Mar 012024
 

To the President of the United States, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate:

Pursuant to the Alyce Spotted Bear and Walter Soboleff Commission on Native Children authorizing legislation (Public Law 114-244), October 14, 2016, as amended, I respectfully submit a Minority Report of the Commission on Native Children.

This report attempts to include the perspective of those Native Americans who live outside of the reservation system and do not use any form of tribal benefit or program.  Indeed, about 75% of Native Americans do not live on reservation land or participate in reservation politics.  As a result, countless families of Native American heritage are not heard through methods normally employed by those assessing the needs of the United States’ native population. 

This is significant as legislation and administrative rules often include them and their children, whether they have chosen to be involved with the reservation system or not.  

With their voices in mind, this report presents additional recommendations, several of which were presented to the Commission but were not put forward for discussion or vote.

Due to the strength of an ‘iron triangle’ encompassing federal Indian policy, it is necessary to submit this minority report.

 

Respectfully submitted,

Elizabeth Morris

Alyce Spotted Bear and Walter Soboleff Commission on Native Children

 March 1, 2024  28 Responses »
Oct 112021
 
children dying

October 11, 2021

Washington, DC – Wiley, a preeminent DC law firm, submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the Christian Alliance for Indian Child Welfare in Brackeen v. Haaland. The brief was filed in support of adoptive families and states in this high-profile case, which urges the Court to review a Fifth Circuit decision involving the rights of Native American children and their families under the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA). The brief was joined by seven individual signatories who are former ICWA children or are parents to ICWA children, all of whom have been harmed by ICWA.

Wiley partner Stephen J. Obermeier and associate Krystal B. Swendsboe, who authored the amicus brief, are members of the firm’s Issues and Appeals Practice and are representing the nonprofit Alliance on a pro bono basis.

The case, which stems from a child-custody dispute, addresses the harm suffered by Indian children and their families as a result of ICWA – such as the denial of the full range of rights and protections of the federal and state constitutions to the petitioners when subjected to tribal jurisdiction under the ICWA.

“For nearly fifty years, ICWA has imposed race-based classifications on Indian children and their families – a clear violation of Equal Protection – and has caused horrendous individual suffering as a result,” Obermeier and Swendsboe explained in the Alliance’s brief.

As noted in the brief, this case raises particularly significant issues for Alliance because its members are birth parents, birth relatives, foster parents, and adoptive parents of children with varying amounts of Indian ancestry, as well as tribal members, individuals with tribal heritage, or former ICWA children – all of whom have seen or experienced the tragic consequences of applying ICWA’s race-based distinctions. The brief includes, as examples, stories from the individual amicus signatories who have been harmed by ICWA’s race-based distinctions and discriminatory placement preferences.

In addition to violating the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, the ICWA exceeds the authority granted to Congress under the Indian Commerce Clause, according to the amicus brief.

Congress “may not exercise power over family and custody matters under the guise of regulating commerce with Indian Tribes,” the brief argued. “ICWA, therefore, exceeds Congress’s power to regulate commerce, as it is entirely unrelated to commerce and intrudes on noncommercial subjects belonging entirely to the states.”

https://www.wiley.law/pressrelease-Wiley-Files-Amicus-Brief-in-High-Profile-Supreme-Court-Case-on-Behalf-of-Christian-Alliance-for-Indian-Child-Welfare-and-Former-ICWA-Children-and-Families

 October 11, 2021  No Responses »
May 252019
 
Inform concerning ability to abuse absentee ballots

CHIPPYGATE: 
Tribal Government corruption on the Leach Lake and White earth Reservations of Northern Minnesota 

EXCERPTS from the Ojibwe News/Native American Press

June 7, 1996 


Defense overwhelmed by vote fraud evidence in week 4 of Chippygate 
by Greg Blair

The enrollees came from all over the country, many of them full-blood Indians, while some had blonde hair and blue eyes. However, not one of them hesitated when asked by prosecutors if they were eligible to vote in the White Earth reservation’s elections. “Yes,” was the answer jurors heard from nearly one hundred witnesses who testified this week that they were denied the exercise of this right by the fraudulent practices of Darrell “Chip” Wadena’s gang. Some of the witnesses reported that they had never lived on the reservation or voted in tribal elections. One of the witnesses was a doctor, another was a former Twin Cities radio personality, one was a minister and yet others were successful businessmen and women. Some were raising families, others were retired elders and some were also struggling in poverty.

Many said they had left White Earth as young children or older adults. Others said they had voted on the reservation, but not by absentee ballot. Yet others said they had voted once, but prosecutors showed them two sets of signed ballots for verification. Still others insisted that they had never voted in the reservation’s 1994 general election, but that they had voted in other past White Earth elections.

By day’s end, the federal courthouse in St. Paul, Minnesota was resembled a White Earth reunion more than a federal corruption trial. The get-together was even larger than during the reservation’s founder’s day Pow-Wow held in mid-June each year. 
A common sentiment was expressed by one witness, who said after testifying, “That’s the reason my parents left the reservation, there is too much corruption and I guess it’s still going on.”…


Leech Lake members, residents played key role in White Earth vote conspiracy 
By Jeff Armstrong

White Earth Reservation officials used funds from a public assistance program with a $1.1 million annual budget to compensate Leech Lake and White Earth members who helped them obtain and certify fraudulent ballots in 1990 and 1994, according to testimony in the federal conspiracy trial of White Earth’s top officials.

Indicted White Earth election board chair Carley Jasken also directed the assistance program, but despite the federal charges, Jasken will be responsible for overseeing next Tuesday’s balloting.

Eleanor Craven testified that she and fellow Leech Lake member Leo Gotchie, then a district RBC candidate, were campaigning for absentee votes on May 25, 1994, when they stopped at Peter Peqette’s south Minneapolis home. Craven said Gotchie suggested the stop in hopes of obtaining gas money for their return trip by using her notary seal to validate White Earth ballots. 

Shortly after their arrival at Pequette’s, Craven testified, Jerry Rawley showed up at the residence with an attache case full of “hundreds” of signed absentee ballots in sealed envelopes. Although the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe’s election ordinance requires absentee voters to sign the “affidavit envelope” in the presence of a notary public – who must then verify that the voter actually cast the enclosed ballot – Craven said she and Pequette proceeded to notarize the invalid ballots.

…Craven said Rawley then collected the votes and handed Gotchie an apparent payment. “He gave something to Mr. Gotchie and he said, “here, take care of your notary,”

…Among the “votes” delivered on May 25, 1994 were those of Cheryl Boswell and her brother Neil. Ms. Boswell, like more than three dozen witnesses in a single day, testified that she never voted in the election and that the ballot envelope in her name was a forgery. Boswell also caused a subdued stir in the courtroom when she told the court that she knew her brother’s vote was false because Neil Boswell had died six months prior to the election.

…An employee of Harper’s at Leech Lake maintenance, Terry LaDuke, received two payments of $400 each from the White Earth general fund in 1994. LaDuke testified that it was a common practice at both Leech Lake and White Earth to gather ballots to be notarized, with or without the voter’s presence. 


Money is at the core of court queries 
By Pat Doyle

The question drew a response that startled some in the courtroom: How much money do you make in a year? 
When Darwin McArthur, executive director of the White Earth Band of Chippewa, replied that he made $59,000, a tribal member in the spectator section gasped.

By standards of the White Earth Indian Reservation, McArthur’s salary is extraordinary – but not close to the income of his bosses. 
…Jurors…listened to testimony of how council members tapped tribal accounts to buy themselves vehicles or to pay their taxes.

“If they tell you to issue a check, that’s what you do?” a prosecutor asked McArthur.

“Yes.” he replied.

In 1993 tribal funds provided $240,122 for Chairman Darrell (Chip) Wadena, $209,507 for council member Rick Clark and $187,237 for Secretary-Treasurer Jerry Rawley.

Prosecutors say those figures include tens of thousands of dollars that the officials embezzled from their tribe by creating gambling and fishing commissions that provided them with checks for work they didn’t do. Additionally, Wadena and Rawley are accused of accepting bribes or gratuities if $428, 682 and $21,500 respectively from Clark to assure that his drywall firm would land a contract to help build the tribe’s Shooting Star Casino in Mahnomen.

…In their questions to witnesses, defense attorneys have suggested that tribal officials deserved the money because they built a casino that employs about 1000 people, most of them Indians, on a remote reservation in northwest Minnesota. Moreover, they say the officials were operating in the belief that treaties and federal statutes over the years gave them the authority to do what they did. And defense lawyers have tried to convince the jury that over-zealous federal investigators singled out Wadena, Rawley and Clark for conduct common among Indian officials.

Whatever its outcome, the trial exposes a tribal government operates without checks and balances, in which council members typically avoid scrutiny by their constituents or non-Indians. Council members made decisions about their pay at meetings they routinely held without notifying White Earth members. McArthur said they did so to avoid opposition.


Bill Lawrence was a Red Lake Band Ojibwe member who grew up in Bemidji. A military vet, attorney and journalist, Lawrence was a watchdog of Minnesota’s tribal governments for more than two decades.

Lawrence founded the Ojibwe News in 1988 in response to tribal government corruption. His work helped federal prosecutors go after tribal leaders and other politicians. He had crusaded to open the books of Minnesota’s 11 Indian casinos and his investigative reporting helped send several tribal leaders to prison in the 1990s. Lawrence passed away with cancer in 2010 at the age of 70.

 May 25, 2019  No Responses »
Apr 202017
 
children dying

Lenore Banning owned over a million feet of timber on her trust land in Washington State, but lived in poverty all her life. She was not allowed to sell any of her timber.

Toddler Lauryn Whiteshield was murdered a little over a month after her arrival to her grandfather’s home on the Spirit Lake Reservation in the spring of 2013. She and her three-year-old twin sister were taken from a safe, loving home in Bismarck and placed with their grandfather and his girlfriend, a woman known by Spirit Lake to have been abusive to children in the past. The woman beat the girls several times. On June 12, 2013, they were thrown down an embankment. Sometime later that night, Laurynn died next to her sleeping sister.

Factually, current federal Indian policy infringes on the lives, freedom, and property of many persons of Native American heritage.
– – Federal policies mandate tribal government jurisdiction over individuals of lineage in several situations, including
#1) Children across America who have never been near a reservation nor involved in tribal customs
#2) Families who have at one time lived on the reservation, but for their own reasons, have purposefully moved elsewhere and do not want tribal government jurisdiction
#3) Women of any heritage, victimized by reservation related violence, who are only allowed to seek justice in tribal court (even if the perp is a nephew to the judge) and are denied the option of county court
#4) And as the Department of Interior holds title to the property of millions of individual tribal members – Adult U.S. citizens who are not allowed to sell or use their property as collateral without permission.

Please share this video* with your friends.

PLEASE also share this video* with YOUR Congressmen. MANY of them take a stand on all kinds of things, demanding justice and civil rights. DEMAND that they take a strong stand for the rights of persons of heritage…CITIZENS subject to abuse by laws that Congress itself has created and MUST remove.

Most especially – share your thoughts on this video* with the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs – Senator John Hoeven. (701) 250-4618, or (202) 224-2551
or through his contact form at: https://www.hoeven.senate.gov/contact/email-the-senator

Find your State’s U.S. Senator and Congressmen here:
https://www.senate.gov/
https://www.house.gov/
– *This video was adapted from “The Implications of Native American Heritage on U.S. Constitutional Protections”, A Presentation Prepared for Liberty University, Research Week, Center for Research and Scholarship April 10-13, 2017

Thank you – and PLEASE Share….

Learn More:

https://DyingInIndianCountry.com

https://www.facebook.com/CAICW.org/

This video was adapted from “The Implications of Native American Heritage on U.S. Constitutional Protections,” A Presentation Prepared for Liberty University, Research Week, Center for Research and Scholarship, April 10-13, 2017

 April 20, 2017  No Responses »
Oct 242014
 
Lavern 'Bundy' Littlewind

He died in a car wreck on Sept. 22, 2014. Just five hours earlier, he was talking to us on the phone, telling us he had tape recorded his meetings with BIA social services and tribal court because he finally wanted his story to be public.

Lavern “Bundy” Littlewind was a BIA policeman and Spirit Lake tribal member. He wanted people who don’t live on the reservation to understand why child abuse is endemic on so many reservations. Many Tribal social services don’t protect kids. They protect tribal sovereignty.

Jastin Ian Blue Coat died 10-18-2014

Jastin “Ian” Blue Coat

The latest: Toddler Jastin Blue Coat was murdered October 18, 2014, in Eagle Butte, SD. Because of his heritage, he wasn’t allowed protection.

After a series of child murders at Spirit Lake, our federal government – in the form of the BIA, FBI and U.S. Attorney Tim Purdon – was called in two years ago to oversee, improve care, and protect the kids. Federally funded programs such as Casey Family Services and ACF were also supposed to be improving care. But that money has been poured down the drain.

There is no serious intention to protect children if the only real solutions are perceived to threaten tribal sovereignty. Protect tribal sovereignty at all costs – even at the expense of children.

Power and money have corrupted nations from time immemorial.

In all our years of going to DC about this, Representative Kevin Cramer has been the only Congressman to take real action. This year, he pushed for an oversight hearing and called the BIA on the carpet. His office asked Bundy to testify at the June hearing as well, but Bundy was nervous, thinking tribal government might use his kids against him if he spoke up. That’s understandable – many have seen that happen.

The U.S. Government has set up a system that allows crime and corruption to occur without repercussion in Indian Country. We are very grateful to Rep. Cramer. It takes real courage to address something other Congressman have been afraid to touch. We need him to remain in office, pursuing protection for kids at Spirit Lake as well as across the country.

 October 24, 2014  No Responses »
Dec 312012
 
Roland, preaching, Sunday service in Juarez, Mexico, June 2003

A woman was advocating for rights of tribal members and freedom from tribal gov’t tyranny, while telling me that the only way tribal members can be free from alcohol is through traditional religion.

So… while on the one hand she decried being dictated to and controlled by tribal gov’t, she was attempting to dictate to and control other tribal members when it came to spirituality.

This is a very important point about freedom for tribal members. Some tribal governments do try to dictate that people need to follow traditional religion, not any other. When Roland was testifying in Seattle, a member of the NICWA told us that reservations have a right to keep Christians off their property – and Christians have no right to speak to tribal members about their religion. We asked “What if an elder who has lived there all his life and becomes a Christian wants to talk to his grandchildren about it?” The NICWA representative answered that the grandfather had no right to speak to his grandchildren about it and would have to move.

This is not an unusual point of view within some tribal circles, nor was it unusual in many historical dictatorships that one religion was chosen for the entire country and all had to abide by it. This was why many settlers came to America and why our constitution addressed religion.

Then comes the Indian Child Welfare Act, used by some tribal governments to dictate the religion Indian children are to be raised in. Some times exposure to powwows and traditional Indian religion is mandated by courts and tribal governments as a condition of their foster care. Other times they aren’t even allowed to stay in Christian homes. This can happen even if the parents and grandparents want the children raised as Christians.

In other words, individual freedom is robbed by some tribal governments as well as federal government in applying the ICWA.

My husband and I knew who we wanted to be guardians of our kids if we were to die. We chose a man from our church. His race didn’t matter to us – his spirituality and heart were all that mattered. This is our right as parents to choose. No one else’s.

NO ONE else in America is underneath a law that dictates how you are supposed to spiritually raise your kids. The 1st amendment says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”… but the ICWA Congress enacted comes dangerously close to doing just that.

 December 31, 2012  No Responses »