SAN PASQUAL INDIAN RESERVATION, Calif. — When wildfires tore through here last month, 94-year-old Frances Jones escaped minutes before flames engulfed her home. Within days, San Pasqual's tribal council had cut her a check to help pay for food and clothing.
Jones' neighbors, Lorraine and Natalia Orosco, lost their childhood home and two trailer-houses. But when they asked tribal officials for help, they were told they didn't qualify for the aid Jones received. The reason: Even though their late father was a tribal member and the young women were reared on the reservation, they do not officially belong to the tribe.
The sisters are among the reservation's scores of "lineals" -- descendants of tribal members who do not qualify for membership because they do not have enough San Pasqual blood.
After blackening San Pasqual's land, the Paradise fire has deepened a cultural chasm that has run through the reservation for years. On one side stand lineals, clamoring for a voice in the tribe's future and demanding to be accepted as equals. On the other side are most of the tribe's members, who insist that the reservation's limited resources -- coming mostly from a new casino -- should be spent on those with the purest blood.
Of the roughly 70 homes burned on the reservation, about 20 belonged to lineals and 30 to tribe members. The remainder was rental housing.
All tribe members who were evacuated during the fires -- whether they lived on the reservation or not -- received at least $1,000 from the tribe to cover emergency expenses. Tribe members were also entitled to another $1,000 from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. Lineals were ineligible for either grant, though the tribe offered to cover temporary lodging for some.
Although all of those who lost homes are eligible for aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the striking difference in how the tribe treated residents has left some bitter.
"We feel like second-class citizens," said Lorraine Orosco.
It was not always this way.
The tribe inhabited the mountain areas of northern San Diego County until the U.S.-Mexican War in the 1840s, when the members scattered and largely assimilated into nearby towns. In the 1960s a new generation attempted to resurrect the tribe. Jones and others gathered for meetings around a large oak tree on the inhospitable, 1,200-acre reservation designated by the federal government. The members formulated plans to move onto the land and accepted a constitution that, in part, defined a member as someone with at least an eighth of San Pasqual blood.
