This story from The Fresno Bee is accurate and timely.  Please read it and make comments at www.fresnobee.com.

Saturday, Feb. 28, 2009

But not everyone gets to share the bounty.

Over the last several years, the tribe has expelled about half its members, stripping them of their Native American heritage, former members say.

Hundreds have been cut from the rolls even though many could clearly document their Chukchansi descent, they said. Some had been tribal leaders. Even two of the last 10 people who speak the tribe's language were removed, one former member said.

Those who were kicked out of the tribe, including the jobless or elderly, lost health-care benefits, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. subsidies, college scholarships and any hope for a share of casino profits.

Those who remain could receive significantly larger payouts from the casino now that membership has been slashed, former members say.

"What better way to get more money in the future than to whittle down your tribe?" asked Mary Chapman, a 71-year-old retired Fresno County worker who says she was expelled after she questioned the disenrollments.

Tribal Chairman Morris Reid says the disenrollments were necessary to correct past membership mistakes and had nothing to do with increasing the wealth of remaining tribal members.

"We had to find out if they were qualified Chukchansi," he said. "It was a process and procedure that had to be followed."

But some who have been expelled say the move contradicts the original purpose of Indian gaming: to draw a long-suffering people out of poverty and unite them in prosperity.

"It's really a sad day when your people are engaging in the theft of your identity to line their pockets," said Cathy Cory, a special-education teacher in Porterville who was disenrolled along with 41 members of her family.

The Chukchansi tribe had 23 members two decades ago after it was officially recognized by the federal government. The tribe boosted membership to more than 1,500 by the late 1990s, in part to increase federal aid, tribal leaders later said.

Then, as the sparkling casino doors swung open in 2003, the seven-member tribal council decided it had enrolled too many people. It ordered a membership audit and, according to former members, kicked out more than 500 members in 2006. It had already expelled more than 200 members years earlier.

Those disenrolled include retirees and children, teachers and college students -- some in the Valley and others scattered across the country. The tribal council voted to kick out members who had served on tribal committees and on the tribal council, and booted at least one sitting council member. Others were removed from the tribe even though their blood relatives were allowed to stay.

The federal government hasn't recorded membership since 2005, but former members say the tribe has about 760 people. Reid, the chairman, estimated membership at 900 to 1,100, but said he did not have an exact count.

Reid said more Chukchansi Indians will be enrolled in the coming years, but did not offer specifics.

Because Indian tribes are considered sovereign nations, the federal government and U.S. courts have no say in tribal disputes. Much of the information about the disenrollments comes from former casino managers and former tribal members -- some of whom were in leadership positions -- and copies of internal tribal documents they provided. Reid gave a brief phone interview, but did not return later calls. Attorneys for the tribe did not return calls.

Disenrollments by casino-owning tribes have made headlines across the country for years. The epicenter of the debate is in California, where the 57 Indian gaming tribes bring in more than $7 billion a year.

In the last decade, about 2,500 people have been kicked out of 14 California tribes, almost all of them gaming tribes, said Laura Wass, the Central California director for the American Indian Movement and a leading advocate for disenrolled Indians. Chukchansi has been the most ambitious, accounting for about one-third of the disenrollments, said Wass, who has worked closely with expelled Chukchansi Indians and members disenrolled from other tribes.

In 2005, about a year before the Chukchansi disenrollments, the tribe's membership overwhelmingly voted to stop the disenrollments, said Bryan Galt, a former chairman of the tribe's enrollment committee. But the tribal council decided the vote was invalid because some members who voted had pending disenrollment hearings.

A similar measure was put to a vote in December 2008. By then, more than 500 members had been expelled -- almost half the tribe -- and the amendment failed by a slim margin.

Former members fear that those with political clout in the tribe will likely interpret the vote as a signal that they can plow ahead with more disenrollments.

Jeff Livingston, who was the casino's CEO from 2005 until early 2008 and is not a member of any tribe, said tribal members and even tribal leaders constantly worry about whether they will be the next to be expelled.

"To this day, everybody's looking over their shoulder. The trust is gone," said Livingston, who said he was fired from his job after getting into a dispute with tribal leaders. "There are people in there and on the board who will slim it down until they're satisfied."

Big money: $1.5m a day

According to the most recent figures from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, about 28% of the tribe was unemployed in 2005, even before the recession.

But prosperity seems to be just around the corner for those who remain.

The tribe's $180 million, 300,000-square-foot casino off Highway 41 has 1,800 slot machines, 48 card tables, and seven restaurants. In 2005, it issued a $310 million bond to pay off debt, expand the casino and build an 11-story hotel tower.

Galt, who was a manager at the casino until shortly after his disenrollment in September 2006, said the casino's revenue is staggering -- even though it has been curbed by the economic downturn.

Before the recession, up to 15,000 people would walk through the doors every day, forking over about $1.5 million every 24 hours. Average monthly revenue was $12 million in 2007, Galt said.

"People don't understand how much money we made," he said. "Every six weeks, we had the equivalent of the city of Fresno visit the casino."

Most of that money has gone toward casino expansion and paying down debt, Galt said. The tribe also promised the Grizzlies $16 million to name Fresno's ballpark and spent millions more on police and fire protection in Madera County.

In December 2007 -- less than a year after the disenrollments -- each of the remaining members got a $7,000 stipend, courtesy of casino profits, former and current members said. Since then, members have received $300-per-month payouts.

That is a pittance compared to what some tiny gaming tribes pay members: up to $20,000 a month. Disenrolled Chukchansi members and other critics say the tribe is hoarding casino profits, waiting for the economy to recover and the tribe to shrink further before spreading the wealth among the fortunate few.

"There is only one reason you disenroll people -- you disenroll people for greed," said Livingston, the former casino CEO.

More members, more funds

The U.S. government has decided to let tribes decide for themselves who should be a member. But years of shifting government policies, diluted blood lines and lost records have made it difficult to determine who is Chukchansi and who isn't.

In an attempt to force Indians to assimilate into American society, the U.S. government "terminated" many California tribal reservations in the 1950s and 1960s -- including the Picayune Rancheria, home to the Chukchansi. Decades later, a lawsuit forced the government to rerecognize the tribe.

In 1988, the Chukchansi drafted a constitution and, like many newly recognized tribes at the time, sought out distant relatives scattered across the country. It didn't matter how much Chukchansi blood they had -- the tribe wanted them in.

Years later, tribal leaders would admit that the effort was at least partly motivated by money.

"We enrolled members over time because it 'served our interest,' " the tribal council wrote in a February 2005 newsletter, explaining why it was cutting back membership. "The greater our membership numbers, the more dollars we received from the BIA."

Livingston said the larger membership also helped legitimize the tribe in the eyes of investors -- making it easier for the tribe to secure a loan to build a casino.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs still provides the tribe with assistance -- about $260,000 this fiscal year -- on top of funding from other federal government agencies for housing subsidies and other welfare programs.

There is, however, no evidence that any of the federal funding has been used to build the casino or fund its operations.

Hearings process 'a joke'

By the late 1990s, the future casino was on everyone's mind. A Sacramento management company called Cascade Entertainment Group was trying to secure a deal with the tribe. But the tribal chairwoman at the time, Daisy Liedkie, believed the company was driving too hard a bargain.

Liedkie said that tribal leaders who supported the Cascade deal turned on her. She said that one day in June 1999, about 20 people showed up at the tribal office, yelled and spat at her, and told her to leave. Madera County sheriff's deputies who arrived at the scene described it in a report as "some sort of insurrection by Indian subjects."

According to Bureau of Indian Affairs records, the upheaval prompted the BIA to send the tribe a letter threatening to suspend federal recognition if it didn't "eliminate the influence of political factions."

Within months, Liedkie said, she and more than 200 relatives and supporters had been expelled from the tribe. The next year, California voters approved Proposition 1A, which allowed Las Vegas-style gambling on Indian land.

As construction was under way on the casino in early 2003, tribal leaders began discussions about "auditing" its membership. Reid, the tribal chairman, insists the timing was a coincidence.

He said that the tribe didn't have the resources to do a necessary audit until the casino was built.

By 2005, the disenrollment debate had reached a fever pitch.

There were screaming matches during hours-long tribal council meetings, say those who were in attendance. People would openly challenge committee members and council members, yelling, "You don't belong here!"

At one marathon meeting that lasted until midnight, some members in favor of disenrollments brought sleeping bags and threatened to stay until they got their way.

The new enrollment committee soon came up with a list of more than 500 people who should be expelled.

Disenrollment hearings began in May 2006 and lasted into early 2007. At first, the hearings lasted 45 minutes. But soon the tribal council only allowed 20-minute hearings, said Wass, who represented more than 100 members at the hearings.

She said the members often brought documents that recorded their Native American heritage. But most of the time, the tribal council didn't dispute that the disenrollees were of Chukchansi descent. Instead, they insisted the members had failed to meet other criteria, like applying for membership before an April 1990 cutoff date. But because membership records had been stolen a decade earlier, it was sometimes impossible to prove otherwise.

"The process was a joke," said Cory, the special-education teacher. "At the hearing, everything was timed. I had a written request to tape the hearing, but [the chairman] ordered me to take the recorder out of the room.

"I represented myself and my four children, but only one person could speak. That was the rule. If you had an attorney, only the attorney could speak. If you didn't show up to the hearing, they would disenroll you on the spot."

The tribal council members, meanwhile, were paid to run the approximately 30 hearings. At a July 8, 2006, meeting that was held without notice, the council members voted to give themselves $250 each for every disenrollment hearing, said Cory, who was at that meeting.

The tribe defended the hearings in a statement to Capitol Weekly, a Sacramento newspaper, in August 2007. The tribe said it took "the necessary time to ensure the process was accurate" and made sure that "every individual was given due process under the tribe's law."

But those who were disenrolled had no recourse. The Bureau of Indian Affairs says it tries to stay out of any membership arguments and the tribal council's decisions were final.

Galt also was disenrolled. He has century-old documents that indicate his ancestors received an allotment of land from the federal government. The tribe's constitution states that any Chukchansi who is a descendant of an allottee can apply to be a member at any time.

The tribal council conceded that Galt was Chukchansi, but said his ancestor had received a homestead allotment, which it said was different from other allotments, and therefore Galt should never have been enrolled in the tribe in the first place, according to a letter the tribe sent Galt.

A surreptitious recording of the hearing captures council member Harold Hammond Sr. at the end of the meeting bluntly telling Galt: "You're not native no more."

More disenrollments in the future?

When the dust settled, the tribe didn't look anything like it had only a few years earlier. In 2005, tribal officials told the BIA it had 1,234 members. Livingston said that at a meeting in June 2007, a council member announced that the tribe had 691 members.

Current and former members worry about what will happen next.

"I expect more disenrollments to follow," said Chapman, the retiree. "It may not be right away, but it will happen."

The reporter can be reached at ccollins@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6412.