They've been mentioned in a number of threads, but it's surprising they don't have their own thread. Fraud of theirs made the news.
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https://www.indianz.com/News/2018/10/15/man-from-northern-cherokee-nation-landed.asp?fbclid=IwAR1p6YMYRqdrf6rPgnjrcgn0QuB0Mdlj5BiCbZ43Mtof1g0tKWP1so0egP8The Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake was among the federal agencies that awarded contracts to a company whose owner belongs to the "Northern Cherokee Nation," The Los Angeles Times reported.
Man from 'Northern Cherokee Nation' landed $7.6 million in government contracts
Monday, October 15, 2018
A man who belongs to the Northern Cherokee Nation, a group that is considered illegitimate by Cherokee people, landed $7.6 million in federal government contracts, The Los Angeles Times reports.
The group lacks federal recognition and state recognition. But the Small Business Administration did not question whether William Wages was actually Native American when it determined that his company qualified for the disadvantaged contracting program, the paper said.
“It’s very much a con,” David Cornsilk, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, told the paper. Cornsilk, who is a well-known genealogist, did not find any of Wages' ancestors on any Cherokee rolls.
Wages happens to be the brother-in-law of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-California), who serves as the Majority Leader in the U.S. House of Representatives. His company won more than $4 million in contracts at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, which is in the congressman's district, the paper reported.
Still, there was no direct evidence that Wages and his company, which is known as Vortex Construction, benefited from the family connection, based on what has been reported so far by The Times.
“But other than a batting cage we owned and operated together in our 20s I haven’t had interactions with Bill on any of his subsequent business pursuits,” McCarthy told the paper.
McCarthy also said that he always knew that his wife, Judy, who is Wages' sister, claimed Native ancestry "along with other nationalities as well,” the paper reported.
As the Majority Leader in the House, McCarthy has control over which bills come up for passage in the chamber. Since the start of the 115th Congress in January 2018, he has helped a number of pro-tribal measures win approval, almost always without controversy.
None of the Indian bills addressed the 8(a) program at the Small Business Administration. Most dealt with tribal homelands, economic development and related issues.
The Northern Cherokee Nation is based in Missouri. The Cherokee Nation, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians do not consider the group to be legitimate.
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http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-na-pol-mccarthy-contracts-20181014-story.htmlHouse Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s family benefited from U.S. program for minorities based on disputed ancestry By PAUL PRINGLE and ADAM ELMAHREK OCT 14, 2018
....A company owned by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s in-laws won more than $7 million in no-bid and other federal contracts at U.S. military installations and other government properties in California based on a dubious claim of Native American identity by McCarthy’s brother-in-law, a Times investigation has found.
The prime contracts, awarded through a federal program designed to help disadvantaged minorities, were mostly for construction projects at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in McCarthy’s Bakersfield-based district, and the Naval Air Station Lemoore in nearby Kings County.
Vortex Construction, whose principal owner is William Wages, the brother of McCarthy’s wife, Judy, received a total of $7.6 million in no-bid and other prime federal contracts since 2000, The Times found.
The Bakersfield company is co-owned by McCarthy’s mother-in-law and employs his father-in-law and sister-in-law, Wages said. McCarthy’s wife was a partner in Vortex in the early 1990s.
Vortex faced no competitive bids for most of the contracts because the Small Business Administration accepted Wages’ claim in 1998 that he is a Cherokee Indian. Under the SBA program, his company became eligible for federal contracts set aside for economically and socially disadvantaged members of minority groups, a boon to its business.
Wages says he is one-eighth Cherokee. An examination of government and tribal records by The Times and a leading Cherokee genealogist casts doubt on that claim, however. He is a member of a group called the Northern Cherokee Nation, which has no federal or state recognition as a legitimate tribe. It is considered a fraud by leaders of tribes that have federal recognition.
....In an interview at the Vortex office, Wages said he did nothing wrong and followed the SBA’s rules in getting Vortex certified for the minority contracting program.
He said he submitted a membership card from the Northern Cherokee Nation — then known as the Northern Cherokee Nation of Missouri and Arkansas — to qualify. He said he would be “very surprised” to learn he is not of Cherokee descent.
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Following The Times’ inquiries, the designation of Vortex as a Native American-owned company also was removed from the SBA’s public database. SBA officials declined to say who made the change or why, or to answer other questions.
The
SBA did not require membership in a recognized tribe until 2011, about 3 1/2 years after Wages left the program. But the regulations did require applicants, if asked by the agency, to “demonstrate that he or she has held himself or herself out, and is currently identified by others,” as Native American.
All three Cherokee tribes with federal recognition consider the Northern Cherokee group illegitimate.
“It’s very much a con,” said David Cornsilk, the Cherokee genealogist and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, the largest of the recognized Cherokee tribes.
At The Times’ request,
Cornsilk cross-checked Wages and his ancestors against census records and the membership rolls of the recognized Cherokee tribes. Neither Wages nor any of his known ancestors appear on the rolls, which date to the early 19th century, Cornsilk said.
A Times examination of census, birth, death, marriage and other available public records show
Wages’ ancestors were identified as white. He is listed as white on his birth certificate.
“It’s disheartening to see this,” Cornsilk said. Native Americans are “the poorest people in the United States,” and “the poverty gets worse” if there are abuses in the SBA program, he added.
Cherokee leaders said the Northern Cherokee group is one of many masquerading as bona fide tribes. Chuck Hoskin Jr., secretary of state for the Cherokee Nation, said “it is particularly disturbing” when minority set-aside contracts are granted to members of “a group that is posing as a tribe.”
....
Wages said he similarly has avoided discussing his Cherokee heritage with McCarthy or his sister, who has worked for several years for the state Republican Party. She declined to be interviewed.
Wages acknowledged he never took part in Native American culture growing up.
After learning The Times was pursuing this story, Wages said he considered having his DNA tested to prove his Cherokee heritage. He said he opted not to because the tests are unreliable for Native Americans.
Experts say commercial DNA tests can be less accurate for Native American ancestry than for other populations because the genetic data readily available for Native Americans can be more limited.
Wages said a cousin informed him in 1998 that his paternal great-grandmother was of Cherokee descent and they were eligible for membership in a group then called the Northern Cherokee Nation — or sometimes the Northern Cherokee Tribe — of Missouri and Arkansas.
In a subsequent email, Torchinsky said Wages’ paternal great-great grandparents were “100% Northern Cherokee.”
“As such, Mr. Wages is a legitimate and recognized member of the Northern Cherokee Nation of Arkansas and Missouri,” he said, misstating the former name of the group.
Wages said the tip from his cousin, who has since died, sparked the idea that would propel Vortex’s success. He said he realized he could be certified as a minority contractor if he joined the Northern Cherokee group.
“We saw it as an avenue to use,” Wages said.
He said he mailed his family tree to the Northern Cherokee group. It sent him a card stating he was one-eighth Cherokee, and he then used that card to apply to the SBA program for minority contractors — and was accepted, he said.
Wages said he believed the group was legally recognized by Missouri and California. Neither state has done so.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the SBA office in Fresno, which covers Bakersfield, said Wages’ application previously had been destroyed as part of the agency’s normal purging of older documents.
Based in Clinton, Mo., the Northern Cherokee group has registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt nonprofit.
In a telephone interview, the group’s chief, Kenn “Grey Elk” Descombes acknowledged that neither the federal government nor Missouri legally recognizes his organization as a tribe. But he said its members should qualify for minority contracting work.
Descombes, who works in trucking, said the group verifies a person’s Cherokee lineage through a process that is 90% based on family stories. He said the federally recognized Cherokee tribes unfairly criticize his group because they don’t want competition for minority set-aside contracts and other government benefits.
The Northern Cherokee group has asserted on its website and on identification cards that it secured recognition in Missouri through proclamations by two governors, and in a bill and resolutions by the state’s Legislature.However,
the governors’ proclamations and the legislative resolutions carried no legal force, said Nick Omland, spokesman for the Missouri secretary of state’s office. In 1985, a bill passed by the Missouri House of Representatives would have granted the group recognition. The state Senate never voted on the House bill, and it died without becoming law, Omland said. Later that year, then-
Gov. John Ashcroft vetoed another bill that would have recognized the group.
Torchinsky said in his email that Wages “reviewed a letter from the governor of Missouri at the time of his SBA application recognizing the Northern Cherokee Nation as a legitimate Native American tribe.” He did not provide a copy and did not respond to follow-up questions.
Wages also claimed membership in the Northern Cherokee organization to pursue contracts through the state of California that are designated for minority-owned businesses.
In 2009, he submitted an undated letter from the Northern Cherokee Nation of Missouri and Arkansas to the Department of Transportation in Sacramento to qualify Vortex for minority-owned status, according to department records officer Marcy Freer.
Based on the letter and an affidavit that Wages signed — under penalty of perjury — that said he had been “subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias, or have suffered the effects of discrimination, because of my identity” as a Native American, the state approved Vortex as a disadvantaged minority-owned business.
The letter includes a scan of the ID card that says Wages is one-eighth Cherokee. It bears an image that appears to replicate the state of Missouri’s seal and falsely claims the group is “officially recognize [sic] as a Cherokee nation by the sovereign state of Missouri” and cites the House bill without noting that the measure had died.
The California Department of Transportation certified Vortex as a disadvantaged, minority-owned business. Vortex renewed its certification each year until this August, when it didn’t submit the required filing, according to department spokesman Mark Dinger. That was after The Times began asking questions about Wages’ minority status.
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Wages said he had been “struggling” due to his Cherokee background, particularly in the early stages of his contracting career.Wages and his father, Harvey Wages, who joined him in the interview, said they believe they once were turned down for a bank loan because the lending officer suspected they were Native American.Harvey Wages said he also has an ID card from the Northern Cherokee group. He said his family had long thought they had Cherokee ancestors in Arkansas, particularly his grandmother, Delana Wages, who died in 1972.
He said she might have passed herself off as white to avoid discrimination. Census records list her and her parents as white.
Sean Nordwall, executive director of tribal operations and federal programs for the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, one of the three federally recognized tribes, said accounts of Native American ancestors posing as white are almost entirely mythical.
“How were we supposed to do that? Put on face paint?” Nordwall said.
In his email, Torchinsky said, “At least some Northern Cherokee documented themselves as white in order to protect their families and property from both stigma and confiscation.” He said The Times’ “assertions … about Mr. Wages and his family drip with the same kind of racism from which the Northern Cherokee and other Native Americans sought relief.”
The Times asked Wages and Torchinsky to authorize the Northern Cherokee group to release the material the organization used to approve his application for membership.
....McCarthy’s official biography makes no mention that Judy McCarthy, who is Wages’ birth sister, has Native American ancestors. As best can be determined, they never publicly claimed a Cherokee heritage.
....McCarthy said in his written response to The Times that he didn’t recall ever discussing in public his wife’s Native American background. “Since growing up I understood Judy’s family to have some Native American heritage — along with other nationalities as well,” he said.
In all, it won about $7.6 million in federal contracts — the vast majority as no-bid and other contracts reserved for minority-owned firms, federal contracting records show....
