In February 2013, Michelle Roberts was in Deming, Washington, 15 miles south of the Canadian border.  At the time, as a member of the federally-recognized Nooksack tribe, she lived in tribal housing, on tribal land, and worked in human resources for the Nooksack Tribal Gaming Agency. But on Valentine's Day of that year, all of that was threatened: She and more than 250 others received notice that, unless they contested it before the tribal council, their tribal membership would be revoked. The Nooksack leader at the time, Chairman Robert “Bob” Kelly Jr. said in a statement that those removed were “non-Indians who had erroneously been enrolled in the Tribe.” 

The families—who became known as the Nooksack 306—fought against their disenrollment for more than 10 years in a battle that traversed histories, adoptions, and the definitions of identity. However, last year, the day after last Thanksgiving, the thing they were fighting became a reality: Several families started being formally evicted from their homes under the Nooksack Housing Authority. Today, the Nooksack families feel like they have exhausted their options, but they hope generations to come with learn from what they see as a grave mistake. 

The Tribe’s decision to disenroll these families hinges on one person: A woman named Annie George. She was born in 1875 to Nooksack tribal leader Matsqui George and Maria Siamat. Just days after Annie’s birth, her mother died and her father remarried Madeline Jobe (Nooksack) in 1880. Matsqui was a well-known and regarded Nooksack chief, leading a village in what is now known as British Columbia. 

After her mother’s death, Annie was traditionally adopted by her father’s new wife, Madeline, in accordance with the kinship customs of Coast Salish tribes. 

Even though Annie was adopted and her father was recognized as having Nooksack ancestry, Annie did not receive a land allotment from the tribe nor did she appear on the 1942 US Census roll, both pathways to enrollment into the federally recognized Nooksack Indian Tribe of Washington. This meant she was considered a non-member of the Nooksack tribe, despite her ancestry, family, and adopted mother. 

However, her descendants were enrolled with the understanding that her adopted mother Madeline Jobe qualified them for membership under Nooksack tribal law. It is this adoption and Annie’s lack of presence during the Census and land allotment that the Nooksack Tribe has disputed with her descendants seventy years later. 

Currently, the Nooksack tribe is made up of approximately 2,000 tribal citizens. The Constitution and Bylaws of the Nooksack Indian Tribe of Washington have multiple avenues toward Nooksack enrollment, however, several include a requirement of at least “one-fourth Indian blood.” Membership into the tribe was given to all original Nooksack Public Domain allottees in January 1942 when the tribe was established, and to their lineal descendants, as long as those descendants had met that legal requirement.

Since these initial requirements, the Tribe has added additional pathways for enrollment, including: descendants of those on the official census roll who possess one quarter of Indian blood; all people who receive payment from the Nooksack Tribe Distribution of Judgement Fund of 1965 and who possess one quarter of Indian blood; and adoption by an enrolled Nooksack member and one quarter of Indian blood. 

Questions around the “validity” of Nooksack families’ enrollment have surfaced since the late 1990s and early 2000s. A 1996 enrollment audit, investigating the Tribe was dropped due to outrage among families facing disenrollment. 

But the conversation resurfaced in 2010, when Bob Kelly, a Nooksack adoptee, was elected as the Nooksack Tribal Chairman. The newly elected Kelly had been legally adopted into the Nooksack tribe and recognized as part of the community, therefore he was eligible to run for leadership and hold office. The events that unfolded during the next eight years of his leadership wreaked havoc on individual Nooksack members and families, bringing the tribe into the national spotlight as a cautionary tale of the most severe impacts of tribal government corruption, political indifference, and the intersection of tribal sovereignty, citizenship, identity, and belonging. 

It quickly became difficult for Michelle and others facing disenrollment to petition their cases as the tribal council refused to meet with them or gave them narrow windows and strict parameters to doing so, she said. When the council did allow the families to respond, Michelle says that they were invited to a virtual Zoom meeting, where each person had only ten minutes to present their case without the opportunity to ask questions.

Three of the families involved hired Indigenous rights attorney Gabe Galanda to represent them in tribal court and fight the disenrollments. Galanda is from the Round Valley Indian Tribe of California and specializes in tribal law, representing a number of different clients including tribes, tribal businesses, and individuals. 

“They were just so obviously Indigenous to me, the way they talked, the way they dressed, the way they bickered with each other. Just like aunties sitting around the table,” Galanda recalled of his first time meeting with members of the family. 

The court battle reads like it’s out of a soap opera. Galanda appealed the disenrollments to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), as the Nooksack Tribal Constitution required that all disenrollments be approved by the BIA. This was successful in postponing the disenrollments but led to Galanda being barred from tribal courts by the council in 2016.

According to the Bellingham Herald's reporting in 2016, the Tribe and Chairman Kelly claimed Galanda had conflicting court cases stemming from when he served as a pro tem judge for another tribe, citing his own opinion in a later case with the Nooksack Tribal Courts. They also claim he had "committed numerous unethical acts" in Nooksack courts. 

Shortly after, the tribal council fired the tribal court judge who had spoken out against Galanda’s disbarring and asked the Tribe to submit an affidavit outlining whether or not Galanda was afforded due process before this disbarment. According to the filing in Nooksack Tribal Court, the tribe failed to address the question of what due process was afforded Galanda’s firm ahead of removing them from practicing in tribal court. 

A few days later, Chairman Kelly was appointed as head judge of the tribal court system. But with this consolidation of power, the Kelly administration’s actions raised concerns within the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Department of the Interior (DOI). 

The DOI under the first Trump administration did not recognize Kelly and his council calling them the “unelected, unrecognized, and illegitimate Kelly Faction.” The federal government typically stays out of independent tribal governments and politics due to tribal sovereignty, however, the DOI stated it would only conduct business with the Tribe if they follow their own bylaws and constitution. 

Under this leadership, the Nooksack tribal council clashed with the DOI when the department withheld federal funds due to the lack of a free and fair election process for council members. Additionally, the BIA refused to uphold actions taken by the council due to the lack of quorum. 

Those who spoke out against the disenrollments and other decisions made by the Kelly administration faced backlash, much like Galanda, including being fired from their positions, harassed by tribal police, or—in one woman’s case—reportedly having her personal photos leaked on social media from a computer within the tribal government office. 

A few months after the council disbarred Galanda, the disenrollments were finalized and 306 individuals were removed from the Nooksack rolls. 

Michelle and several of those disenrolled lost their jobs and their homes as a result. Eviction notices first arrived in 2021, five years after the disenrollments went through. At that time 63 people faced eviction from their longtime homes. However, families were able to delay the evictions in court until the end of last year. 

The tribe maintains that those homes must be occupied by tribal members and because of the disenrollments, argues the families no longer qualify. 

“We were denied deeds to homes we rented to own for as many as 26 years,” Roberts said in a statement the Monday before the evictions. “Our homes are now being taken without due process or compensation. We now face exile from our ancestral homelands – a break in the connection between our Nooksack ancestors and homelands.” 

The homes from which families were removed are owned by the Nooksack Indian Housing Authority and cannot be occupied by non-tribal members, according to the Nooksack Statement on the Evictions Counterproposal. Additionally, properties owned by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) require occupants to be low-income, which the tribe argues, the disenrolled members are not. The Tribe maintains that the homes are not rent-to-own however, the families say they were explicitly told the homes were rent-to-own when they moved in years ago. 

The tribe is adamant that the families living in the homes are not Nooksack and intends to put enrolled Nooksack families into the vacated properties. 

“Nooksack housing manages just 111 units and has a waiting list of over 200, 15 of whom are elders,” the statement reads. “Several of those on our waiting list are unhoused. The homes are needed for qualified Nooksack citizens.” 

The Nooksack Tribe did not respond to The Stranger’s requests for comments. 

Although Kelly and those who worked closely with him no longer hold power after a tribal election in May 2018, the division he caused within the Nooksack community remains. 

“The wrath of those people, they were the ultimate bullies. I think people are still afraid,” Michelle said. “People are afraid because they attack your identity, your family, your ancestors. They can come for your job, for your homes.” 

Michelle has never once doubted her belonging to her community. She and others maintain their Nooksack identity and refuse to let tribal politics and vendettas define who they know themselves to be. 

“There’s two ways that we’re Nooksack, by blood and by adoption,” she said. 

In most cases, in the US, an individual can only enroll in a single federally recognized tribe. However, if an individual meets the enrollment requirements of both a U.S. based tribe and a Canadian tribe, they can enroll and be citizens in both. 

This is the case for some of the disenrolled Nooksack families, who qualify to enroll in the Shxwhay Band of British Columbia. The Shxwhay Band is made up of approximately 403 tribal citizens and spread out through the US and Canada. 

Michelle and her father are now staying in Shxwhay Band housing just a short distance from her old home. Her father has dementia so she’s glad he’s able to stay close to the community he’s familiar with. 

Although they’ve received support from United Nations officials and even the archdiocese of the Catholic Church, calls for intervention from Washington state legislators and federal politicians remain unanswered.

“These political offices, they say ‘tribal sovereignty’ and they don’t want to get involved, but it’s just a convenient political excuse. They’re not interested in doing the hard, intellectual work of really looking at this issue of tribal sovereignty against Indigenous human rights,” Galanda said. 

Disenrolled members have done everything they could to try and find a solution and regain what was taken from them: Petitioning tribal leaders and the council, tribal court to prove their case and keep their homes, as well as state, federal, and global political leaders. The families made one last ditch effort to reach the Biden administration before he left office on January 19, but that window closed quickly without success. At this time, Michelle says her only hope is that future generations read the stories, learn what truly happened, and understand the mistakes of their predecessors. 

“This is the twelfth year of this fight, we’ve exhausted every resource we can and every avenue available to us. We’re going to continue to fight but we just don’t know what that looks like anymore because we’ve tried in the courts, we’ve tried at the state government, at the federal government but nothing’s happened,” she said.

Galanda wants people to see the issues and hypocrisy that arise when liberal politicians who claim to support tribes stand idly by while human rights are violated in the name of tribal sovereignty. 

“An Indigenous person’s everything can be stripped away by tribal politicians with impunity because of tribal sovereignty – jobs, homes, livelihood, belonging, identity,” he said. “At this point we’re just writing history. We’re writing down truths and that is tribal sovereignty is invincible over Indigenous human rights.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that an individual could only enroll in a single federally recognized tribe in the United States. We have updated the article to reflect that that is true in most, but not all, cases.