Re-Post: February 24, 2012 BIA Recommends That Pala Reverse Its Disenrollment Decision

On February 24, 2012 the BIA recommended to Pala's Executive Committee that it reverse its disenrollment decision.

24 Feb 2012 BIA Recommends Reversing Pala Disenrollments

Agua Caliente Tribe of Cupeno v. Michael Black (BIA)

Historical Friction Between Old Pala Indians and Warner Ranch Indians

The document below is a piece of history describing friction that exists even up to this day between the multiple groups and one tribe residing at Pala. It's not just Old Pala Luiseno (Band) and Warner Ranch (Agua Caliente) Cupeno (Tribe).  There are also Cahuilla (Band), Yaqui (Band), and Iipai (Band) living at Pala as well.

If you are confused about the difference between a Band and Tribe you are not alone.  The BIA  can't keep it straight either.

An example would be to consider Luiseno.  Luiseno itself is a tribe.  But there are many Bands of this tribe living all over Southern California on multiple reservations.  The Pala Luiseno are a Band of the Greater Luiseno Nation.

The Cupeno are a tribe historically residing at Agua Caliente aka Warner's Hot Springs (Ranch).

The Cupeno as a tribe were forced onto land purchased adjacent to Old Pala's land.

1951 Feb 7 Old Pala Dispute With Warner Ranch Indians by kupa7 on Scribd

The Cupeno Removal - Part 3

Part 3 of a 4 part series by Jeff Smith at the San Diego Reader is out.  It is titled:

Against the Inevitable - This land is mine: The Cupeño removal of 1903, part three of four

Here is an excerpt:

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On April 19, Cecilio Blacktooth and three other tribesmen rode to San Bernardino to buy horses. “We will never give in,” he told the Los Angeles Herald, “but will perish gladly if the last sight we see is our Agua Caliente.

“Some will scatter to other tribes, but the old men and women would not leave and have begged to be taken above Warner’s Ranch in the mountains…to look down upon the graves of their ancestors.” Pala is “so barren,” he added, “not even rabbits will live there.”

Blacktooth didn’t mention that at least 15 Luiseño Indian families already did. They lived on allotments assigned by the government ten years prior. The relocation would force them to share a reservation with another tribe.
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Read the full article at this link:

Against the Inevitable - This land is mine: The Cupeño removal of 1903, part three of four

The Cupeno Removal Part 2

Jeff Smith at the San Diego Reader continues with his 4 part series on the Cupeno Removal.

Here is a link to part 2:

In search of the unwanted, This land is mine: The Cupeño removal of 1903, part two of four

Here is an excerpt:

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On April 5 the San Diego Union ran a headline: “WARNER’S RANCH INDIANS SAY THEY WILL NOT MOVE TO THE NEW RESERVATION; THINK THEY WOULD STARVE.” The Cupeños are almost all united against the move, the story said, and will “scatter to the hills rather than go to Pala to starve.”

Lummis told officials in the Department of the Interior that Pala was the tribe’s second choice for a home.

“Not true!” said Josephine Babbitt, schoolteacher at Kupa for 12 years. “They had no second choice.” Babbitt told the Cupeños that Lummis was a liar. She also pointed out that, while he said the Cupeños would have “a valley all their own,” they must share the reservation with another tribe: 76 Pala Indians already lived there.


Read the full article here-->   In search of the unwanted, This land is mine: The Cupeño removal of 1903, part two of four

The Cupeno Removal

There is an article in the San Diego Reader about the Cupeno Removal of 1903.

Here is a link and an excerpt:

This land is mine: The Cupeño removal of 1903 The blackest of crimes committed against Warner Ranch Indians.

By Jeff Smith, March 30, 2016

Visitors to the Indian village at Kupa were often struck by the silence. No loud voices, no sudden shouts. Even children played quietly. A stillness spread from the bowl-shaped Valle de San Jose below, past Warner’s Ranch, and up to where Cupeños busied themselves with the tasks of the moment — tasks their people had performed since time for them began.

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On May 13, 1901, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the California Supreme Court’s decision: J. Harvey Downey and his stockholders legally owned Agua Caliente — aka Kupa. It did not matter that the Cupeños lived there centuries before the Spanish came. In the original case, Barker vs. Harvey, attorneys for John Downey, J. Harvey’s uncle, argued that no natives were on the site in 1844, when John J. Warner obtained the land grant. And they never filed a claim to the Board of Land Commissioners in 1851.

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Courts from San Diego to Washington DC read “vacant and abandoned” to mean no Indians were on the property. But in 1893, Warner said that wasn’t true. Eighty-five years old and gravely ill, Warner gave a deposition at his home in Los Angeles. The southern half of the valley was abandoned, he said, not the northern, which included Agua Caliente/Kupa. He “never heard of them being displaced.” The original grant even stipulated that he could not interfere with roads and other usages,” meaning the native village.
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Read the full article at the link below.

This land is mine: The Cupeño removal of 1903 The blackest of crimes committed against Warner Ranch Indians.

April 21, 1903 Report of Conference at Agua Caliente

April 21, 1903 Report of Conference at Agua Caliente 408

Evictions

Seems all Pala's EC does anymore is evict people.  Warner Ranch Indians got evicted from Kupa.  They got disenrolled by mostly non-Cupeno.  And now they are being evicted again.

Kenny Johnson and Gina Howard are both Margarita Brittain descendants.  Must be just a coincidence they are being targeted for eviction.

I cannot speak for the other people named on the agenda because I do not know them.  But I can say there is no reason to evict Kenny and Gina other than pure spite on the part of Robert Smith.

2015 September 9th Pala Meeting Agenda