The Squaxin Island Tribe should not have expelled certain members during a wave of disenrollments last year, a judge has decided, overturning the tribe’s removals of longtime educator Sally Brownfield and two relatives.
Rather than immediately re-enrolling Brownfield and her relatives, the tribe's leaders have asked the judge to reconsider. But the ruling against the tribe in its own court may attract attention across Indian Country, where membership purges have become more common in recent decades.
The tribe’s legal code puts the onus on tribal officials to prove why a member must be disenrolled, rather than on the member to re-substantiate their belonging, Squaxin Island Tribal Court Judge Josh Williams found this month, describing Brownfield’s disenrollment as “arbitrary and capricious.”
“I think that’s hugely important,” said David Wilkins, a University of Richmond politics professor, member of the Lumbee Nation of North Carolina and leading researcher of Native American disenrollments. “The judge in this case said, ‘Once you’re in, you’re in. You don’t have to prove anything again.'”
Brownfield, 75, grew up northeast of Olympia, where the Squaxin Island Tribe is based, and says she descends from a local Native woman.
She worked alongside her mother to help build up the tribe’s institutions after it secured federal recognition in 1965. They were among a number of people with community ties who were enrolled by the tribe in the 1980s and 1990s.
But Squaxin officials disenrolled Brownfield last spring, saying she didn’t meet criteria in the tribe’s constitution, including sufficient Native ancestry and descent from a select group of people listed on historical documents. Around that time, the officials disenrolled other people for similar reasons.
That roiled emotions in the small tribe, which has about 1,300 members and a number of businesses, including cannabis stores and a casino-resort.
Critics cast the disenrollments as a power play, while Squaxin leaders said they were simply putting the tribe’s house in order after a membership audit.
“We are in this position because we have chosen to follow the constitution,” Squaxin Chairman Kris Peters said last year. “As difficult as that may be.”
Brownfield, along with her son and an aunt, appealed their disenrollments.
In his Jan. 12 ruling, Williams focused on the tribe's burden of proof rather than trying to resolve its dispute with Brownfield about her ancestry.
Although the tribe says it currently lacks documentation showing Brownfield is at least one-eighth Native American, there must have been evidence it considered sufficient when it enrolled her many years ago, Williams found.
“It is not incumbent upon appellants to re-prove their eligibility,” the judge wrote, also rejecting the tribe’s separate assertion that Brownfield should be expelled based on procedural flaws in her mother’s enrollment process.
Williams serves as a Squaxin judge through a contract with the tribe. He has upheld some of the tribe’s other disenrollments, Peters said, questioning the judge's handling of Brownfield’s appeal in particular.
“This decision completely contradicts some of his other decisions” and the facts, Peters said, suggesting Brownfield may have prevailed because she's spoken out publicly. “His legal reasoning is all over the place.”
In contrast, Brownfield hailed the ruling in her case, calling it clear and fair. She said she hoped Squaxin leaders would accept the judge’s decision right away, calling the tribe's motion for reconsideration disappointing.
“It really eats at me that we’re losing the real values and traditions,” she said.
Each disenrollment case is unique, said Kehl Van Winkle, a Seattle-based attorney who represented Brownfield and her relatives in their appeal. Van Winkle has argued for and against tribal disenrollments in his career.
“Disenrollments are happy for nobody,” Van Winkle added, saying he hopes the case will ultimately be resolved and allow everyone to move past this.”
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