Gabriel “Gabe” Galanda was honored by Indian Country Today Media Network, as one of “50 Faces of Indian Country.”
Gabe was recognized as one of 50 Native people who epitomize “the day-to-day struggle for [Indian Country] to regain what was taken . . . and that it’s possible to achieve [our] dreams without sacrificing our strength and beauty.”
Gabe was dubbed “The Crusader” by ICTMN, in honor of his advocacy to “get Native inmates the right to worship in traditional ways” and“’find a cure’ to the disenrollment epidemic.”
In 2011, Gabe caused the Washington State Department of Corrections to reform its religious practices policies to accommodate traditional Indian worship. In 2012 Gabe was named a Difference Maker Award by the American Bar Association, and in 2014 the Washington State Bar Association bestowed him the Excellence in Diversity Award, for his Indian prisoner religious rights advocacy.
As ICTMN observed, Gabe has also emerged nationally “as one of the most outspoken critics of the practice” of disenrollment, the “roots of [which] lie in colonialism, not indigeneity.” In 2015, he co-authored a 92-page law review article, “Curing the Disenrollment Epidemic: In Search of a Remedy.”
Gabe has defended nearly 600 Indians against disenrollment, including having kept the Nooksack 306 enrolled since 2013; obtained a “watershed decision” for 66 Grand Ronde Chief Tumulth Descendants; and protected 132 Elem Pomo Indians from being exiled, which would empty their Reservation.
Gabe, an enrolled citizen of the Round Valley Indian Tribes of California, is a founding Partner of Galanda Broadman, PLLC, an American Indian-owned law firm with office in Seattle and Yakima, Washington and Bend, Oregon, dedicated to advancing tribal legal rights, Indian civil rights, and Indian business interests.
