40 YEAR OF "LIVING ON THE FAULT LINE"
THE COLLISION OF TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF TRIBAL MEMBERS - WHEN AND WHERE WILL THE "BIG ONE" HAPPEN?
By: Dennis G. Chappabitty, Attorney at Law, OBA #1617, Sacramento, California.¹
Introduction
Several years ago, we decided to take one of those obscure blacktop roads north through Parkfield, California, in the spirit of the 1983 publication “Blue Highways,” a folksy travelogue through America's near-forgotten back roads written by William Least Heat- Moon. Parkfield is the self-proclaimed “Earthquake Capital of the World.” We were on our way back to our home in Elk Grove, CA from a business trip to the Santa Barbara-Santa Ynez area. Parkfield is situated on a relatively straight section of the San Andreas fault in central California, where fault movement occurs often as a seismic slip, or "creep.” We jokingly took a picture of me hanging on the sign right before a bridge that announced “San Andreas Fault.” On the surface, all was peaceful and calm as we drove through Parkfield and up the steep grade and north out of the remote valley. Below the earth it is a different story – Tension is building.
The discipline of earthquake prediction strives to know when and where in those prone areas the next earthquake-caused natural disaster will cause death and destruction. In my opinion, the discipline of Federal Indian Law compels its practitioners to predict and prevent the next intrusion of the United States Congress into the lives of tribal peoples and their sovereign governments, the majority proven to be destructive, intrusive and unnecessary.²
We residents of the State of California don’t bother to ask “if the Big One will ever happen” - we ask “when is the Big One going to occur?” We can only try to predict the factors that will lead to a devastating earthquake but we cannot stop them from happening. In the same sense, the moral, social and economic factors that lead to ICRA violations by tribes are well-known. Very different from earthquakes, however, is the real possibility of preventing “The Big One” through forecasting cases, planning and educating leaders using predictable scenarios, and engaging in sensitive analysis and treatment of claims as they arise. To prevent “The Big One,” we need to make sincere efforts to minimize the damage done by the “small” ones.
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