Legitimate tribes and tribal reality

By Roy McClellan, 10 June 2000

Tau Cibabo and Friends,

Our Native American Indian ancestors and people are being disrespected by some people who claim to be of Native American Indian tribes, when in truth these people are not even remotely related as descendants of the original tribes.

In today's maddening world you find these new agers coming out of the woodwork like cockroaches. They seem to be fooling people into joining some tribe that simply does not exist. There's an old saying by W C Fields, There's a sucker born every day.

Anyone in their right mind knows that you do not simply start something or try to recreate something without first having a real or firm foundation of a legitimate tribal claim. I smile when I hear about these people going around telling others that if, you are born in an area or town that you must belong to the local tribe. I would say that it's like saying, for example if you are born in the town or a city of some state like New York, that you are all Mohawk Indians.

I am a native Islander who was born in a small town known as Orocovis, Puerto Rico in the year 1951. My two children were born in the town of Vineland, New Jersey. Does this mean that my children, simply because they were born in this local area town, Lenapes? Can they now claim to be Lenni-Lenapes of New Jersey? I honestly do not think so!

What is stranger and more bizarre, is that these people are even going around telling the members of existing tribal organizations to quit their present day tribal organizations, so that they can join their illegitimate new age tribes.

The putting on of Native American Indian regalia, or in this case a new age clown costume, does not make a person a Native American Indian. It only means that some clown fooled people into playing the game of cowboys and Indians. What seems to be wrong here? Well to me it seems that the Cowboys are now creating and dressing up like North American Indians. This, my friends, has become a real joke within the Native American Indian communities in the United States and Puerto Rico. According to the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs), a tribal group has to have existed for over 25 years and have a history, tribal territorial council government with community members who can show that they are from the original tribe or indigenous tribal community. In any case these people do not have a leg to stand on. These are the facts as I understand them according to the United States government and the Commonwealth Government of Puerto Rico.