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Land into trust issue still alive in Congress |
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Monday, 16 November 2009 |
Amendment of Indian Reorganization Act could impact Narragansetts, Charlestown.
By ANDREW MARTIN
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Two congressional committees met last week to discuss bills that aim to, in their essence, reverse the Supreme Court decision in the Carcieri v. Salazar case.
The House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources met at 10 a.m. last Wednesday with a host of witnesses to discuss bills H.R. 3742 and H.R. 3697. They are sponsored by Rep. Dale Kildee (D-MI) and Rep. Thomas Cole (R-OK), respectively.
As stated in the committee’s website, the pieces of legislation look to: “Amend the Act of June 18, 1934, to reaffirm the authority of the Secretary of the Interior to take land into trust for Indian tribes.”
In other words, the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934 would apply to all tribes and not only those recognized when the IRA was enacted.
And, as one federal official said during the hearing, these bills would ensure that Congress would not create two classes of tribes - those able to take land into trust and those unable to do so.
“These bills would clarify Congress’s policy and allow all tribes to avail themselves of the Secretary [of the Interior’s] trust acquisition authority,” Donald Laverdure said. He is deputy assistant secretary of
Indian Affairs in the federal Department of the Interior.
Laverdure also made it clear that his department was, and continues to be, disappointed in the outcome of Carcieri v. Salazar.
Agreeing with Laverdure were several Indian Tribe leaders from Washington state and Michigan.
But there was a dissenting opinion from a nearby state official. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said that reversing, or “fixing,” the Carcieri decision “threatens to create new injustices against local communities and states.”
Blumenthal then explained those injustices. They included trust lands being outside land-use regulation, which could potentially burden communities with increased traffic and pollution. Also, he said trust land
results in a significant loss of tax revenue since the property would be outside state and local taxation.
Although he was not completely against the legislation, Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch urged lawmakers to “proceed with caution” on amending the IRA. Lynch submitted testimony regarding the bills to the Natural Resources Committee last week.
Locally, these bills would have a great impact in Charlestown. If the bills pass, the Narragansett Indian Tribe would be federally recognized and, as a result, the tribe would be able to take its 31-acre parcel into trust.
The tribe would then have a number of options in regards to how it chooses to use that parcel. The fear across the community and state is the threat of a casino, though tribal officials have denied repeatedly that they are not interested in going that route.
The other congressional board meeting on this topic was the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. The purpose was to hold an “oversight hearing on fixing the federal acknowledge process” of whether or not a tribe is recognized by the federal government.
Two panels of witnesses spoke on the subject, with testimony coming from several experts such as George Skibine, acting principal deputy assistant secretary for Indian Affairs, and Frank Ettawageshik, chairman of a national federal acknowledgment task force for tribes.
Ettawageshik, also of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, explained that it is widely known that this process is “badly broken and needs reform.”
During his testimony, Skibine told the committee he and the Department of the Interior Secretary are interested in working with Congress to improve and streamline the federal acknowledgment process.
“Our goal is to continue to improve the process so that all groups seeking acknowledgment can be processed fairly, systematically, and completed within a set time frame,” Skibine said. This goal, he added, is in line with others that include ensuring the United States recognizes a tribe with consistent legal, factual, and historical basis. |
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