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* copyright 1995, Michael Medina
Rosemary Cambra's War
Local Ohlones seek official federal tribal recognition
By Michael Medina
When just-elected president Bill Clinton fielded questions on MTV in 1993, a
young woman from the Lumbee Indian tribe of North Carolina asked him what he
planned to do about the plight of federally unrecognized tribes such as hers.
"I didn't even know there was such a problem," the bewildered rookie
president responded.
Clinton knows more about the problem now. This month the White House
concluded a first-ever series of meetings with representatives of numerous
unrecognized Indian groups, including several from the Ohlone people who once
inhabited the Bay Area.
To the Spaniards who colonized California, the tribes which occupied the area
from San Francisco and the Carquinez straits to Big Sur were lumped together
and called the Costanoans, or coast people. Although they experienced the
same decrease of more than 90 percent of their population suffered by other
California tribes, small groups of these Ohlone Indians survived into the
present, but were never formally recognized as a tribe. Once even considered
extinct by Indian scholars, today the Ohlone combat this perception as they
seek formal recognition.
Rosemary Cambra, the chairwoman of one Ohlone group, the 300-strong San
Jose-based Muwekma tribe, said the biggest obstacle to recognition is the
maze of technical, ambiguous and demanding federal regulations that govern
tribal recognition. The villain in Cambra's eyes is the Bureau of
Acknowledgment and Research, the branch of the federal Bureau of Indian
Affairs which oversees tribal recognition.
Like some Orwellian bureaucracy, the BAR, ostensibly in charge of recognizing
tribes, is in fact in charge of not recognizing tribes, Cambra charges. Some
tribes have been waiting for more than a decade just to have their petitions
for recognition reviewed, she said-and positive findings are rarely made.
Tribes begin the recognition process by first submitting a letter of intent.
Then they work with BAR staff-a three-person team consisting of a historian,
anthropologist and genealogist-to remedy any shortcomings. When the
petitioner feels the application is ready, they ask for a formal review,
which occurs in the order the materials are submitted. Cambra said there is
an inherent conflict in the process because the bureau staff ends up adopting
a stance either for or against the petitions during the research, and then is
asked to judge the very same petitions.
Bureau staff historian John Dobbern says bureau staffers are scholars, not
advocates-although he admits they wear two hats and do play a judicial role.
But Dobbern defends his agency, noting they have more than doubled their
staff, streamlined some of their regulations and slashed their turnaround
time for reviewing petitions. While only 25 petitions were acted upon from
1978 to 1992, Dobbern said, the bureau has issued decisions on three
petitions in the last three months, with six more ready with preliminary
findings.
Still, Cambra said the Muwekma have little faith in the process, but are
intent on exhausting all the possibilities in seeking recognition. Cambra
said that when she turned in the Muwekma petition to BAR head Holly Record at
the White House in January, she told them: "This is my declaration of war."
The Muwekma also hope to win the war on another front, by getting Clinton to
recognize them and other unrecognized tribal groups through executive order.
Cambra met Clinton personally-albeit briefly-when she attended the first
meeting of unrecognized tribes in October.
"He acknowledged the presence of the California tribes, he talked about
working as a 'partner with the government,'" she said. "He's a good P.R.
man."
Despite her lack of faith, Cambra has made some progress with officials at
the White House meetings. Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior
Michael Anderson was scheduled to visit San Jose March 20, with Dobbern
slated to visit the following week to begin evaluating the Muwekma petition.
The Muwekma would use their federal recognition to promote economic
development, Cambra said. Indian housing, health and education grants, for
example, could be combined with local city and county moneys to develop
projects that would benefit both the Ohlones and the community at large, she
added.
Recognition would also put the Ohlones at the front of the line to claim
surplus federal land. Already the Muwekmas have registered a claim to 400
acres of the Presidio in San Francisco including the present site of
Letterman hospital. Under federal law, recognized aboriginal groups have the
first right to claim such land. Even if the recognition comes too late to
pursue the Presidio claims, Cambra said other area base closings will free up
federal lands for potential Muwekma claims.
The Muwekma cite other Ohlone groups-specifically the Esselen in Monterey
County and the Amah-Mutsun of San Benito County-as mutually supporting each
other's petitions for recognition. But there are other Ohlones as well, not
all of whom apparently support the recognition efforts.
Larry Myers, executive secretary of California's Native American Heritage
Commission, chuckled when he heard that Muwekma materials mentioned only the
other two Ohlone groups.
"Often these things revolve around family rivalries," he said. "The Muwekma,
the Esselen, the Amah and the Mutsun are all united, but the other groups do
not all get along with them. In the minds of many of the other Ohlone, there
is the fear they may be excluded if one particular group is recognized."
Myers named more than a half-dozen Ohlone not involved in the recognition
efforts-although none returned phone calls for this article. The most
organized of these other Ohlone is undoubtedly the Galvan family, which runs
a non-profit organization to administer the Ohlone cemetery near Mission San
Jose in Fremont.
Cambra admitted their is little or no overlap between her group and that of
the Galvans, her cousins. "We are interested in different things, in
different projects," she said. "I guess you could say that we are competing
groups in some ways. But that should not stand in the way of tribal
recognition. The question is not whether this family or that family runs the
tribe, but if the tribe should be recognized at all. If the fact that there
were competing factions within a nation was grounds for not recognizing that
nation, we would refuse to recognize most of the governments of the world."
Tracing their roots to the original aboriginal Ohlone society may be a bigger
obstacle to Muwekma claims. Although Cambra, for example, can trace her
lineage to ancestors at California missions in the 1700's and early 1800's,
the standards by which the recognition petitions are judged stress continuity
with the original tribal society, something California Indians-disrupted by
the Spanish Mission system, Mexican abolishment of that system, and later
United States annexation-rarely maintained.
"The problem most Ohlone have, like many California Indians, is some can
trace their ancestry to the mission where there ancestors were baptized, but
people were hauled off to the missions without regard for their origins-most
mission records don't say where they're actually from," Myers said.
At least one Indian advocate believes this distinction should no longer be an
obstacle to the bureau's recognition of the Muwekma and other tribes.
"Their main concern has been 'historic versus non-historic,'" said Al Slagle,
attorney for the Association on American Indian Affairs. "They don't want to
recognize 'created tribes.' But the validity of this was challenged,
especially in regards to California. By their definition of 'historic tribe'
there were no tribes in California at all. Congress overrode this policy and
declared it void, and in December 1994 the BIA staff agreed not to use the
historic/non-historic distinction anymore. But the BAR improperly continues
to use that term nevertheless."
A lack of support from other American Indian tribes has complicated matters
for the Muwekma, Cambra said. Many other tribal groups either believe in the
extinction of the Ohlone themselves, she said, or just can't take seriously a
group of a few hundred when their own group numbers in the thousands.
Some tribal opposition can even be traced to simple self interest. When the
Lumbee introduced recognition legislation a few years ago, they ironically
discovered that some of those lobbying the hardest against the legislation
were representatives of the already recognized tribes, said Richard Regan, an
aide to Rep. Charlie Rose of North Carolina.
"Recognized tribal representatives have told me they were opposing Lumbee
recognition because it would mean stretching the limited resources devoted to
Indians even thinner," he said. " 'It would mean putting even more spoons in
the soup,' they told me."
One local Indian rights activist, Alan Leventhal, a staff member of the San
Jose State University School of Social Work and Department of Anthropology,
said he withdrew from national Indian politics because he felt the needs of
the California Indians-the people he was trying to help-were being ignored.
No tribe has ever been recognized by executive order, Regan noted, but a
number of tribes have been recognized through congressional legislation. The
current political climate in Congress, however, makes this route unlikely.
"If there is no BIA actions, we can expect to see more and more tribal
petitions to Congress," Regan said. "I can't tell you the number of tribes
calling us up and asking about the process of turning to legislation for
redress. But the chances of legislation passing in either chamber is very
low."
Still, many feel legislation may be the best way for California's
unrecognized Indians to pursue their claims.
"By October we will be putting together a report for Congress," said Polly
Gervin, staff person for the Advisory Council on California Indian Policy.
"Then we expect to come forward with draft legislation."
The council itself is the stepchild of recognition legislation. The Council
was formed by President Bush as a sort of consolation prize in 1992 after he
vetoed tribal recognition legislation, yet acknowledged the extent of the
problem. Altogether, Gervin said, there are 42 unrecognized tribes in
California totaling some 80,000 individuals.
U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren said she met with Cambra when she was in Washington
earlier this month for the third White House meeting. She said she supports
the Muwekma petition despite the potential cost to the federal government.
"To me this is an issue of fundamental rights, not money," said Lofgren. "Do
we say-although I guess the Republicans are these days-that we are not going
to provide benefits to disabled veterans because it would cost too much, or
we are not going to enforce Civil Rights laws because it would cost too much?
No. This is about doing what's right. This is about justice, not economics."
* copyright 1995, Michael Medina
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