GROUND ZER0, New York, N.Y.--Jan. 18, 2004 --  The American Indian tribes are using an ancient remedy to battle the Beast of Terror on a number of reservations.   Their solution is banishment, exile, ejection from the community.

      Two tribes are employing the harshest of all penalties against those who violate tribal policy such as selling drugs.   They are excommunicating the persons from all elements of the community, including eviction from their homes and cutting off their rights to any payments or subsidies.
       They are stripping the violators of their rights of Indian citizenship, a harsh and often brutal retaliation against the growing need to stabilize the culture within tribes away from crime and toward more community.
       According to the New York Times, two tribes are imposing the severe penalty of excommunication.   One is the Lummi Indian reservation in Bellingham, Washington, and the other the Chippewa of Grand Portage, Minn.
       The tribal councils on both reservations have reached back to ancient laws that allows the tribe to expel members who threaten the community.  Also on the Chippewa list of failings that can lead to banishment are being in a gang, selling drugs, harming the band's cultural items, disrupting a religious ceremony, unauthorized hunting or fishing and being banished from another reservation.  Indian tribes are sovereign states, legally not under the jurisdiction of the Constitution of the United States, and have the right to act in ways that U.S. citizens might find in direct opposition to fundamental rights.

        Poverty and unemployment on the reservations have driven many members to drug dealing.   Attempts to limit the crimes by conventional methods have met with little results, so the tribal councils in both the Lummi and Chippewa communities have resorted to the brutal expulsion of those who threaten the community.

         The Times reports the sadness of those ejected from the tribe.    One woman sleeps in cellars in the "white man's" land, begging for food and clothing.  
        Tribal spokespeople say the harsh penalty is being installed to protect the community at large.
        The community at large, I assume, means the Children's Children's Children.   In one of the examples illustrated in the Times story, an 15-month-old died after eating an OxyContin pill on the floor, dropped by the drug dealer who lived there.
         As Sentinels of Vigilance, all of us have a responsibility to defend the rights of our children, especially to protect their safety.    The reservations that have installed the excommunication, banishment, penalty, are telling their tribal members that "those who dance with the Beast of Terror must live with him, walk in his shoes, sleep in his slime."     

       However cruel the ejection of a person may be from a community, in one sense it tells the world how important the whole is to the singular.
        When individuals violate community laws, and threaten the future of the children and their offspring, they become cancerous.    The idea the community will condone such behavior by trying to repair it through therapy and counseling is one thing if it works.   The idea the community will not condone such behavior is another.

       Those quick to criticize the Indian community for banishment might look at our child molestation laws.    Child molesters are banished by our society.  By law, their pictures are plastered around neighborhoods.  They register by law so their presence can be noted.   Citizens can access their addresses.   Banishment exists.
         As a Sentinel of Vigilance I look upon the Indian Reservations who employ banishment with applause and sorrow.     I applauded the effort to stop the flow of drugs and crime within the community, and am saddened that Vigilance to stop the crimes was not installed prior to the current harsh penalty.
        I believe if we all become Parents of Vigilance and act within the Principles of Vigilance, that fewer of our children will grow into adults who want to Dance With The Beast of Terror.
       When that happens, fewer of them will be banished from the Tribe, the Tribe of Vigilance.