The timeless view of San Jacinto Peak from Morongo Reservation. (Pat Murkland Photo)
As a Morongo Reservation Tribal Council member for more than 30 years, including three times as chairwoman, Mary Ann Andreas has seen a rapid and dramatic growth of Native American tribal governments, including the successful fights for tribal gaming rights.
So, when Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, the Banning Public Library District, and Friends of Banning Library earlier this year co-hosted an online session featuring area Native American women who nurture and lead our communities, Mary Ann Andreas, the Center’s 2014 Dragonfly Award winner for her leadership achievements, talked about tribal sovereignty. Here are a few excerpts:
Inherent Rights
Mary Ann Andreas explained that sovereignty legally recognizes that Native Americans had powers before any newcomers came onto their homelands, including the right to govern people with one’s own laws, and the right to control and manage land and resources.
Although treaties with Native American people were broken, or in the case of the local Treaty of Temecula, never honored, treaties helped establish legal bedrock for tribal sovereignty in the United States, because only nations can enter into treaties with other nations.
Mary Ann Andreas
Teach it:
“Tribal sovereignty is the right to self-govern,” Mary Ann Andreas said. “And I think part of what I want to talk about today is the importance of teaching our generations, our children, everyone, even governments, state governments, city governments, federal government, about sovereignty, and how it affects the tribe, and how it came about. And since governments are constantly changing … it’s a non-stop job.”
Teach: “The importance of the fact that it’s an inherent right. That the government did not give it to us. It was not granted to us by anybody. It’s an inherent right that we had previous to any contact. …
“We do have a tribal sovereignty class for all our children turning 18, but I think there needs to be a greater understanding, of teachers, in public school, in colleges, and at every level. That we teach what tribal sovereignty is, and how it interacts with tribes. … [The tribes] have to make sure that every one of our tribal children understands that the inherent right to self-government is a right to determine our membership, the right to hunting and fishing, and to create laws, and so those are all very important powers to have, and powers to fight for.”
Fight for it:
“The general principle of sovereignty is about power and control. So, in the tribes’ interest, in our generations’ interest, it is important that tribal leadership fight for this, continuously, and that our people understand it, and when we move on, then they take over, they stand up, and they speak out and fight for the same thing.”
Live it:
“In my opinion,” Mary Ann Andreas said, “I have heard it said before, and I agree with this, and I say it all the time, the most effective protection of tribal sovereignty is the effective exercise of tribal sovereignty.
“That means we have to, as in the case of gaming, we exercised our right to the sovereign right to gaming, and now we have that right, and I think people in general in the public … they accept that as a right, of our sovereign right as a tribe, as a Native people. So that’s one example of how we exercised our sovereign right.”
Keep Fighting:
“We have this thing called pencil sovereignty where both ends of the pencil are used, the eraser to erase laws, and the other part to write new laws that diminish our tribal sovereignty. And I think that tribes have to continue to work hard to protect our tribal sovereignty. It comes down to the government-to-government relationship, it comes down to the inherent right of self-government, it comes down to the treaties that were made between tribes as nations and the United States of America. And I think that it gets very complex. …
“Once colonialism, the colonial times passed, all of the resources, all of the food, most of the land was taken, so tribes for many years didn’t have money to travel to Washington, D.C., or money to hire an attorney, or money to hire a lobbyist. Some tribes are still like that this very day.
“But we have gained independence, we have shared knowledge and legal opinions and legal and public relations, we’ve taken over control of many of the duties of government within ourselves, like schools, security, police. We elect our leaders. We take care of our land. And by doing those things, we exercise our sovereignty…”
Keep Teaching:
“I would of course like to see, more and more, be able to walk up to a child, a young person, and say, ‘Can you tell me what tribal sovereignty is?’ And have him just jump right out and tell me and … be knowledgable about who we are, where we came from, and where we’re going to.”
The full 15-minute presentation by Mary Ann Andreas starts at about the 6:36-minute mark in this recorded Zoom video by Banning Library District. Thanks to Mary Ann Andreas, and thanks to the library and Friends of Banning Library for co-hosting the January 2021 presentation.
Learning Center President Ernest Siva (far left) and his wife, Vice President June Siva (far right) in 2014 presented the Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s Dragonfly Award to Mary Ann Andreas and James Ramos, now a California state Assembly member, for their soaring achievements in leadership, including cultural leadership.
November is National Native American National Heritage Month. Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s 501(c)3 nonprofit mission every day is to save and share Southern California Native American cultures, languages, history, and traditional arts. We love to hear from our community: EMAIL. Thank you! Pat Murkland, Editor. November 3, 2021.