Honored Abroad, Ignored at Home: The Cruelty of Federal Tribal Recognition

The Maori welcoming ceremony began with a towering woman with emerald, tattooed lips singing a summoning song. A phalanx of elders wore traditional capes, and wielded rough staffs introduced themselves in Te Reo, the Maori language.

This spring I traveled as a journalist with the Winnemem Wintu, a small California tribe, to cover their journey to commune with the New Zealand salmon, genetic descendants of the fish that once spawned in their river, the McCloud.

While inspiring, the trip unfortunately also revealed a cruel irony. After two weeks of being treated as esteemed ambassadors from a sovereign nation, the Winnemem would return to the United States and promptly cease to exist.

In the 1985, the Winnemem were unceremoniously dropped from the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ (BIA) list of recognized tribes after a Supreme Court decision required the BIA to amend its rolls.

Recognition establishes a formal government-to-government relationship between the US and a tribe, and without it American Indians have no access to Indian Health Services, college scholarships and billions of dollars in government aid. It also means that tribes have no protection under the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, which theoretically ensures their access to sacred places.

The Winnemem never received a reason for the loss of recognition. They previously signed agreements with the US Forest Service to use agency land for ceremonies and possess a well-documented history of their rich and still vibrant tribal culture.

They're hardly alone. There are 564 recognized tribes in the United States, but it's estimated that more than 300 are unrecognized, including more than 100 in California that represent 90 percent of the state's Indian population.

For the Winnemem and tribes like them, this has meant being cornered into poverty and living in a bizarre 'No Man’s Land' where the ability to hold their ceremonies at sacred sites is completely dependent on the whims of government agencies and private landowners. The withdrawal of recognition works as a vice, slowly strangling their ability to protect their culture.

For years, the General Accounting Office has documented the persistent problems with federal recognition, but little has been done about it. The BIA’s Office of Federal Acknowledgment is perennially understaffed, and hundreds of applications are lodged in a growing backlog. The average processing time for an application is now about 20 years, and the BIA's judgments, according to the GAO, are lacking in transparency.

Other factors muddy the process. Some recognized tribes aren’t eager to share a limited pot of funds, and recognition often means tribes can open casinos. Not surprisingly, the recognition process has also become plagued by politics.

This is not a problem simply relegated to the United States. In recent years, the Winnemem's Chief and Spiritual Leader Caleen Sisk-Franco and other activists have tried to raise awareness about these issues at the UN, and a recent workshop drew representatives of unrecognized or unrepresented tribes from Canada, Hawaii, Indonesia, Africa and Egypt.

In January, Sisk-Franco and other indigenous leaders, including Lipan Apache scholar and poet Margo Tamez, plan to meet in Arizona to discuss how to ensure that unrecognized and unrepresented indigenous people aren't excluded from the UN's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIP).

Currently, the United States is considering ratification of the DRIP, and many indigenous leaders believe the DRIP's articles are so strong and encompassing that it will prove a valuable tool in protecting their cultures.

But there is a potential loophole: If a country applies a restrictive definition of who's indigenous.

If the U.S. is allowed to say the DRIP applies only to recognized tribes, indigenous people like the Winnemem will enjoy none of its protections, and the government will retain its ability to discriminate against the unrecognized.

The Winnemem’s New Zealand trip was emblematic of the hypocrisy and injustice that permeates the US system of recognition. If it continues to exist as it does, it will only lead to the destruction of indigenous cultures within American borders.

A first step in making things right would be acknowledging the Winnemem, and others like them, as historical tribes and giving them the basic rights they need to preserve their culture.

The Winnemem say they’re not looking for a handout. They’re simply looking for the right to exist.

To ensure they have this right, tell the UN Human Rights Council to add language to the DRIP that protects the rights of unrecognized and unrepresented people by signing the petition below.

Photo credit: Marc Dadigan

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Marc Dadigan is a freelance writer and photographer based. He is currently living as an immersion journalist with the Winnemem Wintu as he works on a book about their spiritually guided salmon restoration project.