A Chukchansi tribal council election this month that ousted two supporters of tribal disenrollment has been nullified, keeping the tribe's membership issues festering.
Four opponents of disenrollment -- a thinning of tribal ranks over bloodlines -- won election, but two were deemed ineligible by the Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians election committee, said a tribal source speaking on condition of anonymity because he fears he'll be disenrolled.
The two ineligible candidates, Morris Reid, a former tribal chairman, and Harold Hammond, a spiritual leader in the tribe, will not be allowed to run in the new election, the source said.
Tribal officials last week also voted to audit ancestry records of tribal members, meaning hundreds more could be disenrolled in 2012. Already this year, 57 members of one family were disenrolled and a tribal committee started disenrolling another 200. The ancestry audit will examine the bloodlines of 350 more members. The tribe, which once had about 2,000 members, would dip to 600 to 700 if all the disenrollments are approved.
In the Dec. 3 election of four tribal council members, Reid got the most votes and Hammond came in third. Along with second-place finisher Dora Jones, an incumbent who opposes recent disenrollments, and Dixie Jackson, who also opposes recent disenrollments, the new council majority was composed of disenrollment opponents.
Two council members seeking re-election -- tribal chairman Reggie Lewis and Chance Alberta -- were fifth and sixth in the election and might earn two of the four seats in a new election. If that occurs, the 5-2 majority opposing disenrollment would switch to a 4-3 majority in favor of it.
Reducing tribal rolls allows remaining members to get a larger share of tribal casino profits, said Laura Wass, a Fresno-based official with the American Indian Movement.
Those cut from the tribe lose a monthly check of more than $300 from casino proceeds. Elders lose a food allowance worth more than $300 a month and utility allowances; members lose clothing and educational allowances for their children and college students lose scholarships.
Some in the American Indian community were stunned by the tribe's decision to reject the election results.
"I have never heard of anything like that happening," said Kenneth Hansen, an associate professor in American Indian studies at Fresno State. "It sounds like people are trying to stack the deck."
To David Wilkins, a University of Minnesota professor and author of a textbook on American Indian studies, California tribes with casinos have proven to be in a world of their own.
"Political vendettas and the mock capitalism angle is so pervasive," he said. "It is masked by tribes as a lack of [Native American] blood."
Wilkins has studied bloodlines of disenrolled Chukchansi members and said they are "bona fide tribal members."
California tribes, he said, should join together and create intertribal appellate courts to allow appeals on issues such as disenrollments or contested elections to be heard by a judge or an objective committee. Without such arrangements, the federal government may need to step in soon, he said.
"Disenrollment is happening on a scale that is unfathomable, and there is no justification for it," Wilkins said.
But Chukchansi is a sovereign nation. It has no constitutional provisions to allow federal government intervention in its elections or disenrollment, said Troy Burdick, Central California Agency superintendent for the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs in Sacramento.