Tribal Council votes to add 29 names to Restoration Roll

By Dean Rhodes

Smoke Signals editor

Tribal Council voted to add 29 more names to the Restoration Roll during its Wednesday, Oct. 23, meeting, bringing the total number of Tribal members added to the historically important roll this year to 187.

The vote marks the fourth time this year that Tribal members have been added to the Restoration Roll. During a special meeting held Feb. 28, Tribal Council added 20 Tribal members to the Restoration Roll. On May 29, Tribal Council added 15 names to the Restoration Roll and another 22 on July 31. During a marathon meeting held on Aug. 14, 101 names were added.

Tribal Council will now request that the Secretary of the Interior approve the Restoration Roll additions.

The process for adding names to the Restoration Roll started in 2012 when Tribal legal staff started working with the Department of the Interior to develop a process for approval and additions to the roll.

In December 2015, Tribal Council approved 16 additions and three corrections to the Restoration Roll. At the time, Tribal Council Vice Chair Chris Mercier said the advantage to having your name on the Restoration Roll is that it allows Tribal members to count all of their Indian blood as Grand Ronde blood, which could help extend an individual’s bloodline.

“Tribal Council recognizes the devastating effects Termination had on the membership,” said Tribal Council Secretary Jon A. George in reading from a prepared statement in May. “In an effort to correct those effects, we passed a resolution in November 2018 that provides criteria for consistently applying the phrase ‘entitled to be on the membership roll of the Tribe on Aug. 13, 1954.’ The resolution states that a person was entitled to be on the membership roll of the Tribe on Aug. 13, 1954, if that person was alive on that date and born to a Tribal member.

“Tonight, we wish to provide additional thoughts on what it means to be born to a Tribal member. We believe being ‘born to a Tribal member’ means being born to a person who could have been a Tribal member at the time of the applicant’s birth.

“When this Tribe was Terminated, a number of families were wrongfully left off the membership roll. The correction of the Restoration Roll is important to Tribal families because having an ancestor on the Restoration Roll is a requirement for membership under the current Tribal Constitution. Corrections to the Restoration Roll are part of an ongoing effort to correct the wrongs of the past and provide a path to membership for those families who continue to suffer the effects of Termination.

“The interpretation is an attempt to address the inaccuracies of the federal government’s recordkeeping at the time of Termination. This Tribal Council continues to build on the efforts of our previous leadership and help bring closure to families who have been suffering. This is another important step in the Tribe’s movement to reunite our Tribal families.”

Tribal members seeking to be added to the Restoration Roll can request an application from the Member Services Department at 503-879-2116.

In other action, Tribal Council:

• Approved the agenda for the Sunday, Nov. 3, General Council meeting, which will be held at 11 a.m. in the Tribal gym. The meeting will review the 2020 draft budget;
• Approved a professional services contract not to exceed $50,000 with Native American attorney Robert Lyttle to conduct a series of meetings regarding enrollment;
• And approved a resolution naming Tribal Council member Michael Langley as the Tribe’s principal delegate to the National Congress of American Indians and all other Tribal Council members as alternates, as well as paying the Tribe’s $30,000 in annual dues.

Also included in the Oct. 23 Tribal Council packet were approved authorizations to proceed that accepted the Environmental Protection Agency’s invitation to be a member of the Columbia River Basin Restoration Working Group and sited construction of the new Procurement and Information Services building on the Vetaly property located on the west side of Grand Ronde Road just north of the entrance to the Governance Center.

The entire meeting can be viewed by visiting the Tribal government’s website at www.grandronde.org and clicking on the Government tab and then Videos.