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1103418
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Pitt River Tribe
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1103418
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document
title
Pitt River Tribe
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Bradley H. Patterson Files (Ford Administration)
Bradley Patterson's Native American Programs Files
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California
Indians of North America
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1103418
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1976-01-01
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1976
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1976-01-01
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1976
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The original documents are located in Box 5, folder "Pitt River Tribe" of the Bradley H.
Patterson Files at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Copyright Notice
The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of
photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Gerald Ford donated to the United
States of America his copyrights in all of his unpublished writings in National Archives collections.
Works prepared by U.S. Government employees as part of their official duties are in the public
domain. The copyrights to materials written by other individuals or organizations are presumed to
remain with them. If you think any of the information displayed in the PDF is subject to a valid
copyright claim, please contact the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
ROOM 206
1346 CONNECTICUT AVE., N.W.
AMERICAN INDIAN PRESS ASSOCIATION
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20036
Phone: (202) 293-9150
NEWS SERVICE
FORD
Executive Director: Rose Robinson
News Director: Richard LaCourse
PITT - AP232
GERALD
LIBRARY
WASHINGTON, D.C. (AIPA) The Pitt River Tribe of northern inland California has
asked the Supreme Court to order a review of its claims after receiving no response
to requests for White House intervention, and following unsuccessful attempts to
prevent logging operations on ancestral lands claimed by them, and subsequent to
dismissal of petitions to the Federal Court of Appeals and the U.S. Court of Claims
for a reopening of their case.
The tribe, represented by San Francisco attorney Aubrey Grossman, filed a
petition in the Supreme Court Apr. 15 requesting that the high court order a review
by the U.S. Court of Claims of a 1964 Indian Claims Commission (ICC) judgment that
the Pitt River claim to 3,500,000 acres had been resolved by the overall settlement
of California Indians awarded at that time.
In seeking the review, the Pitt River Tribe claims that discrepancies existed
in the election supervised by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to determine whether
the 1964 ICC settlement was acceptable to the tribe, that payment of 47 cents per acre
awarded by the ICC was significantly less than the value of the land, and that the
tribe was prevented from dismissing counsel and obtaining the services of an attorney
willing to appeal the ruling.
In a statement announcing filing of the petition, Grossman said that Pitt River
would like an opportunity tp prove they were denied a fair election on their particip-
ation in the California settlement. "It offered to prove that many persons who voted,
from a list prepared by the BIA, were not Pitt River Indians--and that some were not
even Indians, " he said. Grossman stated that the tribe has been prevented from
proving any of its claims because "its attorney was wedded to the settlement and argued
for it; and that government refused to let the tribe change attorneys" and "also refused
to let the tribe appeal the case to the Court of Claims."
The tribe claims that their attorney refused to act in their interest, and that
the BIA would not approve a contract with a lawyer who would act in accord with their
wishes. In 1964, when the tribe tried to retain Atty. Melvin M. Belli to enter an
appeal in the ICC California settlement, the BIA Commissioner notified Belli that his
contract would not be approved because the BIA was not notified in advance of the
tribal meeting in which the decision was made to retain Belli and because that meeting
"was not called by a (BIA) representative" as prescribed by federal regulations.
The tribe maintains that it was prohibited from entering into a new contract
because the government wanted to prevent an appeal of its case. Grossman agreed to
represent the tribe without fee in order to avoid the necessity for government
approval of his contract. Yet, by the time he entered a petition for reopening the
case in September of 1972 with the Court of Claims, the petition was dismissed on
grounds of the statute of limitations.
The Pitt River petition provides much emphasis on the tribe's difficulties in
directing counsel to appeal the ICC judgment. In part, the petition states: There is
certainly no other case where an Indian tribe has been unable to file an appeal because
the government would not let them change attorneys in order to obtain an attorney
Digitized from Box 5 of the Bradley H. Patterson Files at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
PITT/one add
(AP232)
who would agree to file an appeal, and then were barred from court on grounds of
"
statute of limitations
Other reasons set forth by the tribe for the granting
of the petition include:
--The tribe claims that California Indians were misled into accepting payments
amounting to a figure of from two to 19 percent of land values established by the
ICC and Court of Claims under normal appraisal rules;
--Tribal enrollment for the purpose of participation in the settlement was so
much increased against the wishes of the tribe that claims money was distributed
among persons with less than one percent of Indian blood;
--Because of dismissal of its petitions for review or appeal, the tribe claims,
a conflict exists with right to counsel decisions of the Supreme Court and decisions
of other courts of appeal in cases of negligence of counsel and attorney participation
in fraud.
In a telephone interview, Grossman told AIPA that a decision on whether the case
may be reviewed will probably not be made until after the Supreme Court begins its
term in October. Grossman added that the best he could hope for was a determination
from the court that the tribe was denied the right to counsel and the right to appeal
the ICC judgment and, on these grounds, that the court would remand the case to either
the ICC or Court of Claims for review. "Legally, deprivation of counsel is the one
thing they can't possibly dodge," he said.
He held little hope that the court would consider other points raised in the
petition, such as alleged mismanagement of the election which voted acceptance of the
1964 judgment and the amount established by the ICC for payment of the settlement,
believing them to be "small questions" more properly belonging in a lower court.
Should the high court decide not to order the case reopened, the only oppor-
tunity remaining for the tribe to regain possession of any of its ancestral lands
would rest in an appeal for congressional action. Approximately two-thirds of the
acreage claimed lies within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service, with the
remainder being under private ownership. Grossman estimated that restoration of
10,000 acres of this land would permit the tribe to become economically viable.
Among the California Indian population of about 80,000, the Pitt River Tribe
with less than 500 members is believed to be the only group fighting for land restor-
ation. Other California Indians have formed an organization called California
Indians for a Fair Settlement (CIFS) and are seeking additional cash payments for
their 64 million acre settlement.
-30-
FORD
LIBRARY