Simmons Discusses Tribal Recognition
WASHINGTON, Feb. 07-Connecticut congressional leaders yesterday said the current federal Indian recognition process is badly in need of streamlining and improvement and the federal government must also aid states in dealing with the financial and legal pressures Indian casinos place on state governments.
“The Bureau of Indian Affairs is desperately in need of help,” said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4th, during a hearing of the House Government Reform’s Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs. “It lacks the staff and resources to conduct thorough reviews of applications for recognition,” said Shays, a member of the committee.
Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd, noted that nearly 200 tribes, including 10 in Connecticut, are currently waiting for the Department of Interior, of which BIA is a part, to rule on their recognition petitions. The applications can range from a single-page letter to 30,000 pages or longer.
Simmons and Shays said there is a severe backlog of recognition decisions that has forced many tribes to go to court to expedite the process.
In order to be recognized by the United States government, a tribe must submit an application proving the tribe meets seven criteria of authenticity.
The criteria include requirements that the tribe prove it has been a continuous American Indian entity since 1900, that each member is a direct descendant of the historical tribe, that that those petitioning for the tribe’s recognition are not members of another North American Indian tribe.
The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) issued a report last November for improvements to the BIA and its recognition process including producing tribes with a set of distinct guidelines of the criteria, expanding its staff to expedite its response time to applicants and maintaining a sense of overall consistency in its decisions.
Connecticut officials also said the federal government should do something about the burden that the casinos of recently recognized tribes places on states.
“Federal recognition policies are turning the ‘Constitution State’ into the ‘casino state,’ and we do not like it,” Simmons. “We want more control over the process. We want to close the loopholes. We want a level playing field.”
For example, Simmons said two existing Connecticut casinos – The Mohegan Sun and run by the Mohegan Tribe and the Resort Casino run by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe – have overburdened the state with dense traffic on rural roads and strained fire and emergency services.
“The bottom line is Connecticut is becoming the gambling center of the East and this has happened because of Indian gaming,” Shays said.
Simmons and Johnson have both introduced their own legislation to deal with all of these problems.
Simmons’ bill, co-sponsored by Johnson, Shays and Rep. James Maloney, D-5th, calls upon the government to require the BIA “to notify states whenever a tribe within their borders files for recognition.” The bill also asks the BIA to provide a state with a written report as to how it came to its decision on a tribe.
Simmons is also proposing the federal government allot approximately $18 million in grants for local governments to assist “impacted towns” as well to pay for any costs incurred by the state during the decision process.
Johnson’s bill, on the other hand, co-sponsored by Shays and Simmons, “allows the federal government to cover up to $500,000 in expenses incurred in land claims or tribal acknowledgement cases.”
North Stonington Mayor Nick Mullane attended the committee hearing but did not testify.
Published in The Waterbury Republican-American, in Waterbury, Connecticut.
