"If a legislature can disenfranchise any number of citizens at pleasure … it may soon confine all the votes to a small number of partisans … no man can be safe, nor know when he may be the innocent victim of a prevailing faction."

-" Alexander Hamilton

It's been nearly two years since Carla Maslin was kicked out of her tribe.

"It's been incomprehensible to think somebody can take away your identity," said Maslin, who once belonged to California's Redding Rancheria tribe. "It's such a human issue. This is about your character, your integrity, who you are."

Typically, tribal citizenship standards range from providing proof a relative belonged to the tribe or meeting the tribe's minimum percentage of Indian blood. But sometimes tribal citizenship rests solely on politics, and depends on who's elected to the tribal council.

So when the Redding Rancheria Tribal Council disenrolled Maslin and 75 other Foreman family members, the clan had little recourse. Twenty-seven years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed tribes' right to determine their membership in the Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez case. The court asserted that the 1968 Indian Civil Rights Act protected the tribe from being sued, leaving civil rights matters within tribal court jurisdiction.

Yet a growing number of disenrolled tribal citizens - between 1,200 and 1,600 people across the country and mostly from California rancheria reservations - say tribal courts and councils aren't providing justice. They've reacted by creating the American Indian Rights and Resource Organization, a civil rights group that received nonprofit status two weeks ago.

"People want to know what they can do before it happens because once it happens, you're gone," said Mark Maslin, Carla's husband, who helped found the organization. "These tribal leaders don't play by the rules. It's hard to combat them. My wife's family didn't even see it coming. It was like walking into a gas chamber."

John Bill, who is about to be disenrolled by the Sauk Suittle Tribe of Washington, is looking to the group to help him. When his tribe removes his grandmother from the tribal rolls, all of her descendents will no longer be recognized as tribal citizens.

"There's nothing we can do," Bill said. "We can't sue the tribe. We have nowhere to turn."

The American Indian Rights and Resource Organization is already spearheading an effort to amend the Indian Civil Rights Act, Indian Country's version of the U.S. Bill of Rights. The group is staging a demonstration Oct. 28 in Ukiah, Calif. The proposed amendment, the Tribal Justice Act, calls for federal court intervention and a waiver of tribal sovereign immunity if tribes don't uphold the Indian Civil Rights Act.

"As a general proposition, it's dangerous," said Frank Pommersheim, a University of South Dakota law professor. "It strikes at the heart of tribal sovereignty. But conversely, if a tribe doesn't have a tribal court, that creates a dilemma to have a cultural right taken away without opportunity to be heard. Those are the things that need to be balanced."

Michael Stuhff, a Las Vegas attorney representing Redding Rancheria members, said the Tribal Justice Act draft likely will be unveiled in the next two weeks.

"We're not here to determine who is an Indian," he said. "That's a lose-lose situation. All we're asking is that they (tribes) follow tribal ordinances or constitutions."

The idea to amend the Indian Civil Rights Act is not a new one.

In 1989, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, introduced Senate Bill 517 to provide a federal court remedy for tribal citizens. The act sought to hold tribes accountable, including situations where tribal courts were not fully independent from tribal legislative or executive authority.

Similar legislation today likely would receive little tribal support, said John Dossett, general counsel for the National Congress of American Indians.

"For a long time, going back to the founding of the organization, the position of NCAI has always been the right to determine your own membership. It's one of the most fundamental rights of Indian tribes. We'd never support any proposal to intrude on that. That's a bible doctrine."

When the issue of tribal enrollments has risen within NCAI, said Dossett, tribal leaders have said they don't want other tribes second-guessing their decisions.

"Indian leaders are afraid of this," said Velda Shelby, a tribal enrollment consultant. "If you're going to mess with enrollments, you're going to mess with people's entitlements. A lot of people - especially the gaming tribes - don't want to increase their numbers. It's come down to an economic entitlement, which is unfortunate. It's a big, big, issue."

Many tribal citizens have tried to take their civil rights grievances to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which typically refuses to get involved in internal tribal disputes. And attempts to seek state or federal court intervention also have failed.

"Tribes need to find a remedy for grievances," Pommersheim said. "If they won't provide judicial opportunity, they are creating a situation where Congress will act."

Several courts have suggested that's what needs to be done.

When disenrolled citizens of California's Table Rancheria tribe sought recourse in federal court, the court agreed that disenrolled citizens had a strong claim to tribal membership.

"You know, somebody ought to warn the tribe this is the kind of facts where some court is going to say we're outraged and put it to them," Senior Judge Lawrence Karlton said in 2003 oral arguments. "Having said that … it appears to me that there is very little this court can do."

Attorney Brian Leighton told the Eastern District Court that the Table Rancheria council and its Bureau of Indian Affairs attorney didn't respond to disenrolled citizen complaints.

Table Rancheria citizens appealed their case to the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. "We agree with the district court's conclusion that this case is deeply troubling on the level of fundamental substantive justice," Chief Judge Mary Schroeder wrote in an opinion last month. "Nevertheless, we are not in a position to modify well-settled doctrines of tribal sovereign immunity. This is a matter in the hands of a higher authority than our court."

In nearly all cases, the courts point to the Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez case, whichs upholds tribes' right to determine Indian Civil Rights Act outcomes. "Martinez is handcuffing judges," Stuhff said.

Since the Redding Rancheria tribe doesn't have a tribal court, the Foreman family had little hope of regaining what they lost. Not only did they lose their tribal identity, the family also lost education, health and other citizenship benefits, including a monthly casino per-capita payment amounting to about $2,500. Maslin blames the disenrollments to greed. Her clan's ousting left a higher casino payout for the enrolled.

Maslin said her father has a hard time looking at the tribe's Win-River Casino these days. It was built on Maslin's grandmother's federal trust property, land the woman, now dead, sold to the tribe.

Redding Rancheria leadership refused to talk about the Foreman disenrollments. "It's a confidential matter," said Molly Redmon, a legal secretary with the tribe. "They don't have any information to offer."

Despite being disenrolled in 2003, Foreman family members rejoiced after the tribal council agreed to grant them an appeal in January 2004. The downside: They had to argue before the political body that disenrolled them.

The family had few options. That's when they decided to dig up the family matriarch for DNA testing. A second female relative also was exhumed for more testing. Despite a 99.98 and 99.89 percent probability factor proving kinship to both women, the council refused to reinstate the ousted clan.

"If we were in a real court, this would probably be accepted," Maslin said. "We went the distance. We went beyond what we should have." She said seven generations of her family have lived on the Redding Rancheria.

None of that mattered on appeal day, when Maslin's family asked her to speak on their behalf.

"We couldn't change their mind if Jesus himself walked into the room and said these people are who they say they are."

(Reach reporter Jodi Rave at 800-366-7186 or jodi.rave@;missoulian.com.)