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Filipino clan stealing tribe's identity, elders say
Tuesday, July 11, 2000
By PAUL SHUKOVSKY
DEMING -- The Nooksacks have seen rich tribal lands that once spanned thousands of acres -- from the Canadian border to Mount Baker and beyond -- shrink to a 50-acre reservation.
Generations ago, the tribe devoted itself to hauling salmon from the river that bears its name. Today, they squeeze a living from a modest roadside casino and a faltering mobile home construction business.
And now, some elders say, comes the ultimate indignity: The tribe itself has been stolen.
The Rabangs, critics say, have gained control of tribal government and taken advantage of ties to the Skway Indian band in Canada, a tribe closely related to the Nooksacks, to cover up a drug-smuggling operation.
Tipped off by wiretaps, FBI and U.S. Customs Service agents raided tribal homes northeast of Bremerton last spring, cracking a marijuana-import business that funneled more than a ton of British Columbian pot into the United States during the past few years.
Eighteen people -- most of them members of the Rabang family -- have been indicted so far.
But federal authorities suspect the corruption runs much deeper -- deep enough perhaps to warrant an unprecedented racketeering case against the Rabangs and tribal leaders.
That there was a criminal conspiracy on the reservation has already been settled in court. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle has extracted guilty pleas from several members of the Rabang family for conspiracy to smuggle marijuana. In addition, two Nooksack officials were recently sent to prison for embezzling federal money. And another embezzlement investigation targeting tribal government is in progress.
Elders of the 1,449-member tribe suddenly find themselves in the strange position of welcoming federal intervention.
"We want our tribe back," said Rozelda Roberts, a former tribal council member. "They are illegally in our tribe. A group of people come in and completely take over. That really hurts."
Ivan George, 67, hopes the FBI won't stop until all the Rabangs are booted from the tribe.
"That would be our prayers answered if the feds stepped in. Our only chance is the FBI," said George, a Pentecostal minister with a degree in urban planning.
But Vice Chairman Narcisco Cunanan, one of an estimated 200 Rabangs and their kin who belong to the tribe, said it's unfair to condemn the whole family tree in the wake of the drug bust.
"We are all labeled because of a few of us," he said, insisting Rabangs are true Nooksacks.
Donna Roberts, Rozelda's sister-in-law, remembers how it was before the Rabangs began gaining tribal membership in the 1980s. The tribal center was a place of communal warmth, said Roberts, who used to run the housing authority. "It used to be you could go up to the tribal center and chat."
Not anymore, said Janice George, Ivan's wife. Now fear pervades the fabric of the tribe. "No one wants to come forward (against the smugglers); they are afraid."
Even with the recent arrests and convictions, she said, marijuana trafficking on the reservation has resumed, with children sometimes being used as drug couriers.
The smugglers -- who called themselves "Rabang Nation" -- used family-owned homes on tribal lands on both sides of the border to hide potent "B.C. Bud" marijuana from authorities, according to court records and criminal justice sources.
At least $6 million worth of the drug wound up flowing out of the Skway reserve near Chilliwack in British Columbia, sources say.
The Rabangs control the Skway Band, claiming four out of five seats on the council, according to a tribal publication.
"Dope is collected at Skway for shipment across the border," said one federal criminal justice source. "Money is delivered to Skway. Skway, like Nooksack, provides a safe haven from prying eyes of cops."
Royal Canadian Mounted Police drug investigator Marcel deRepentigny agreed.
"As far as the Skway, rarely do we get any information unless something is right in your face," he said. "There's very little intelligence coming out of the reserve. And when you are dealing with natives, it's so easy for them to move across the border because they have dual citizenship."
'Big voting bloc'
Tribal Administrator Jerry Folsom, who is non-Indian, said the attack on the Rabangs' authenticity as Nooksacks reflects racism by some members who resent the family's mix of Filipino and Indian blood.
Cunanan said his grandmother, Elizabeth Eugenio, gained admission to the tribe in the 1980s because "she was a full-blooded Indian and a Nooksack Indian. You don't sneak anybody into the tribe."
Phillip Narte, Cunanan's cousin and Nooksack community development officer, called the allegations against the Rabangs sour grapes.
"You've got people who ran the tribe for years," he said. "And suddenly they are not running things anymore. They want the ball back. But our family is a big voting bloc now."
In Indian country, tribal politics is family politics.
"The tribe has functioned for thousands of years with these kinds of conflicts," Folsom said. "They are family conflicts. This is part of the reality of Indian life. The tribe can work around it."
Part of the way the tribe has worked around it, Folsom said, is the election two years ago of Art George as tribal chairman.
Said George of the attacks on the Rabangs: "Basically, it's all politics. They have a vendetta against us. There is no family that can strong-arm or intimidate other families or this tribe."
Rozelda Roberts admits she'd like to be back in power, but only because she's convinced the Rabangs are not true Nooksacks.
Narte disagreed, saying Eugenio's grandfather was a Nooksack.
In the 1800s, there was no meaningful international border separating the Nooksacks from the Skways in what is now Chilliwack, B.C. The Indians speak the same language, have similar customs and share kinship ties.
Both sides agree that Eugenio grew up on Skway lands, married a Filipino man named Rabang and gained official Nooksack membership only in the 1980s. Subsequently, her children joined the tribe.
Nooksack rules require everyone to apply for tribal membership through the enrollment clerk and prove that they have at least one-quarter Nooksack blood, Folsom said.
The clerk certifies that the information is the best available and passes it on to the Tribal Council for a vote.
But Ivan George, the anti-Rabang elder, said that at the time Eugenio joined the tribe, "they were adopting people that were right on the edge. They had a relative who is Nooksack so they said, 'Oh, you're a Nooksack, too.'"
The influx of Rabangs led Rozelda Roberts to join an effort in 1997 to kick them out of the tribe.
Then a member of the council, Roberts said the Rabangs "got wind that we were planning to disenroll them. Then these people came in and threatened us. They had people there we had never seen in our whole lives. It was pretty scary."
An audiotape that includes a threat made at the meeting to "beat to death" anyone who voted to disenroll the Rabangs is in the hands of a federal grand jury in Seattle, according to criminal justice sources.
But efforts by FBI agents to gather more evidence is hampered by widespread fear on the reservation, the elders say.
Dual citizenship
Investigators began gathering information on the drug-smuggling ring about three years ago, using wiretaps and confidential informants.
New details of the smuggling ring became public a week ago when Saturnino Javier, a Rabang cousin named in an indictment dubbed the "Nooksack 10," pleaded guilty to conspiracy.
Javier admitted to smuggling more than 1,500 pounds of pot out of Canada since 1997, bringing the weed to Rabang homes at Nooksack tribal housing projects. The pot was ultimately sold to dealers in Seattle and Portland.
In court, Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Roe called the continuing investigation "an important marijuana-smuggling case involving a large family conspiracy."
Dual Canadian and U.S. citizenship allowed the smugglers easier passage through border checkpoints, authorities said. Once federal agents began listening in on Rabang phone calls, however, scrutiny at the border increased and arrests were made there.
Prosecutors are now considering going much further: branding the Nooksacks' tribal government a criminally corrupt organization. Such a move, under the federal Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO) law, could result in a judge taking over day-to-day operations of the tribe if the case is filed as a civil suit, or further prosecution of tribal members if it's filed criminally.
Neither the U.S. Attorney's Office nor the FBI would comment on the problems on the reservation or the prospect of a RICO suit.
There have been a handful of RICO cases brought around the country against Indian groups, such as street gangs in the Southwest, but there are no records of using the RICO Act against a tribal government, a U.S. Department of Justice spokesman said.
When Congress passed the RICO Act in 1970, it conjured up images of tough district attorneys taking down Mafia capos.
But the law also created a new class of civil tort in which the plaintiff must show the defendant engaged in racketeering -- defined as being at least two criminal acts connected by a common scheme, plan or motive.
A criminal RICO action would allow the government to introduce evidence painting a picture of an alleged conspiracy that would otherwise not be allowed in normal criminal proceedings. Targets could be individual tribal leaders or members of the drug conspiracy.
It isn't just drug smuggling that has authorities looking at a possible racketeering case.
HUD and the U.S. Attorney's Office also are investigating the alleged embezzlement and misuse of at least $300,000 in federal housing funds by Nooksack tribal officials.
A search warrant affidavit filed Feb. 11 claims some of the money was squandered on bonuses for tribal council members and on a manufactured home built by a tribe-owned company that was offered as a casino prize.
"Council has that right to pay bonuses," Tribal Chairman Art George said. "They are the governing body."
George refused to comment on the propriety of signing off on a painting contract that resulted in $144,000 going to a company owned by his daughter and son-in-law.
Folsom, the tribal administrator, said there were no improprieties. "HUD approved every single expenditure we have made as they were made."
To elders like Ivan George, the tribe's state of affairs is nothing short of tragic.
"Once we gathered berries and roots and trees and fish," he said. "This is how the people made their living. But times have changed so much that we can't even fish and we can't even hunt.
"The life now is devastation and turmoil. The people are not content in their own homes.
"As time goes by, those opportunities to live as our ancestors did disappear," he added. "We lived plainly, right off the land. But to do that today is impossible. Indians have learned what greed is all about."
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The group of a half-dozen elders claim a large family of Filipino and American Indian descent has fraudulently enrolled in the tribe.
George, Leanna and George Olson Jr. stand in front of the tribal home from which they were evicted by the Nooksack housing board after a conflict with members of the Rabang family. The Olsons claim they were punished because of the Rabangs' power within the tribe. But tribal administrator Jerry Folsom says they were evicted because of years of complaints about disturbances at the household.
Grant M. Haller/P-I
The Rabangs, he complained, "extend their influence through dope. They control the council and control the staff. They have the housing committee under their control."
Phillip Narte, community development officer of the Nooksack Nation and a member of the extended Rabang family, holds ID cards that show he's a member of the Nooksacks and the Skway Indians.
Grant M. Haller/P-I
"Rabang is being used as a code word for 'Indipinos,'" he said. "It's a racist slur."
Rozelda Roberts and Donna Roberts examine the 1942 census of the Nooksack tribe for an ancestor of the Rabang family.
Grant M. Haller/P-I
Holding aloft a complicated family tree chart, she said Eugenio's only connection to the tribe is that before her grandfather -- Matsqui, a Canadian Indian -- married Eugenio's grandmother, he had married a Nooksack.
P-I reporter Paul Shukovsky can be reached at 206-448-8072 or paulshukovsky@seattle-pi.com
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