By Ryan Schlehuber
December 11, 2004
It has been a nine-year effort so far, but the organization of the Mackinac Bands of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians is getting closer to being federally recognized as a tribal government. A large obstacle was cleared Tuesday, November 16, when the board of directors at Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians said it would remain neutral in the Mackinac Bands’ quest for independence. The resolution will allow the new organization to break away from the Sault Tribe without a fight, if it can get federal recognition.
Other obstacles lurk on the horizon. The organization must meet a number of federal requirements before its case will even be reviewed.
Mackinac Bands of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, which now is only a nonprofit organization, they have registered members. About 40 percent of them are also Sault Tribe members.
Mackinac Bands is eligible for federal acknowledgment, He said it meets the most basic requirements of blood quantum, and Mackinac Bands contends its ancestors signed the 1820 and 1836 treaties with the U.S. Government as a distinct group and were granted a large tract of land in the Eastern Upper Peninsula and the right to fish under tribal authority in treaty-ceded Great Lakes waters. As a separate group, the Mackinac Bands enjoy the benefits and rights shared by the Sault Tribe’s six other historical bands.
The Sault Tribe, according to its constitution, is comprised of six historical Indian communities: Sault Ste. Marie, Grand Island, Point Iroquois, Garden River, Sugar Island, and Drummond Island. When the Sault Tribe ratified its constitution in the 1950s, however, Mackinac Bands’ name was not included with the other six historical bands, an error or omission on the part of the Sault Tribe, said Tribal Chairman Aaron Payment.
Mackinac Bands’ nine-person board of directors initially asked the Sault Tribe board to support its cause, but, to retain its healthy enrollment numbers and to protect its federal funding resources, the Sault Tribe board revised the resolution to where it would not object to Mackinac Bands’ efforts for federal recognition, but it would not support it, either.
There are roughly 33,000 members of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Of those, 14,636 are descendants of the Mackinac Bands of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. Another 17,000 Mackinac Bands’ descendants are not registered with any tribe at this time, according to the Bands estimates. The Mackinac Bands, he said, is one of the largest of the unrecognized bands in Michigan with which the early European settlers sought treaties.
With Mackinac Bands’ descendants comprising close to half of Sault Tribe’s membership, and with the potential for 17,000 more to register, it is not surprising that Sault Tribe Chairman Aaron Payment fears the departure of Mackinac Bands members could devour federal funding that would otherwise go to the Sault Tribe.
Many of the Sault Tribe board members individually support Mackinac Bands’ efforts, including board member Rob Lambert.
“I always thought the Mackinac Bands should be separate,” he said at the November 16 meeting.
If it does, Mackinac Bands’ descendants will have a choice of continuing its membership with the Sault Tribe or switching to the Mackinac Bands.
Despite circulating rumors, said Mr. Payment, a descendant of the Mackinac Bands’ can remain a member of the Sault Tribe, rather than to join the new group, and, despite other rumors, they do and will continue to receive the same benefits as any other Sault Tribe member.
It will be awhile before Mackinac Bands descendants will have to make the choice to stay with the Sault Tribe or join the Mackinac Bands, however, as the process to gain federal recognition is long, arduous, and far from a sure thing. It took the Sault Tribe more than 20 years to break away from the Bay Mills Indian Community in Brimley.
Mackinac Bands has hired a historian to aid in gathering more information about its history, and the board will soon hire an attorney to assist it in obtaining federal recognition. Once the group has submitted its documents, the United States Secretary of Interior will send a group to the area to validate the historical research.
With federal recognition comes the availability of land claims and trusts, federal grants, and federally funded programs and services. It could also put the Mackinac Bands in line for a casino.
“Do we want to fractionate ourselves and have separate markets?” asked Mr. Payment to about 150 Sault Tribe members at an informal meeting Saturday, November 20, at Little Bear East conference center. “If Mackinac Bands separates, we’re going to have another casino. The question is, where will that casino be? Mackinaw City?
We have a fragile and delicate balance in our budget. Can we afford that?”
Even though the Sault Tribe board voted to remain neutral in the issue (by a 9-1 vote), Mr. Payment said he will continue his efforts to persuade Mackinac Bands’ descendants to stay united as one tribe, to remain as Sault Tribe members.
“I don’t support anything that takes away our land trust fund,” he said. “As chairman, it’s my responsibility to protect all resources of the tribe. I was not elected to separate these; I was elected to protect them.”
Another issue that could be detrimental to the Sault Tribe, said Mr. Payment, is the possibility of the other five historical bands wanting separation, as well, if the Mackinac Bands succeeds in its attempt.
He and other Mackinac Bands members who attended the meeting spoke of how they once had their own chiefs and an autonomous voice.
The organization’s main priority is to provide Mackinac Bands elders with more and better health services and other programs, something he believes the Sault Tribe has overlooked with the continuing growth and success of its casino business.
“Our elders are not getting the services they deserve,” “The Sault Tribe has lost sight of its goals and objectives. The casino is their priority now. We want to provide more health and education benefits to our people, our elders.”
There are 562 federally recognized tribal governments in the United States, according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), which administers and manages 55.7 million acres of land held in trust by the United States for American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska natives.
2 comments:
Alot of todays members wanted nothing to do with "Indians" until the word "free benifits" was mentioned. My mother felt the harsh reality of being an indian while growing up in Naubinway.She remembers all the nonindians and the way hey treated her. Now, these same people are members of the tribe.
We as a nation must not take the word of an individual as true. We must use history and bloodline to seperate the true indian from the want-to-be indian.
Many of the members are NOT true indians and must not be allowed in our tribe. Money and free services are the only reason the want-to-be indians are members.
The indians that do belong are suffering from services that should go to them are going to the greedy non indians.
Once the true history through hereditary Blood is produced ths true numbers Will be lower. The birth record Must show Native on it. And you must prove direct lineage not off shoot a branch from a direct decendant. There is a lot to this not just self claiming. What are the Indian names those names are Anglo Saxon names now you must tell me his Indian name. Now we Will see who can tell me the Native name. I can tell you my family Native name. So the real numbers are going to be lower. Pretreaty to treaty not treaty to tribal band list. Big Big difference.
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