Wednesday, March 2, 2016

NIGC Derelict In Its Fiduciary Responsibility to Individual American Indians

Good article in Indian Country Today.  Here are some excerpts.

h/t originalpechanga.com

Indian Country Today - NIGC Must Deter Gaming Per Capita Misuse

By Gabriel S. Galanda 3/1/16

It is easy to blame the Congress, the BIA,, and federal courts for allowing mass tribal disenrollment to flourish. They are all complicit.

But behind the scenes another federal entity plays a key role, especially in the increasing number of disenrollments tied to gaming per capitas: the National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC).

Over the last five years, the NIGC has shied away from regulating gaming per capita distributions, and by doing so emboldened a growing number of tribal politicians to disenroll their kin to increase income for those politicians’ allies.
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More to the point, while the NIGC does not have authority over any tribe’s “enrollment decisions,” the agency does possess the statutory power—and indeed is mandated—to intercede in disenrollment-related gaming per capita misuse. 25 U.S.C. § 2702(2); 25 C.F.R. § 290.14(b). The Commission can and should regulate the money. Prior NIGC Chairmen understood that. The current Commission demurs.
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The NIGC’s deference to an intra-tribal system of check and balance in that context, is derelict. So is the Commission when it comes to the trust responsibility it owes to every single enrolled member of gaming tribes.

By the admission of former NIGC Chairman Harold Monteau, the NIGC owes a “direct trust (fiduciary) responsibility to American Indians”—meaning not merely to tribal governments, but to tribal members, including those who face disenrollment.  (emph. added)





2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't agree with this article. The author makes you many assumptions, interprets the law wrong, and does not understand that membership, enrollment, and disenrollment are two faces of the same coin. Either you belong or you dont, either your tribe allows you in or it does not. The abuse of sovereignty by arbitrarily changing the criteria to belonging internally and not enforcing that guideline equally may be abuse, but it is within the confines of tribal law and governance, it is up to the tribal community to fix it's mess, not extern a lot non-tribal entities who want to enforce non-tribal law, order, and usurp sovereignty.

Reinstatement_Restitution said...

Nope. Disenrolling members so they can't participate in tribal benefits and preventing them from recourse by denying appeal or dispute resolution is not protected by sovereignty. Or at least it shouldn't be. The IGRA requires that tribes have a Revenue Allocation Plan that is approved by the BIA. This RAP must provide an opportunity for tribal members to appeal disputes over per-capita distribution or unallocated or undistributed revenue. This right to appeal establishes individual interest in unallocated revenue. Tribes disenroll so that members can't appeal denial of tribal benefits. It is an obvious method to obviate federal regulations. The NIGC turns a blind eye. It is dereliction of duty and should be investigated by the U.S. Attorney General and Department of Justice.

Like that is going to happen....

The layers of corruption and collusion are pervasive.