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 Volume 11, Fall 2005 |
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PG&E to Divest Lands Important to California Tribes Board Member
Profile: Celebrating Client Achievement: Round Valley Indian Tribes Meet Sam Hough, Directing Attorney of Eureka Nor-Rel-Muk Tribe Fights to Restore Spiritual Site AICLS: Helping Protect and Preserve Indian Language CILS Helps Reunite Indian Family Safe Haven: Foster Families for Indian Children CILS Helps Indian Families Get Back over $100,000 |
Meet
Sam Hough
What tribe(s) are you and where were you raised? Oooh, the million dollar question. I am Serrano from the Morongo Indian Reservation in Riverside County. When I was a child, my father was in the military and then worked as a preacher whose job it was to start new churches. I have lived all over the Western and Southern United States. We moved about every one to two years and never lived anywhere longer than three years; I attended 18 different schools from K through 12. How long have you worked for CILS? As of August 16, 2005, it will be one year. How have you and your family adjusted to living in Northern California? We are settling in nicely to the community. We have two young daughters, Rylie, age two, and Teagan, age 8 months, that keep us fairly busy and entertained. We enjoy walks on the beach and in the redwoods, and birding at the Arcata marsh. We also like gardening and spending time transforming our house into a home. Where did you live before and what surprised you about your new surroundings? We lived in Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona for the last four years. The most surprising aspect of our new home was the price compared to the modest square footage. What have you learned about the Native Community in your service area that you didn't know before starting work there? Being from a Southern California tribe, I was unfamiliar with the history of termination in the area. What initially motivated you to study Indian law? What continues to motivate you? My own family and tribal history motivated me to study Indian law. Indian people are subject to more bureaucratic nonsense then any other group of citizens in the U.S. What primarily motivated me, and continues to motivate me, is that Indian people can be robbed of their religious freedom in this country by the bureaucratic process, without recourse to the protections of the Constitution. This injustice was and is so nonsensical to me that I had to study Indian law in order to begin to understand it. But studying the law didn't really help me understand the injustices because the primary legal principle of Indian law - the Doctrine of Discovery - sets Indian people up as less than human and therefore without the rights that one might otherwise expect in a democratic society. Perhaps most worrisome is that even minimal protections in Indian law, as set forth in the Marshall Court during the 1800's, continue to be eroded today. As an Indian person today, studying Indian law can be equated to an African American student being required to read the Supreme Court's decision in the Dred Scott case over and over and over again as good law. The 1856 Dred Scott decision provides that African American people were not and could not be U.S. citizens because, as slaves, they were viewed as property and not as men. But as Frederick Douglas, a leader of the movement to abolish slavery remarked about that opinion, "my hopes were never brighter than now." I believe that someday Congressional plenary power, and its bureaucratic despotism that Indian tribes and people are subject to, will be seen for the evil that it is. As Douglas said, the Supreme Court "cannot change the essential nature of things - making evil good, and good evil." All it takes to begin changing the world is the first small step. I chose CILS to be the base from which to take that first step because of the firm's excellent history. What issue areas do enjoy working on the most? What do you see as the biggest issues facing the local communities? I'd have to say I enjoy working on cultural resource protection, with as broad an interpretation of cultural resources as possible. Indian tribes are truly a "people" whose sovereignty above all and foremost is based upon their peoplehood. The peoplehood is comprised of a sacred history and language, a unique ceremonial cycle, and control over a particular territory. This is the truest form of sovereignty and it predates the now increasingly antiquated positivist notions of the "nation state." Therefore we as advocates for Indian people have to protect the culture - the peoplehood - of the people because the culture makes us Indian and defines us as individual peoples possessed of sovereignty. Otherwise, Indian tribes may truly become only the quasi-sovereign nation states that the U.S. has declared them to be. I also take particular delight in analyzing tribal vs. state jurisdictional issues whether civil or criminal, adjudicatory or regulatory. The greatest need I see in the northern California Indian communities is for sustainable non-gaming economic development. Seeing healthy rivers teaming with fish is always a priority, and economic development can be one way to help secure the future of the rivers and the people. The financial literacy workgroup that CILS is devising as well as, possibly, a group focused on microlending for tribal entrepreneurs might help address some of these concerns. Among other issues, I represent tribes in Federal Energy Regulatory Commission proceedings on the Klamath River and the Pitt River so I am familiar with the challenges facing tribes in this regard.
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