Comments on October 2000 Catawba
Enrollment Information
Comment from Webmaster:
In the October 2000 issue of the Catawba Nation newsletter RiverSpeak,
Chief Gilbert Blue, in a general tribal membership letter, addressed among other points a
reference to tribal enrollment process and his inability to modify and/or correct any errors
in the Catawba roll hence forth. Below are the first two paragraphs from this open letter.
Dear Tribal Members,
I would like to take this opportunity to clear up a few items.
In regards to the final base roll, I want everyone to understand that the procedure and demands
placed upon the tribal members for inclusion on the final base roll were placed there by BIA.
In particular the long form birth certificate. We know who our people are but they insisted on
these forms. To try and make sure that no one was left off the roll should be on it and that no
one was on it who shouldn't be I personally drove at my own expense to Washington DC and talked
with Frank Keel about the roll. His answer was that the time frame for appeals had run out and
there was nothing that he could do. Since the BIA has the final word there was nothing I could
do either.
[edited the remaining portion of the letter that dealt with other issues such as Water Reclamation
Project, apparent concerns over the recent federal law suit in Wade, et. al. v. Blue, et. al.,
expenditure of tribal monies, future of the Catawba Nation, and the concern over what problems
future generations of Catawbas will be left to face.]
Sincerely,
/S/
Chief Gilbert Blue
Comment from Webmaster:
In the same issue of RiverSpeak an interesting related comment about tribal enrollment
appeared which is quoted in part below. Please note that apparently not everyone was treated
with the same documentary requirment that Chief Blue speaks of in the above open letter. As of
October 2000, the Tribal Enrollment Office is still attempting to collect mandatory long birth
certificates which should have been compiled before the BIA published the Proposed Final
Membership Roll on December 21, 1999. The BIA failed in its obligations to the Catawba people
and to the public as the BIA clearly allowed at least two different standards for enrollment
procedures to be administered. This is a clear violation of the US Constitution for due process
protections. No one knows which individuals were excused from this legal duty and major expense
to produce "long form birth certificates" while others were required to do so.
This is a gross miscarriage of justice and fairness --- Webmaster.
Tribal Enrollment
[not shown here is paragraph one]
This is another reminder that was in the previous newsletters in 1999: To those members, who had
some documentation on file, we still need a long form birth certificate on file. [paragraph two]
The tribal enrollment office has sent out letters to members that do not have a social security
number on file. If you have received a letter and we do not have your SSN on file please contact
us as soon as possible with this information. [paragraph three]
Comment from Webmaster:
As we have stated all along. Those who petitioned for tribal enrollment have asked for a fair,
honest, unbiased reviewing of our applications for tribal enrollment. This is further evidence
that the process was not an objective evaluation but one in which an arbitary use of documents
was applied, and that some individuals were viewed differently by the current Executive Committee
Members and/or the BIA than other individuals.