SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Several hundred disenrolled members of various California tribes staged a lengthy and loud protest on the steps of the state capitol asking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state legislature to immediately halt signing new compacts with the state;s tribes as a first step toward creating an inter-tribal appeals process for disenrollees.

At least nine tribes were represented at the July 14 demonstration and are perhaps a testament to a growing controversy in which increasing numbers of the state's tribes are finding themselves left without tribal membership.

The tribes at the protest represented a fairly balanced geographical cross section of the state and have formed an organization called California Indians for Justice. Organizers said this demonstration represents the first step that the group plans to take and claim that they will demonstrate at various tribal casinos as well as the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C.

Though questions of Indian policy and issues are usually handled by the federal government, organizer Laura Wass, who works with the Fresno chapter of the American Indian Movement, felt it was important to start in California.

Wass maintained that pressuring the governor and legislature to stop the compacting process could be used by the state to pressure tribes to set up an inter-tribal appeals court to deal with the matter of disenrollment. Wass said the next step would be to pressure the U.S. congress to launch an inquiry to on the matter of "tribal identity and tribal membership."

Though the actual chances that any of this would come to fruition is cloudy at best, Gov. Schwarzenegger was at least taking note of the demonstration as a member of his press office was present at the rally, though he declined comment on the matter.

Wass claimed that the majority of the disenrollments were the result of the per-capita system in which gaming tribes carve up a proportion of their profits to pay to tribal members from their gaming establishments. The problem, as Wass and the other demonstrators see it, is that fewer tribal members mean a bigger piece of the monetary pie for the remaining members.

"It's greed, plain and simple," said Wass.

Several of the tribes represented have gaming establishments or currently have plans on the drawing board.

One of the largest factions at the demonstration were members of the Foreman family formerly of the Redding Rancheria at the north end of the Central Valley. Their story had generated quite a bit of press over the last few years as 76 tribal members were disenrolled, predominantly members of the Foreman family.

About 40 members of the Foreman family stood on stage together while family patriarch and former Redding Rancheria Chairman Bob Foreman addressed the crowd. Foreman recounted the various ways that family members had fought to stay in the tribe including bringing in a DNA expert that proved within a 1 percent margin that the members of the Foreman family to be descendants of one of the 16 original members of the Redding Rancheria.

For their part, the tribe has claimed that they did not have a tribal representative at the exhumations of the ancestral graves used in the DNA search and therefore question the authenticity of the DNA tests.

It is cases like these, Wass and several of the demonstrators said, that prove the need for an inter-tribal court so that these decision can be appealed.

Jacob Coin, executive director of the California Indian Nations Gaming Association (CNIGA) countered that gaming is helping tribes to set up court systems and he said it is precisely the revenue from gaming that would allow a more vigorous tribal court system in California to exist.

"Without revenue, you can't have a court system," reasoned Coin.

Coin was himself once the subject of a disenrollment dispute with his own Hopi tribe. He recounted how he used the tribal courts in his dispute and eventually won his case.

"It put my faith in a system that I believed in and it worked for me," Coin said.

It should be noted that Coin comes from a large southwestern tribe with thousands members that only a very few of California's even approach in size. Most California tribes typically consist of a few hundred people or fewer with typically a few extended families constituting the majority of the population. This is one of the reasons that California Indians for Justice has asked for an inter-tribal court, where authority would supercede that of the individual tribes, to be set up for such appeals.

Oftentimes in these cases there are old family disagreements and animosity that leads one faction to want to disenroll another. It is because of this that some claim that money is at least not the sole object of these disenrollments.

"It's not greed, its old family spite," said one member of a Southern California tribe currently involved in an expulsion dispute who asked not to be named.

Part of the problem also stems from a time in California when tribes sought to enlarge their rolls to be more politically potent. Most tribes involved in the disenrollment dispute have claimed that they are just adjusting their rolls because of these additions.

It is difficult to dismiss financial gain entirely from the equation. Gaming has now become a multi-billion dollar business in California and fewer tribal members mean bigger per capita checks for the remaining members.

Beyond the issue of tribal courts and possible motives is the basic issue of sovereign citizenship. Since Indian tribal governments are regarded as sovereign or semi-sovereign entities, it is almost wholly unprecedented in modern times that large numbers of the rank and file of any sovereign body can be stripped of basic citizenship.

Essentially disenrollment equals a form of exile and, in at least the last century, sovereign governments have limited exile to government officials and monarchs and not a large segment of their own body of citizens.

Coin counters that tribal governments are unique entities and said that comparisons to other sovereign governments, such as states, are not applicable because tribes hold a unique sovereign status that is not comparable to other sovereign governments.

However, it is interesting to note that many tribes have been, at best, selective in their use of this argument. During the capitol demonstration Bob Foreman claimed that Redding Rancheria Chairwoman Tracy Edwards had likened her tribe to a state when speaking of the disenrollments. Edwards was unavailable for comment to verify that she made this remark.

In general, tribal leaders have time and time again likened their status to that of a state. For example, former National Congress of the American Indian president Sue Masten likened tribes to states in a January 2002 Indian Country Today article to justify why tribes should not be required by law to pay into a revenue sharing agreement. It should be noted that Masten's Yurok tribe, in which she has also served as chairwoman, has not been a part of the disenrollment controversy.

In addition to the Redding Rancheria, California Indians for Justice consists of disenrolled members from the Pechanga Band of Lusiseno Indians, the Laytonville Rancheria, Enterprise Rancheria, the Western Shoshone, Scott Valley Rancheria, the Guideville Rancheria and the Santa Rosa Rancheria.