Tribal governments that disenroll members do it for the money. Or at least it appears that way in many cases. Tribal councils who engage in disenrollment turn their members into non-Indians in exchange for a bigger slice of tribal gaming profits.

Ironically, while some tribal members may benefit from larger per capita payments, at least temporarily, political strife caused by disenrollment controversies can eviscerate tribal economies, shrinking the pie itself.

This idea isn’t new, of course. We wrote about it in an Indian Country Today Media Network piece in 2013 called “Disenrollment is Bad for the Bottom Line.”

The difference now is that we have better examples of how disenrollment destroys tribal businesses and harms communities. The damage seems to happen chiefly in four ways.