the first place.<<

It is the fault of the U.S. government because it set up a deeply flawed system in the first place, and is now taking advantage of this to pretend that disenrolled people are not Indian. Will they suddenly be treated as white? Of course not. They have all of the disadvantages and none of the compensations. It directly reduces their chance of survival and reproduction. The system traps tribes in a half-life where they have neither enough sovereignty to solve their own problems nor enough subjugation for member rights to be fully protected by an outside force.

For the government to escape fault it would have to continue supporting people in some way, either letting them form new tribes (a historic solution) or creating a catchall category and reservation (a modern solution). Another is splitting the reservation and its resources when the division involves a large enough group of people on each side. All have been proposed and are advocated by different tribal folks, who argue with each other and with the ones who think the government should force tribes to re-enroll ejected members.

>>What would you have our government do about tribal policies you don't like? Sanction them? Cut their funding? Tribal corporate attorneys are not barefoot guys in blankets; they are very sharp, very sharky, and have very low tolerance for interference in 'their' affairs.<<

I tend to favor the outside alternatives: let people form new tribes or provide a catchall category. I don't think forcing people together is ever going to work, and splitting is just another way to whittle the reservations small enough they can be foreclosed. Again. While sanctions are routine tools in dealing with sovereign nations, I can't bring myself to support any action of the government against tribal people, no matter how badly they're behaving. It always goes straight to abuse. :/

>>Genocide is "the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation." Disadvantageous as disenrollment may be for some, it's hyperbole to call it "deliberate killing",<<

Here is a more detailed definition:
http://www.preventgenocide.org/genocide/officialtext-printerfriendly.htm

Among the more salient quotes:

Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy a group includes the deliberate deprivation of resources needed for the group’s physical survival, such as clean water, food, clothing, shelter or medical services. Deprivation of the means to sustain life can be imposed through confiscation of harvests, blockade of foodstuffs, detention in camps, forcible relocation or expulsion into deserts.

Forcible transfer of children may be imposed by direct force or by fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression or other methods of coercion. The Convention on the Rights of the Child defines children as persons under the age of 18 years.

Genocidal acts need not kill or cause the death of members of a group. Causing serious bodily or mental harm, prevention of births and transfer of children are acts of genocide when committed as part of a policy to destroy a group’s existence.

So for example, disenrolled people are always deprived of resources (food, medical care, etc. from the government), often expelled from homes, and their children are neither counted among the shrinking identity group nor protected by even the flimsy laws that supposedly keep tribal children within the tribe.

>>and the whole point of disenrollment is that the people being disenrolled are (allegedly) not legitimately part of the ethnic group or nation.<<

If you look at the examples, you'll find that some tribes have lopped off branches containing hundreds of people who have been part of the tribe for hundreds of years going back to a founding member. To do is to be. If the family has been in the tribe for generations, they're members. Hell, I think people who've been doing the work for a decade or who marry in have a reasonable claim, but that's a more historic perspective than most folks favor today.

The obsession over blood quantum itself is a whole nother barrel of worms and the last bastion of institutionalized racism in America. >_<

Some native perspectives:

https://nativenewsonline.net/opinion/tribal-disenrollment-the-new-wave-of-genocide/

https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/who-belongs-the-epidemic-of-tribal-disenrollment-rP9SELOEfE-i-KBViQs1Vw/

https://www.originalpechanga.com/2010/09/pechangas-tribal-disenrollments-is.html

Anyway, it's a giant mess. There is no talking about it without utterly outraging a whole bunch of people. Turtle Island is a coast-to-coast brawl over this shit, and it all comes down to what people think gives them the best chance of survival. A sticking point is whether they're trying to survive as individuals in a world where dollars are survival tickets, or they're thinking of the seventh generation.

I've done my homework. I've taken stances on some topics and others I'm still contemplating. I watch the news. I spread the word. And if some people are unhappy about that, they can join the hordes of other folks who disapprove of me. It won't stop me from calling out the government, suggesting solutions, forwarding tribal news, or burying fish scraps in the garden.