Members of Nooksack Tribe of Washington protest disenrollment. Photo from Facebook
Attorneys Anthony Broadman and Jared Miller explore how disenrollment hurts tribal economies:
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.Get the Story:
Anthony Broadman and Jared Miller: Disenrollment Is Bad For The Bottom Line: Redux (Indian Country Today 12/14)
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