Gallery: Gabrielinos fight for their own tribal recognition
The Native American culture of Andy Salas’ ancestors dominated the San Gabriel Valley long before Junipero Serra set foot in California, but to the U.S. government, Salas’ tribe, the Gabrieleno, doesn’t exist.
Andy’s father, Ernie, 82, has been trying for much of his life to make the government acknowledge his tribal identity, culture and history. He’s had little success and recently told his son he is too tired to fight anymore.
But Andy Salas said he’s not going to let his father’s dreams of recognition be crushed by a federal government that came on the scene long after the Gabrielenos.
“My dad is depressed, he told me I don’t want anything to do with that,” Andy Salas said through tears. “He said, ‘No, you don’t understand, I tried half of my life to get this right and these guys did me dirty.’ That’s why I do what I do today, because of him.”
Five years ago, Salas decided to take action to ensure that his father could see the day his tribe, the Kizh Nation of the Gabrieleno Band of Mission Indians, is officially recognized. He has spent years gathering the necessary documents and criteria to apply for acknowledgement from the federal government, and in 2010 he submitted a fresh petition on behalf of the tribe of about 500 people he heads in San Gabriel.
And Salas is far from alone in his quest; the Kizh-Gabrieleno are among 79 tribal groups that have submitted petitions to the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Office of Federal Acknowledgement – and most of them are still waiting.
“We are known as refugees in our own land,” Ernie Salas said.
According to the OFA’s website, a tribe must meet a set of seven criteria to receive recognition, including thorough genealogy records, establishment as a tribe since 1900 and proof of tribal government. Once these documents are submitted, the group must go through a multistep review process, which can take years.
With federal recognition comes a host of benefits, including medical coverage, as well as land and the possibility of building a casino.
Since its inception in the late 1970s, the OFA has approved 17 tribes for federal recognition, only one of which was in California, the Death Valley Timbi-Sha Shoshone Band in 1983.
Two other California tribes, Ione Band of Miwok Indians and Tejon Indian Tribe in Kern County, have been granted federal benefits “through other means,” and a third, the Graton Rancheria, was recognized through a Congressional order, according to OFA online records.
Calls over a period of three months to the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs for comment on the recognition process were not returned.
On the state level, the California Legislature has recognized a handful of tribes, but the recognition is largely superficial. Most tribes merely use state recognition as part of their federal application packet, said Shelly McDonald, with the State Tribal Institute at the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The California Native American Heritage Commission also recognizes 50 tribes in the state, most of which are not federally recognized.
“It’s hard for anybody to go and lobby for something, most people never have to do that, but it’s one step harder when you are coming from those places and then you’re asking for something that you already know you are,” McDonald said. “There are a lot of barriers and a lot of things people have to overcome to justify their existence as a people. I think it takes a lot of strength and will.”
Dave Singleton, with the California Native American Heritage Commission, said for many California tribes the problems of federal recognition can be traced back to a series of treaties the state government signed in the mid-19th century, which ultimately gave birth to the reservation system by which many of the tribes in Southern California with land and casinos, like the Morongo Band of Mission Indians or the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians, gained federal recognition.
For those tribes not given a reservation at that time, it’s been an uphill battle.
On top of those criteria which many call impossible to meet, the Gabrielenos, who once lived throughout the San Gabriel Valley, San Bernardino County, Orange County and Long Beach, have faced another roadblock. About 20 years ago, the tribe split. Now, there are at least five different groups under different variations of the Gabrieleno name in the Los Angeles basin.
And that, Singleton said, makes the OFA even less likely to recognize any of them as a legitimate tribe.
“They are divided and I would think as long as the federal government sees that they will have a hard time getting their federal recognition,” Singleton said.
Duane Champagne, with American Indian Studies Center at the UCLA, said the process of tribal recognition is all the more impossible for California tribes because of the way they have been organized since before settlers came to the West.
“No one understands these people,” Champagne said. “They look at them from the outside.”
California tribes, he said, were not organized under an over arching leadership, but instead were spread out in smaller, independent family villages. The “splinters” that many see as division among the tribal families, he says, is the way the tribe has operated for centuries.
“They are doing what they’ve done for the last 10,000 years, they form coalitions and alliances, and even within the coalitions each family tends to have autonomy,” Champagne said. “There is no one tribal government, there is no one tribal leader, there are many families, and that looks like chaos on the outside but that’s the rule for them.”
In turn, tribes vying for federal recognition are forced to fit into a mold created by the OFA that for many is a foreign concept, he said. Even tribes that already have federal recognition are still plagued with internal struggle, he said. And when tribal members do try to assert themselves, he said, it can lead to “animosity and competition.”
“It’s a totally alien structure and they refuse to do it and that presents a problem for recognition,” Champagne said. “But I think it’s really a lack of insight from the Office of Federal Acknowledgement.”
The feud between the Gabrieleno tribes has grown ugly at times, with each accusing the others of not being true Gabrielenos, not having Indian blood and “stealing” their culture and history. There have been lawsuits filed between the tribes, alleging deception, theft and fraud. The members of each tribe are generally all related to one another in some way, many of the tribal leaders are cousins, but they no longer speak to one another.
According to OFA records, there are four versions of the Gabrieleno tribe that have applied for recognition.
Bernie Acuna, chairman of the Gabrieleno-Tongva Tribe, touts his group of about 3000 members in the Los Angeles area as the original Gabrieleno tribe. The group has submitted “a couple” petitions for federal recognition, but the process has stalled.
Ultimately, he said, the different families in the tribe split off because of “different political views”, but he hopes the groups can reunite.
“Those are my cousins and my uncles and my aunts, I’d like to see us all together and be federally recognized,” Acuna said.
Anthony Morales, 65, is the tribal chief for the Gabrielino/Tongva Nation, which has about 400 members centralized in San Gabriel. He said the in-fighting between different Gabrieleno groups has become a “vicious circle” of accusations. But despite the tribal division, he says the real reason none have been able to receive federal recognition is because the government doesn’t want to give it.
“We know who we are and they know who we are and it’s just an issue with the government, they just don’t want to give federal recognition that easily. They make you jump through hoops and hurdles and everything but its just not satisfied, you can have all the documentation in the world and they can find a way to still stall you,” Morales said. “It’s just a system that is broken.”
Chris Lobo, outgoing tribal chief of the Juaneno Band of Mission Indians in San Juan Capistrano, said the Gabrielenos’ situation is not unique. His tribe, too, faced internal strife during the federal recognition process.
“The fighting comes from the recognition process,” Lobo said. “You get a group of people together too long that are trying to fight for something and they start fighting with each other, and the OFA encourages this division.”
According to OFA records, the Juanenos officially submitted a petition in 1982, was denied in 2011, and is now in the appeal process.
“This is a heavy duty political process,” Lobo added. “Since gaming is involved with Indians now it has made it really tough. There are a lot of people that don’t want to see the tribes succeed in any way. … They’ve held us to such a higher standard that almost every tribe in America now says we couldn’t meet that standard. It’s just wrong, it’s not fair.”
