Lineal descent constitutional amendment passes

By Danielle Harrison

Smoke Signals editor

It took several attempts over many years, but the Grand Ronde Tribe has approved changing enrollment requirements to lineal descent.

The membership voted in favor of the constitutional amendment 765 to 380, just above the two-thirds margin required.

A total of 1,146 out of 1,383 registered voters cast ballots, which far surpassed the required two-thirds. One of those ballots was deemed spoiled, so it wasn’t included in the final vote count.  

Results were posted at the Tribal Community Center the evening of Monday, Dec. 9. Most reactions to the news on various social media pages have overall been positive, with descriptions such as “so happy for our Tribe,” “elated” and “best day ever.”

“The amendment passed and it was close there, but it did pass,” Tribal Council Chairwoman Cheryle A. Kennedy said during a Tuesday, Dec. 10, Legislative Action Committee meeting. “The work for the council, our staff and member services begins.”

Tribal Council Chief of Staff Stacia Hernandez asked for patience while everything is finalized.

‘It’s great news that the amendment passed, but now the work begins to have the language finalized by BIA and also for us to finalize all the things we need to do to get ready to accept applications,” Hernandez said. “So please bear with us and be patient. We’ll be updating our application to reflect the new criteria and working on finalizing the process.”

Hernandez added that there would be an update provided to the membership in the next few weeks.

According to Tribal Senior Staff Attorney Holly Partridge, the amendment is not effective until the Bureau of Indian Affairs authorized official provides the certified results and approval. The BIA has 45 days from the election date to do this.

The approved amendment will change enrollment from a 1/16 blood quantum requirement to requiring the applicant possess Grand Ronde Indian blood and be a descendant of a Grand Ronde parent or grandparent, provided that the ancestor was not enrolled in error. Additionally, the 1999 enrollment amendment requirements will be removed, including the requirements to be born to a Tribal member and have a parent enrolled at the time of application.

Additionally, an annual limit of 150 people will be accepted per year. This can be raised to 200 if Tribal Council adopts a resolution to do so. The limit will not apply to minors under 6 months old or those who are the subject of pending juvenile dependency hearings.

The Tribe decided to keep the definition of “Indian blood,” as an enrollment requirement after it became aware of a few Tribal members who are enrolled and do not have any Grand Ronde blood. They were adopted by Tribal members and enrolled as biological children, which occurred prior to DNA requirements. This provision will ensure their descendants will not be enrolled.

Tribal Council is working separately on an updated enrollment ordinance, which is available on the Tribe's website and details the proposed changes.

The proposed ordinance changes the membership requirements from blood quantum to lineal descent; an annual limitation of no more than 200 accepted membership applications (except children younger than 6 months or who are the subject of child welfare court proceedings); removal of the Enrollment Committee’s limited number of regular and special meetings; processing membership applications in the order in which they are received with date stamps; and the complete removal of the section detailing the procedures for correcting the membership roll with blood quantum corrections.

This was the 8th time the issue of enrollment was put to a vote by the Tribal membership, including the 1999 amendment. Additionally, there were two discontinued elections in 2007 and 2014.

Until the lineal descendent amendment was approved, Tribal members had only agreed in sufficient numbers to three other proposals: The 1999 amendment, in 2008 when they increased the relinquishment period from one to five years and in 2022 when they agreed to ban disenrollment actions unless fraud or dual enrollment can be proven.

The Grand Ronde Constitution requires two-thirds of those who register for and cast ballots in a BIA-supervised election must approve any proposal for it to change the Tribe’s governing document. An effort to remove the federal government from Tribal constitutional amendment elections was rejected by voters in 2014.