As shown below, the so-called Susquehannock tribe of Florida has its roots in fraud, selling tribal membership for as little as $10, and has a very long history of targeting international members who do not have access to information regarding what is and is not a legitimate Native American tribe. The founder, David Turnbull, had never substantiated his claims to Native American ancestry, and in all the extensive research our tribal genealogists have done, no one has ever found a single piece of evidence to suggest his claims are accurate. To our knowledge, none of David Turnbull’s family claim that ancestry today, and not a single person who has ever been involved in the Susquehannock tribe of Florida has ever met our enrollment criteria, which require an enrollee to show documented descendancy from our tribe, rather than a checkbook. Our identity cannot be purchased for any price, and under no circumstances would our traditional teachings support such behavior.

As we have received legal threats on behalf of this organization, we will now take this opportunity to thoroughly debunk their claims, highlight their disrespect of our culture, and implore individuals to avoid this organization at all costs. We welcome any legal proceedings they would like to pursue, as we know and can prove who we are, and we know they cannot defend their claims under scrutiny. We will begin with their late founder, David Turnbull, and we will follow through to their current leader, Ralph Oquendo, including their respective genealogical findings and complaints we have received about their financial manipulation and almost cult-like status, which takes advantages of unsuspecting individuals in Europe who do not realize that this organization is not a Native American tribe.

David Turnbull (“Chief Piercing Eyes Penn”)

David John Turnbull, founder, was born in 1930 to William Gerald “Gerry” Turnbull and Dorothy Badgely. Interestingly, while David and his parents are Caucasian, his first wife was of confirmed Native ancestry through the Mohawk and the Seneca people.

His obituary confirms the date and location of his birth. Notably, there is no such thing as a “Penn Indian tribe”, and these vague references to tribes that may or may not exist are a hallmark of both Turnbull and his successor. Many tribes had “Penn” treaties (treaties with William Penn or his descendants, who lead the colonization of Pennsylvania), but it is not a tribe in and of itself. Many who purport to have Native American ancestry will use these kinds of vague or unclear terms to prevent their audiences from verifying their false claims with any particular tribal enrollment office. David Turnbull’s father, William Gerald Turnbull, is Scottish and Irish by ancestry, and his mother Dorothy Badgely comes from a family with a very long history in the United States, of European origin. In every census, marriage, and military record going back to at least 1860 (the first year the census recorded Native American as a race) all of David Turnbull’s ancestors have been enumerated as white people of European origin.

In all of the tribe’s extensive research, both on Mr. Turnbull specifically and on any and all traces of Susquehannock survivors, we have found no evidence whatsoever of any Native American ancestry, least of all a tribe as small and close knit as our own. In fact, it is only after the founding of his organization that even David Turnbull himself refers to his own race as American Indian. The only available document which lists him as American Indian is his second marriage certificate, which he would have self-identified, and which occurred in 1992, after 60+ years of being identified as White, and after almost 200 years of his ancestors being clearly and consistently identified as White across all documents, including such things as draft cards, marriage records, and census documents. While the claim could be made that they were “hiding in plain sight” this does not track against other families of our tribe, who were enumerated as “Indian” in 1860 (the first year “Indian” was recorded as a race on the US census) and “Colored” prior to that. Even when a Conestoga Susquehannock family is enumerated as White in the census, those families eligible for enrollment are still documented descendants of documented Natives, and actively sought their rights by participating in Native American enrollment efforts, the 1872 joint resolution, or the 1941 Susquehannock Indian Reservation Bill. Historically documented Native American ancestry is the core of our enrollment policy. No such thing can be found for the Turnbull family.

If any evidence is ever made available to us to the contrary, we will amend this article immediately. It is not our goal to disparage actual Native people, but rather to draw an even clearer line in the sand as to why the behavior of this organization is inappropriate. If he and his followers were genuinely descendants of the Conestoga Susquehannock people, we would be happy to have them among us.

Ralph Oquendo (“Chief Dancing Thunder”)

Mr. Ralph Oquendo is found to be of Venezuelan and Puerto Rican ancestry, with no ancestral connections to any American Indian nation in the United States and no historical connection to the mainland United States, which did not control Puerto Rico as a territory until after 1898. According to his brother’s obituary and other documents, Ralph Oquendo Jr. is the son of Rafael Oquendo and Nellie Custodio. These documents confirm Ralph Oquendo’s identity and connect the dots to his mother’s birth in New York.

Rafael Oquendo, the father, is Venezuelan. Mr. Oqeundo almost certainly has ancestry from the Indigenous people there, and his father’s side going back at least 3 generations were all born in Venezuela. Why he would choose to falsely claim our heritage instead of embracing his own genuine Indigenous ancestry in South America is not clear. Ralph Oquendo’s mother is also not a complicated case. She was born in Brooklyn, NY to parents who were both born in Puerto Rico. Once again, Mr. Oquendo may have heritage from the Indigenous people there, but we would encourage him to reconnect with those tribes and not to falsely claim an association with our ancestors. Since Mr. Oquendo’s family are fairly recent immigrants/annexations to the United States, their family trees are very legible and easily verified as non-American Indian by ancestry by anyone with even elementary knowledge of genealogy.

Like his predecessor, David Turnbull, Ralph Oquendo has shown poor behavior, and has repeatedly misrepresented his identity both to gain access to sacred spaces, and to better sell ceremonies that are not congruent with our cultural practices, all the while falsely implying a relationship with our people. In order to avoid scrutiny in the US, where he has faced criticism, he now operates almost exclusively in the Netherlands, where information about legitimate tribes is hard to come by, and where interest in Indigenous religious practices has grown to the point that people pay substantial fees to participate in his ceremonies, which have been criticized by mental health professionals and our tribe alike.

Earlier, we mentioned how individuals will often use vague or undefined terms to describe their tribal affiliation in order to avoid scrutiny and gain access to Indigenous spaces. In the newspaper article above Oquendo claims to be an “leader of the Iroquois confederacy” while participating in activities and ceremonies with other genuine American Indians. He deceives even those who share their knowledge with him by claiming to be from the Iroquois Confederacy, a term which is both unusual and vague, but in this context would be taken to mean from one of the Haudenosaunee tribes, an inaccurate label that he deliberately used to gain access to a sacred space he would not otherwise have had access to. The Haudenosaunee do not claim him, nor does any other genuine tribe.

This occurred in Montana among the Plains tribes, where we have received emails about him, which is why the regalia and ceremonies he sells in Europe are from those tribes and not from actual Susquehannock or even Haudenosaunee people. There are over 570 distinct Native American nations, every one of which has very different practices, especially across regions. The tribes both he and his predecessor take their ceremonies and regalia from are almost 2,000 miles away from ours. It is, at best, spiritual false advertising to sell his work as “Susquehannock”, and it is highly disrespectful to our culture and legacy. He has gone so far as to claim that there are those of Susquehannock ancestry born in Europe. An unsubstantiated claim which we find highly offensive, and which further manipulates his followers into a false feeling of kinship. Once again, all built on the fundamental lie they have implied about their own cultural heritage. 

We cannot emphasize enough that his practices do not reflect our culture at all. We do not wear Plains regalia. We do not wear war bonnets, that style of headdress, nor that style beadwork. In all of his videos and featurettes, we have never once observed him singing our songs, practicing anything even close to what remains of our religious ceremonies, or even observing some of the most basic cultural hallmarks of our drumming or dancing. In fact, he consistently commits cultural faux pas’ that confirm to us even more clearly than his genealogy that he is not one of our people, nor was he ever trained by someone who was.

He, his daughter, Eva “Morning Star” Oquendo, and their organization make their living off of a stereotypical charade of Native American culture, claiming affiliations they cannot substantiate in order to lead the lost to pay exceptional fees to participate in phony ceremonies that do not at all reflect our people. They financially manipulate their followers and lead those who are seeking guidance down a path of financial exploitation and harm to Indigenous communities. We have received reports in which people are mislead about the total costs of his services, including hidden payments, and requirements to pay for additional retreats and lodges in order to receive goods/services that had already been paid for in full. He claims to help those with trauma find their true path, but only takes advantage of their desperation to create a false sense of kinship and creates for them a path built on lies. There is no good medicine or guidance that can possibly come from this behavior.

How many of his followers are aware that he is the first generation on his father’s side to be born in the United States, and the only the second generation on his mothers side to be born in the mainland, where every tribe he claims kinship with has been since time immemorial? How many of them are aware that he is not an enrolled member of any Native American tribe? How many of them believe they are dealing with real Conestoga-Susquehannock people, and are paying a substantial premium for spiritual knowledge based on a false implication? They have put their trust in this man based on ancestry claims that no one in his organization has ever been able to substantiate, and he has abused that trust by taking payments and continuing to masquerade as a member of our community. 

In Conclusion:

Finally, genuine Conestoga-Susquehannock spirituality and identity are not for sale. Very little remains of our traditional practices, and in our tribe, like many Indigenous peoples, spiritual knowledge is closed knowledge. It must be earned through your relationships in our community- not purchased from an outsider. Even if his offerings were accurate to our culture, it would be extremely disrespectful to share that information outside of our community, especially for monetary gain. We, as the documented descendants of the Conestoga-Susquehannock people, fundamentally believe it is inappropriate to sell sacred knowledge, especially when you are misleading people and dishonoring your true ancestors. 

Our people have been denied our identity for hundreds of years. We have higher rates of suicide, lower rates of education, and have been economically marginalized for generations. Some of our tribal members are the documented descendants of boarding school survivors, who were taken from their parents and abused at government schools. Some of our tribal members have ancestors who were forced to prove to the court system that they were Natives in order to avoid enslavement. In the case of at least one line, our ancestors had to petition the court just to travel outside of their community. Many of our tribal members live below the poverty line to this day, despite the high value of the land we were promised use of in perpetuity.

We face a daily battle for the survival of our tribe; Less than 100 years ago the state legislature of Pennsylvania passed a bill unopposed to establish a reservation for us and yet still every mainstream source today calls us extinct as a people. That is why it is so harmful to support organizations like his and to have our name associated with his fraudulent organization. It erases the real Conestoga-Susquehannock people and puts in people's mind instead the image of a snake oil salesman that is easily verified as a fraud.