When I wrote about Chief David Belardes and his beef with Mission San Juan Capistrano, some members of the tribal council that considers themselves the legitimate Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation, were upset. That disappointment was spun into a story where Juaneño Chairman Anthony Rivera laid out a case for cross-town group leader Belardes not being a Juaneño, as he claims (and a separate blog post where Chris Lobo, late Chief Clarence Lobo's grandson, laid out a case for Belardes not being a chief).
Now another Juaneño is disappointed with my reporting. Sally Cruz-Wright lives in Florida and does not belong to the groups led by Belardes or Rivera. Until recently, she was the interim vice chairwoman of a third Juaneño group, which, she says, until recently was led by Joe Ocampo of Santa Ana. (There is also a fourth group led by Bud Sepulveda, also based in Santa Ana. Or, at least I think it is still led by Sepulveda.)
Near the end of the story in question, Ocampo makes an oblique reference to the interim vice chairwoman he appointed claiming he is not Juaneño. It came out oblique because I was not trying to dwell on his not-a-Juaneño woes in a story about Belardes'. When we spoke, Ocampo actually named Sally Cruz-Wright as his tormenter. Besides her name, I left out this from Ocampo: “I knew what I was getting into when I appointed her, just not to this extreme. . . . When those people who elected me ask me to step down, I will, and I don't mind making this public.”
Cruz-Wright just made public to me, over the phone, that a new tribal council was elected over the weekend and that Benjamin DuBay is the new chairman of the former Ocampo-led group. Both Cruz-Wright and Ocampo are no longer in leadership positions, she said.
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That's not the main reason she wanted to chat, however. She wanted to
clarify that it was not she who claimed Ocampo is not Juaneño, but the
Office of Federal Acknowledgment, which is under the Bureau of Indian
Affairs (BIA) in the U.S. Department of Interior.
“The truth of the
matter is we received a preliminary federal acknowledgment that
identified those who had provided sufficient documentation or
insufficient documentation that still linked them to a village or an
identifiable [Juaneño] ancestor,” Cruz-Wright explained. “I,
personally, have not stated anyone is or is not an Acjachemen. . . . I
find it offensive he put that implication to me. . . . I just felt it
had to be clarified. For him to make comments that I am a liar to my
own people and that I was making these claims, when he himself knows
what the findings were–“
I interrupted her to say that Ocampo
did not tell me whether he is a documented Juaneño nor did he call
anyone a liar. He just said he is dealing with the same accusations as
Belardes. “That's the same thing as saying I'm a liar,” Cruz-Wright
replied. “This is not something I decided or I made up. It is something
that came out of the Office of Federal Acknowledgment.”
She
claimed her genealogical documentation shows she is a member of the
Acjachemen Nation. So does everyone else's on the new tribal council,
including DuBay, Cruz-Wright maintained. “The members who were unable to
provide the additional documentation to link to a village by the Office
of Federal Acknowledgment were invited to join our cultural community,
until which time they are able to provide that documentation.”
When
I asked why she does not simply enroll in Rivera's group, which is all
about the certified genealogical documentation and does not recognize
the other groups, Cruz-Wright replied, “That question would have to be
addressed to Mr. Rivera.” She claimed she submitted an enrollment
application to his group nearly three years ago and has yet to hear
back. (I'll add the answer to that when I hear back from the Rivera group.)
Cruz-Wright, who is originally from Anaheim, will have
more time to press her case when she relocates back to the Southern
California, she hopes in Orange County, soon. Meanwhile she had another interesting thing to point out about the article that miffed her. It concerned the BIA's revelation that it had received complaints
that 50 previously unregistered tribal members the bureau had
reinstated had been barred from tribal-government elections by the San
Pasqual Band of Diegueno Mission Indians in Valley Center. Tribal
security guards and San Diego County sheriff's deputies reportedly
blocked those legitimate voters from the polls even after the BIA
disclosed the previous disenrollments from the tribe were based on
mistakes.
“That,” Cruz-Wright said, “gets to sovereignty.” In other
words, if a sovereign tribe says you are not a member, you are not a member, no matter what the separate U.S. government says. In the same article, Belardes group tribal manager Joyce Perry raises the issue
of sovereignty when it comes to the U.S. government saying who is
and is not a documented Juaneño. Confronted with the irony, Cruz-Wright said it is
moot anyway because until the Juaneños gain federal recognition (which Rivera
says is right around the corner), they are “not really a sovereign
nation.”
But . . . then what you were saying . . . how come? . . . aw, forget it. My brain hurts.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.