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Tribe to begin member audit
By Derek Hodges
When a planned audit is completed, some members of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation may face questions about their enrollment with the tribe.
The tribe has commissioned the Falmouth Institute to conduct an audit of its rolls.
According to Paxton Myers, the Eastern Band’s executive administrator, the tribe’s membership approved the audit in a December 2003 referendum. That vote was prompted by community suspicions about some members of the tribe, Myers said.
“There have always been rumors that certain people are on the list that shouldn’t be. I’m not saying whether they’re true or not. I don’t know,” Myers said. “This audit is just a means of clearing the air.”
One thing that particularly piqued some people’s attention was the large jump in enrollments the year casino operations first yielded per capita checks, Myers said.
According to Nancy Maney, Enrollment Office manager, there were 352 more applications for enrollment approved in 1995, the year checks were first issued, than in 1994. Those numbers have since returned to their pre-dividend days, Maney said.
“There might be some who are in it just for (the checks),” Myers said. “I would hope you would be proud to be Cherokee whether we get $2 or $20,000.”
Members currently receive around $6,000 each in per capita payments from the casino. In addition, members receive other benefits such as health care, employment opportunities and education reimbursement.
Myers said he isn’t sure how someone would make the roll without proper qualifications. Currently, to become an enrolled member a person must be able to show linkage to the 1924 Baker Roll, that listed members of the Eastern Band, and be at least one-sixteenth Cherokee.
“I don’t really know how someone would have ended up on the roll that shouldn’t have,” Myers said. “Now it would be pretty difficult to do that.”
Those who feel they should be on the list can submit an application at the Enrollment Office. That application is then certified if it meets both standards. It is then considered by the Enrollment Committee, which meets monthly to vote on applications, Maney said.
While the referendum was passed nearly two years ago, the Tribal Council had to wait until this year to put the item in its budget, Myers said.
The audit will check the current list against both the Baker Roll and lineage records of each of the nearly 13,500 enrolled members of the tribe, Maney said.
The process could take as much as three years, Myers said. Not only could it call into question the membership of some in the tribe, it could also find people who are not enrolled that should be, he said.
Those who are found to have questionable links to the Eastern Band will not be automatically removed, Myers said.
“This will not remove them; there is a separate process for that,” he said.
The Falmouth Institute, which is based in Fairfax, Va., conducts audits and other services for tribes around the country.
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