Updated: No Federal Recognition for Juaneño

Updated at 1:05 p.m. with information from the Bureau of Indian Affair's Office of Federal Acknowledgement.

The Indian tribe who built Mission San Juan Capistrano learned Wednesday that it, again, has been denied federal sovereignty by the U.S. Department of the Interior, which said the Tribe has failed to prove its "continual existence" as an 'historical Indian tribe' since 1834.

Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation "is very disappointed that [the federal government] failed to properly evaluate the thousands of pieces of evidence the Tribe had presented," said Tribal Chairman Anthony Rivera Jr. "This is a great and continued injustice to the Acjachemen Tribe."

Based on the thousands of pages of evidence it submitted, the tribe will evaluate the Bureau of Indian Affairs' conclusions and prepare to appeal the decision, which Rivera called inaccurate.

According to the bureau, federally recognized tribes are recognized as having government-to-government relationships with the United States. Aside from being recognized as "possessing certain inherent rights of self-government, they are also eligible for benefits."

The Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation, initiated its petition for federal recognition in 1982. The Office of Federal Acknowledgement released a statement which Wednesday which says the Tribe failed to meet four of the seven requirements necessary for federal acknkowledgement.

Rivera said in a statement that the tribe submitted more than 100,000 pieces of evidence that proved the existence of Acjachemen Nation, leaders, and people since 1776 to present. It also submitted official history written by himself and other experts of the Acjachemen Nation from 1776 to present, and evidence that all of the Acjachemen Indians enrolled with the Tribe descend directly from these historic Acjachemen Indians, he said.

Here are the criteria the Office said the Tribe failed to meet, and why:

• Criterion 83.7(a) requires that external observers have identified the petitioner as an American Indian entity on a substantially continuous basis since 1900. The available evidence demonstrates that external observers identified the petitioner as an American Indian entity on a substantially continuous basis only since 1997, not since 1900.
• Criterion 83.7(b) requires that a predominant portion of the petitioning group has comprised a distinct community from historical times to the present. The available evidence demonstrates that the distinct San Juan Capistrano Indian community, from which the petitioners claim descent, continued to exist only to 1862.
• Criterion 83.7(c) requires that the petitioning group has maintained political influence over its members as an autonomous entity from historical times to the present. The available evidence does not demonstrate that the petitioner maintained political influence or authority over its members as an autonomous entity from 1835 until the present.
• Criterion 83.7(e) requires that the petitioner’s members descend from a historical Indian tribe. The available evidence shows that only 61 percent of the petitioner’s 1,940 members demonstrated descent from the historical Indian tribe at Mission San Juan Capistrano.