Tribal Offices, Tribal Land, Avenida Central, La Grange, Ca. 95329
The California Valley Miwok Tribe, (the real tribe) filed a long awaited legal response to the ongoing felonious activities currently being perpetrated against it and its sovereign right against foreign intrusion on April 2nd, 2024. This litigation was filed in the proper venue of the United States District Court For The District Of Columbia. The individuals and organization listed as defendants in this legal action are responsible for committing the most heinous and unforgivable of all crimes against the Native Peoples of this nation in an organized and calculated assault against tribal sovereignty.
In their attempt to fulfill their agenda they initiated an illegal process and racist document called the Certificate Degree Indian Blood form. They also went as far as violating not only tribal sovereign rights but the rights of individual tribal citizens under statutes of the United States Constitution.
Sample of the Certificate Degree Indian Blood document, showing an individual being 1/16ths Choctaw by blood.
- Sovereignty: The very fundamental under which all federally recognized tribes are able to exist under and to thrive being able to protect their enrolled citizens and very distinct customs, cultures and identities. Tribal sovereignty which bestows those enumerated powers within each and every tribe to be able to govern themselves without fear of foreign influence is essential for all tribes to even be able to continue to exist.
- Genocidal Racism: The genocidal racism being perpetrated against the California Valley Miwok Tribe is detailed within the legal document pdf at bottom of page. Currently being conducted by named defendants, they seek to erase and rewrite the tribe’s identity, citizenship and culture. Initially because of personal
bias against and not wishing to deal with the tribe’s elected government who would not agree to unreasonable and illicit demands that were in direct violation of it’s tribal sovereignty and its ability to protect the rights of its enrolled citizens. Many additional personal and monetary reasons have been exposed in the decades since.
LAW360: Below is a byline by Ali Sullivan
Calif. Tribe Sues DOI Over Tribal Ancestry Procedure
By Ali Sullivan
Law360 (April 3, 2024,9:52 Ptvl EDT) – A California Native American tribe has accused the U.S. Department of the lnterior of using an unconstitutional and
unregulated race-based procedure for determining tribal ancestry in a new lawsuit in D.C. federal court.
Filed Tuesday by the federally recognized California Vallev Miwok Tribe and several of its members, the suit targets the DOI’s Bureau of lndian Affairs’ use
of a “Certificate of Degree of lndian Blood” form, arguing that the DOI and various agency officials “have recklessly trod into the thicket of tribal membership head-long.”
The BIA has made efforts in recent years to organize the tribe through the formation of a tribal constitution, according to the suit. To determine the individuals eligible to participate in the process, the complaint says, the BIA required potential participants to fill out the “Certificate of Degree of lndian Blood” form, outlining their tribal lineage.
There’s no regulation dictating the use of the certificate, the tribe said, and it is instead an “internal device” within the BIA that was created without a public
notice and comment process.
“This court should halt defendants’ unconstitutional racial practices against lndigenous peoples before the BIA extends a legacy of oppression that is antithetical to contemporary federal policies and Supreme Court precedent,” the tribe said.
The complaint alleges the BIA’s use of the certificate violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act because the agency never completed proper rulemaking.
The federal government is also violating the U.S. Constitution, the tribe said, “by establishing a governmentally determined race-based qualification for participation in the creation of tribal law, governing documents, and in an electoral, federally administered referendum for the ‘reorganization’ or ‘organization’ of a federally recognized tribal government’s constitution or governing documents.”
The suit urges the court to declare the procedure, including the absent notice-and-comment rulemaking, violates APA and to issue an injunction barring the application of the certificate criteria until such rulemaking is completed.
The tribe noted the lnterior Department recognizes that the rulemaking is necessary, and there have been unsuccessful attempts in the past to promulgate regulations surrounding the certificate.
ln 2000, the BIA pursued notice-and-comment rulemaking “related to the collection of information under a Certificate of Degree of lndian Blood process,”
but the agency never finalized the regulations, according to the complaint. The DOI’s semi-annual rulemaking agendas included the proposal to regulate the
certificate between 2000 and 2011 , the suit said, but the effort fizzled in 2011.
Without those regulations, there’s no authority for the BIA to employ the form “to determine whether any individual meets the federally established ancestral-lineage-criteria sufficient to participate in the reformation of a currently federally recognized lndian tribe,” the suit says.
Counsel for the tribe declined to comment beyond the complaint on Wednesday. The BIA did not return a request for comment.
The California Valley Miwok Tribe and its members are represented by Peter D. Lepsch and Patrick R. Bergin of Peebles Kidder Bergin & Robinson LLP.
Counsel information for the federal defendants was not immediately available Wednesday.
The case is California Valley Miwok Tribe et al. v. Haaland, Secretary of the lnterior et al., case number 1:24-cv-00947, in the U.S. District of Columbia.
Click here to download PDF: 4.3.2024 Law360
Click here to download the full litigation PDF: 2024.04.02 124-cv-00947 CA Valley Miwok Tribe Complaint (2)
Simply put, racists run the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Oh, they may look like Indians but in reality, they are just red apples and a bunch of bad apples at that, rotten to the core.
