Amendment made to Ordinance No. 14

Observer Staff

1/25/2005 12:00:00 AM

The Tribal Council passed Resolution No. 04-114 on July 28 amending Ordinance No. 14 to clarify Section 6 and to improve the administrative process under Section 13 of the Ordinance.

The amendment to Section 6(a)(2) resolved confusion caused by the term "federally recognized Saginaw Chippewa Indian blood" as used in an October 9, 2003 amendment to Ordinance 14 passed by Resolution No. 04-010. This confusion was eliminated by deleting the words "Saginaw Chippewa" from that phrase. The 2003 amendment had clarified an ambiguity in Section 6 of the Ordinance by making it clear that all "Indian blood" listed for the people on the 1939 base roll constitutes "federally recognized" Indian blood for purposes of Tribal enrollment.

The July 28 amendment to this language did not change the meaning of Section 6 since no legal distinction exists in the Tribe's 1986 Constitution between "federally recognized Saginaw Chippewa Indian blood "and other" federally recognized Indian blood." This recent change merely clears up this confusion and does not have any legal effect on pending or future enrollment or disenrollment cases.

The change to Section 13(g)(1)(2.6) provides authority to the Office of Administration Hearings Officer to stay proceedings when the majority of the parties and the Tribe agree to a stay. This change was made to correct the unfair circumstance where the Tribe and a majority of the parties to a case agreed to a stay but no stay could be entered because a minority of the parties could not be reached or had not agreed to a stay.

Even after this amendment the Hearing Officer still cannot stay a proceeding without the Tribe's consent and then only subject to such terms and conditions as the Tribe and a majority of the other parties to that proceeding have agreed upon. This change will result in some additional stays of the pending disenrollment cases while the Tribal Court of Appeals considers the case currently pending before the Court regarding the power of the Tribe to disenroll. Those stays are intended to prevent needless expenditure by the Tribe in legal fees for disenrollment proceedings if the Tribal Court of Appeals were to rule that the Tribe does not have the authority to disenroll in the circumstances involved in those cases.