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)

Attention True Agua Caliente Cupeno and Warner Ranch Evictees

Notice to all the True Agua Caliente Cupeno and Warner Ranch Evictees out there.  Robert Smith is trying to organize people at Pala to go to protest a hearing about Warner's Hot Springs development.

This is laughable since Robert Smith is Chairman of the Luisenos.  

Not only does Robert Smith claim to be the Chairman of the Luisenos but he also has a track record of harassing Agua Caliente Cupeno descendants.  He lead the charge on disenrolling 168 Agua Caliente Cupeno.  Later when Cupeno elders tried to hold a meeting they were punished and not allowed to ever vote or participate in meetings again.

Robert routinely orders Pala Security to harass Cupeno descendants.  Many family members who live off the reservation cannot visit their family members who live on the reservation without fear of reprisal.  Robert Smith takes action and fines Cupeno for just trying to visit their family and routinely threatens to take their per capita away.

Robert Smith destroys Cupeno land and refuses to pay what is rightfully owed.

Robert Smith has stolen the per cap of 168 Cupeno for the last 6 years.  Hundreds of millions of dollars stolen.  Robert Smith has altered the blood degrees of all the Cupeno trying to erase their memory.

Robert Smith now has the BIA changing Pala to Luiseno affiliation only.

Robert Smith and Theresa Nieto stole the Cupeno Children's Trust Funds.

Robert Smith and Leroy Miranda tried to play cute when they had opportunity to buy the Warner's Hot Springs Resort (Kupa).  Instead of just buying Kupa, the ancestral homeland of the Cupeno, he and Leroy tried to buy membership shares so they could drive the resort into bankruptcy which they did.  There they thought they would buy Kupa cheap but the judge refused to sell to them because of their actions.

It's a good thing the judge did that because Robert Smith hates the Cupenos.  This is because Robert Smith is from San Felipe while now claiming to be Luiseno.

This is a sick joke that Robert Smith is playing where he would dare to organize a group to "save Kupa" when he could have bought Warner's 4 times and each time he balked.  He routinely takes action to hurt Cupeno people with disenrollments, sanctions, fines, banishments, and evictions.

To all True Agua Caliente Cupeno and Warner Ranch Evictee Descedants please attend the meeting.  See the flyer below.  Do not let the Fake Cupeno Robert Smith continue to destroy our heritage!

And don't forget!  Robert Smith is the one who put that fence around the Cal Rossi Trust next to Kupa.  In the process he destroyed all sorts of Cupeno artifacts and violated the land.

Robert Smith is no friend of the Cupeno and should never be allowed to set foot at Kupa (aka Warner's Hot Springs/Agua Caliente) ever again let alone try to organize a protest?

What is Robert protesting?  There is nothing more that Robert Smith loves than seeing the destruction of Cupeno sacred sites.  Robert is probably secretly in favor of the developments and is just trying to shake the money tree of the owners.

The Cupeno Removal - Part 4

Part 4 on the Cupeno Removal by Jeff Smith at the San Diego Reader is out.

Here is a link to the article:

At a certain point, the Cupeño stopped looking back. 10 This land is mine: The Cupeño removal of 1903, part four of four by Jeff Smith

Here is an excerpt:

During the meal, Inspector Jenkins’s head count totaled 97. Manuella Sibimoat was missing. When a Union reporter asked why the old woman would flee, Isabella Owlinguish said that when she and Manuella were young, they were held prisoners at Pala. “It was a revolting story,” wrote the reporter, “like a tale out of the middle ages.”

After she spoke, Isabella “threw off her shawl and shouted ‘see!’ and showed great calloused marks on her thin shoulders. ‘These we had to keep fresh our memories of Pala mission! What we suffered there how many years ago I cannot say, fifty, sixty, maybe more. Bearfoot could not forget. She would not look again upon that place… Does the white man think it strange that we did not want to come?’”

Full Article:

At a certain point, the Cupeño stopped looking back. 10 This land is mine: The Cupeño removal of 1903, part four of four by Jeff Smith

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:

#
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.
#

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.

#

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.

#

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.
#

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.

Agua Caliente Cupeno vs Kevin Washburn Joint Status Report

Agua Caliente Tribe of Cupeno Indians vs. Assistant Secretary Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn Joint Status Report

Agua Caliente Cupeno v Washburn JSR

Agua Caliente Cupeno v Assistant Secretary Indian Affairs Kevin Washburn

We are Cupeno.  We were forcibly removed by the U.S. Government in 1903 from our village at Kupa which is known today as Warner's Hot Springs.  The U.S. Government bought land for us adjacent to the Pala Luiseno Reservation (Old Pala) in an attempt to replace what we have lost.  They called us Warner Ranch Evictees.  

For too long the Cupeno have pushed around.  It is time for the Cupeno to stand up and be proud of who they are once again.  It is time we stop the Executive Committee of PBMI from continually pushing us around, evicting us, stripping us of our rights, and trying to destroy who we are as a people.

HAPPY VETERANS DAY - YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE - YOU MAKE US PROUD

Agua Caliente Cupeno v Washburn