Chapter 5- Open letter from Bob Foreman (cont.)

At an enrollment committee meeting, after being told by a family member of the "Foremans" that with all the evidence we had already provided it was not necessary to exhume my mother for DNA testing, Enrollment Committee member Betty Benner, the *grandmother of  Tribal Chairwoman Tracy Edwards’, told my sister Lorena “just dig her up she is just a bag of bones!”

< Betty Benner                                                                                                                                           My Younger sister Lorena >

At my family's hearing, as current Tribal Chairwoman Barbara Hayward-Murphy and Tribal Chairwoman Tracy Edwards listened on, Betty Benner would testify she never saw a Foreman on the Rancheria, thus despite school records to the contrary and my younger sister Lorena *catching the high school bus with Barbara Hayward in front of *Betty Benners house. 

On September 30, 2003 the Redding Rancheria Tribal Council ruled, “ ...Having failed to produce genomic DNA evidence proving that Lorena Butler is Virginia Timmons natural daughter, the Tribal Council finds that the Foreman family has not met its burden of proof to establish their eligibility for membership in the Tribe.”

It is a shameful hypocrisy that Redding Rancheria Tribal Officials, who actively promotes the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), without ever producing a *single piece of evidence to dispute my mother’s maternal lineage, would require my family exhume my mother in order to retain our tribal citizenship.

...Leaders of the Redding Rancheria and Pit River tribes, which trace their bloodlines to Ishi's extinct Yahi Nation through the Yana tribe, promise to never reveal where they buried him.  “It has to be that way out of respect for Ishi,”' said Stacey Carmen, chief operating officer of the Redding Rancheria tribe. “We want to not *exploit the process. We want to make this as *private as we can. It's a very significant time for our people.”   San Francisco Chronicle newspaper article titled Ishi's Kin To Give Him Proper Burial  August 10, 2000

Edwards stressed that the tribe never asked the Foremans to exhume any bodies. But if they chose to, the rancheria wanted a *member of the tribe to witness the exhumations. Instead, the tribe was left out of that process, leaving its members to question the authenticity of the DNA samples taken and their analysis, Edwards said. Redding Record Searchlight article titled “Tribe Defends Decision to Expel Foremans, February 19, 2004.

 "...The family has agreed if the Tribal Council wants an observer that they *hire a professional anthropologist or pathologist.  No family members will participate in the exhumation, and it would not be appropriate or helpful for other non-professional members of the Tribe to be there either." November 10, 2003 email from Foreman Family Attorney Mike Stuhff to Redding Rancheria Tribal Attorney David Rapport.     

On November 13, 2003 my mother Lorena Foreman-Butler was brought up from her place of rest.  Two independent DNA labs conducted genomic DNA testing on samples from my mother and grandmother proving 99.978% and 99.890% that they were mother and daughter.  On January 27, 2004, after *seven generations of my family having lived on the Redding Rancheria, all 76 members of my family were stripped of our tribal citizenship.  

1979-  Last picture of my mother & Grandmother

 Taken at their house on the Redding Rancheria

< Vice Chairman/ Spiritual Leader Jim Hayward Sr, “...Many of our ancestor's resting places are under siege from development and *plain greed.  Redding Rancheria’s Sounds in the Winds newsletter article titled Preserving Our Sacred Sites . February-March, 2005.

                                                                           Tribal Chairwoman Barbara Hayward-Murphy >

 Chairwoman Barbara Hayward-Murphy, “it does not have anything to do with money and to even ask that question is offensive to me personally, and it's offensive to this tribe,” she said. “The way we do everything has been based on *honor, respect and integrity.  Redding Record Searchlight newspaper article titled Rancheria Threatens to Oust Family,   September 18, 2002.

So I guess if family members of the Redding Rancheria have “interpersonal things” that causes them resentment then perhaps they should understand how I feel while I lay in bed at night listening to the car doors slam in the parking lot of Win River’s Casino located *across the street on the land where my mother, grandmother and my great-grandparents once lived.

 Pictured above with me are three of the many Great-Grandchildren that I have been blessed with

and whose human & civil rights have been violated by our tribal leaders.

If this happened to your family what would you do? 

“We're a sovereign nation - we don't have to justify to anybody our tribal laws or ordinances,” said Redding Rancheria Chairwoman Tracy Edwards. February 15, 2004 Sacramento Bee article titled for tribes, members only.

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”  James Madison

Help correct this injustice by refusing to patronize or support tribes that violate the Civil and Human Rights of their Tribal members, and by writing letters to your local congressman and Senator John McCain requesting they amend the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 to provide enforcement that will protect American Indians and non-Indians from corrupt tribal leaders. 

Senator John McCain                                                                             

Chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs
836 Hart Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

For more information email maslincarla@earthlink.net or contact the American Indian Rights and Resources Organization

AIRRO.org

click here to return to Table of contents                        click here to return to main menu