[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 105 (Wednesday, August 3, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 3, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
   RESTORATION OF FEDERAL SERVICES TO THE POKAGON BANK OF POTAWATOMI 
                                INDIANS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mazzoli). Pursuant to House Resolution 
502 and rule XXIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of 
the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the 
Senate bill, S. 1066.

                              {time}  1416


                     in the committee of the whole

  Accordingly the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole 
House of the State of the Union for the consideration of the Senate 
bill (S. 1066) to restore Federal services to the Pokagon Band of 
Potawatomi Indians, with Mr. Menendez in the chair.
  The Clerk read the title of the Senate bill.
  The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered as having 
been read the first time.
  Under the rule, the gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. Richardson] will 
be recognized for 30 minutes, and the gentleman from Wyoming [Mr. 
Thomas] will be recognized for 30 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. Richardson].
  (Mr. RICHARDSON asked and was given permission to revise and extend 
his remarks.)
  Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, S. 1066 is sponsored by Senator Riegle 
from Michigan and is cosponsored by Senator Levin. This bill restores 
Federal services to the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians. The 
subcommittee held a hearing on this bill on September 17, 1993. The 
tribe submitted convincing evidence that they should be recognized and 
are the political successors to the signatories of several treaties 
between the Potawatomi Indians and the United States. Significantly, in 
the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, the Pokagon Band specifically negotiated 
the right to remain in Michigan. This small tribe of 1,500 has 
continued to exist as a distinct political community in Michigan and 
resides near their ancestral home in the southwestern part of the 
State. The companion bill sponsored by Mr. Upton was reported out of 
the Subcommittee on Native American Affairs November 8, 1993, by voice 
vote.
  This bill passed the Senate on June 10 of this year and was reported 
out of the Natural Resources Committee by voice vote on June 29 without 
amendment.
  Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this measure.

                              {time}  1420

  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. THOMAS of Wyoming. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I 
may consume.
  (Mr. THOMAS of Wyoming asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend his remarks.)
  Mr. THOMAS or Wyoming. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong 
opposition to S. 1066, a bill to extend Federal recognition to the 
Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians.
  Since my position on this legislation is well-known, and is similar 
to the other bill we consider today, let me briefly summarize my views 
here. Despite attempts to cloak this bill in restoration language this 
is not a restoration bill, and no amount of verbal gymnastics can turn 
it into one. This is recognition legislation pure and simple. S. 1066 
would extend Federal recognition to the Pokagon Indians, completely 
bypassing the BIA's Federal Acknowledgment Process [or FAP] through 
which all other nonrecognized must pass.
  I know that the band claims they are descended from a treaty 
signatory, and that that means they are recognized. But I, and the 
Federal courts in such cases as United States versus Washington, 
disagree. Descent from a treaty signatory in the early 1800's does not 
mean that the band has continued in an unaltered tribal state until 
today. To make that determination we have the BIA recognition process, 
and the Pokagon should have to go through it just like any other 
nonrecognized tribe.
  Similarly, I find the band's argument that they are entitled to 
legislative recognition because the FPA process is so ineffective to be 
completely unconvincing. Their recognition petition is under active 
consideration as we speak, and all indications are that they will 
receive a positive finding.
  Mr. Chairman, I am not saying that the Pokagon are not Indians; 
clearly they are. But we have a process in the BIA for making a 
determination as to whether they presently constitute a recognizable 
tribe. Bypassing that process in one or two cases is unfair to all the 
other groups which must complete it is to be recognized.
  The overwhelming majority of Indian tribes in this country opposes 
bills like S. 1066, as does the Department of the Interior. More than 
180 Members of this body voted against a similar recognition bill last 
October--the Lumbee recognition bill. I add my voice to that 
opposition.
  Having summarized my position, Mr. Chairman, let me now discuss in 
detail my opposition to this legislation. S. 1066 presents this 
Congress with one of the most difficult contemporary public policy 
issues in Indian Affairs: In which cases, if any, should we exercise 
our authority to extend Federal recognition to a group seeking formal 
acknowledgement as an Indian tribe outside the established 
administrative process? In the last two Congresses, we have been asked 
to consider acknowledgement of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians. 
So far, we have declined to exercise that authority in their regard. 
The proponents of this bill present no compelling justification why we 
should depart from that well-reasoned course now.
  So that the Members of this House can fully understand the magnitude 
of the issues presented by S. 1066, a brief background on the 
importance of Federal recognition is in order. The question of whether 
a Native American group constitutes an Indian tribe is one of immense 
significance in the field of Federal Indian law. Because Congress' 
power to legislate for the benefit of Indians is limited by the 
Constitution to Indian tribes, for most Federal purposes it is not 
enough that an individual simply be an Indian to receive the 
protections, services, and benefits offered to Indians; rather, the 
individual must also be a member of an Indian tribe. Though it might 
seem to the layperson that there is only one kind of Indian tribe, for 
purposes of American Indian law there are actually two--those that are 
recognized by the Federal Government and those that are not.
  ``Recognized'' is more than a simple adjective; it is a legal term of 
art. It means that the Government acknowledges as a matter of law that 
a particular Native American group is a tribe by conferring a specific 
legal status on that group, thus bringing it within Congress' 
legislative powers. This Federal recognition is no minor step. A 
formal, political act, it permanently establishes a government-to-
government relationship between the United States and the recognized 
tribe as domestic dependent nation, and imposes on the government a 
fiduciary trust relationship to the tribe and its members. 
Concomitantly, it institutionalizes the tribe's quasi-sovereign status, 
along with all the powers accompanying that status such as the power to 
tax, and to establish a separately judiciary. Finally, it imposes upon 
the Secretary of the Interior specific obligations to provide a panoply 
of benefits and services to the tribe and its members. In other words, 
unequivocal Federal recognition of tribal status is a prerequisite to 
receiving the services provided by the Department of the Interior's 
Bureau of Indian Affairs [BIA], and establishes tribal status for all 
Federal purposes.
  Prior to the 1930's, Federal recognition of tribes took many forms: 
Congressionally sanctioned treaties, court cases, administrative 
decisions, and Executive orders--and ``was essentially sporadic, or, at 
best * * * plagued with all sorts of pitfalls and a lack of a 
systematic approach * * *.'' Instead of a process based on a well-
reasoned set of standardized criteria, the granting of recognition was, 
by all accounts, nothing better than arbitrary and excessively 
political.

  In 1871, Congress provided that no tribe could thereafter be 
recognized as an independent sovereign entity with which the United 
States could conclude a treaty. Similarly, in 1919 Congress retired 
another method of recognizing an indigenous group as a tribe when it 
prohibited the President from creating reservations by executive order. 
Thus, by the early 1900's, this curtailment of available avenues of 
dealing with the tribes, coupled with the growing involvement of the 
BIA in managing the daily affairs of the tribes, meant that Congress 
had effectively delegated--either explicitly or implicitly--much of its 
authority over Indian matters to the BIA.
  Those agencies, however, continued to deal with the tribes in a 
somewhat desultory fashion. The early principles of administrative 
recognition were based on a Supreme Court decision which offered a 
rather vague guide to defining a tribe. In an effort to remedy this 
disorganization, in 1942 the Solicitor of the BIA, Felix Cohen, first 
proposed a workable set of criteria designed to provide a uniform 
framework for tribal recognition. The so-called Cohen Criteria 
considered both the tribal character of the native group and any 
previous Federal actions treating it as a tribe. However, application 
of the criteria proved to be no less haphazard than the process they 
replaced. Besides the Cohen criteria, the BIA relied on a patchwork 
mixture of court opinions, limited statutory guidance, treaty law, and 
evolving departmental policy and practice. Thus by 1975, faced with a 
steadily increasing number of groups seeking recognition, the BIA held 
in abeyance further acknowledgement decisions pending the development 
of regulations for a systematic and uniform procedure to recognize 
Indian tribes.
  About this same time the congressionally established American Indian 
Policy Review Commission [AIPRC] proposed the formation of a firm legal 
foundation for the establishment and recognition of tribal 
relationships with the United States, and the adoption of ``valid and 
consistent set of factors applied to every Indian tribal group * * *.'' 
Joining the chorus for standardization was the National Congress of 
American Indians, which called for a ``valid and consistent set of 
criteria applied to every group which petitions for recognition * * * 
based on ethnological, historical, legal, and political evidence.'' 
Senator James Abourezk, AIPRC's chairman, took the issue to the floor 
of the Senate, and introduced legislation calling for the establishment 
of an office in the BIA to handle recognition petitions in a uniform 
way.
  In 1978, the Interior Department, after exhaustive consultations with 
Indian country, established procedures to provide a uniform approach to 
the recognition process. Called the Federal Acknowledgment Process 
[FAP], the regulations set forth seven criteria a petitioning group 
must meet to be deemed a recognized tribe. Under the criteria, based in 
part on Cohen's model, for a group to be recognized as a tribe it must:

       (a) established that it has been identified from historical 
     times to the present on a substantially continuous basis as 
     ``American Indian'' or ``aboriginal;'' (b) establish that a 
     substantial portion of the group inhabits a specific area or 
     lives in a community viewed as * * * Indian and distinct from 
     other populations in the area, and that its members are 
     descendants of an Indian tribe which historically inhabited a 
     specific area; (c) furnish a statement of facts which 
     established that the group has maintained tribal political 
     influence or other authority over its members as an 
     autonomous entity throughout history until the present; (d) 
     furnish a copy of the group's present government document * * 
     * (e) furnish a list of all known members, and show that the 
     membership consists of individuals who have established 
     descendency from a tribe that existed historically or from 
     historical tribes that combined and functioned as a single 
     autonomous entity; (f) establish that the membership is 
     composed principally of persons who are not members of any 
     other North American Indian tribe; (g) establish that neither 
     the group nor its members are the subject of congressional 
     legislation that has expressly terminated or forbidden the 
     federal relationship.

The BIA FAP office is staffed by two teams of professionals including 
historians, genealogists, ethnologists, and anthropologists. These 
teams do exhaustive research on the petitions they receive, and examine 
such factors as Indian identity and community, as well as political and 
cultural cohesiveness. Once a petition is received it is reviewed for 
any obvious deficiencies. These are noted for the tribe, which is given 
the opportunity to supply additional material to supplement its 
petition. The petitions are then placed on active consideration in the 
order received.
  S. 1066 seeks to legislatively extend Federal recognition to a group 
of Indians in the State of Michigan, completely bypassing the 
established BIA FAP process. The bill's proponents posit two principal 
arguments for recognition: First, that the group was previously 
recognized by the Federal Government, and that their recognition has 
simply fallen into abeyance over the years and needs to be reaffirmed; 
and second, that the FAP process is arbitrary and unworkable and 
therefore they are justified in bypassing it. Neither arguments is 
persuasive.
  The proponents of S. 1066 posit that theirs is not a recognition bill 
at all; rather, they contend that it is reaffirmation legislation. They 
argue that there formally existed a government-to-government 
relationship between the Pokagon and the United States, but that the 
relationship--while continuing in law--has not continued in fact due to 
the actions, or inactions, of the BIA and the Federal Government. The 
Pokagon claim descent from signatories to a series of treaties between 
the United States and several Odawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomi bands 
during the early 1800's. Specifically, the band claims that it is the 
descendant of, and political successor to, signatories of the 1821 
Treaty of Chicago and the 1832 Treaty of Tippecanoe River. Therefore, 
they conclude, they are automatically entitled to have their status as 
a recognized group reaffirmed by the Federal Government.

  The Pokagon position, however, rests upon several fatally flawed 
stylobates. To begin with, I am aware of no precedent in Federal Indian 
law for a concept of congressional reaffirmation. Traditionally, there 
are only four statuses available to Indian tribes: Recognized, 
unrecognized, terminated, and restored. Clearly, the last two do not 
apply here; the Pokagon have never been the subject of congressional 
termination legislation, the logical prerequisite to both termination 
and restoration. Just as clearly, the Pokagon band is not now federally 
recognized; its members do not presently receive services from the BIA 
because of their status as Indians, and it does not appear on the 
Secretary's most recent list of recognized tribes dated October 1993. 
That leaves the band only one possible status: unrecognized.
  The band, however, argue that they were recognized in a series of 
treaties in the early 1800's. They contend that over the intervening 
years the Federal Government and BIA allowed that recognition to 
atrophy to the point of nonexistence. They conclude, therefore, that 
their recognized status was never terminated but lies dormant, only 
needing to be reawakened by congressional reaffirmation. They are 
wrong.
  The argument that Indian groups benefit from a presumption of 
continuing tribal existence--and thus Federal recognition--solely on 
the basis that their ancestors belonged to groups with which the United 
States signed treaties has been soundly rejected by the Federal courts. 
The reason for that rejection is fairly straight-forward: Just because 
a group existed as a federally-recognized Indian entity in the 1800's 
in no way guarantees that they have continued to exist in that same 
unaltered condition to the present day.
  Over the years, some Indian groups have broken up and blended into 
the dominant, non-Indian culture. Others have ceased to function as 
tribes. There are countless Indian groups extant today that cannot meet 
the Federal Government's criteria for recognition, notwithstanding the 
fact that they are descended from treaty signatories. The consummate 
example are the Miami of Indiana. The Miami are descended from a group 
that signed a series of treaties with the United States between 1795 
and 1867. Yet despite the existence of these treaties, the group was 
denied recognition by the BIA on August 17, 1992. The Miami were unable 
to satisfy the second and third FAP criteria; they could not establish 
that ``a substantial portion of the group inhabits a specific area or 
lives in a community viewed as * * * Indian and distinct from other 
populations in the area,'' and they could not show that they 
``maintained tribal political influence or other authority over its 
members as an autonomous entity throughout history until the present.''
  The Washington decision, and experience with groups such as the 
Miami, support the responsibility of the BIA to inquire de novo as to 
the maintenance of a group's tribal existence. Without that maintained, 
cohesive, existence there can be no Federal recognition.
  The proponents of S. 1066 take great pains to posit that the Pokagon 
meet all the criteria used by the BIA in determining tribal status. 
However, while the proponents' remarks on this bill, as well as the 
majority's report, focus extensively on their highly subjective 
judgments about whether the Pokagon people meet these criteria, I 
decline to engage in debate over this topic since it is largely 
irrelevant in terms of my position on this legislation. I do not argue 
that the Pokagon are not of Indian descent; moreover, I make no 
judgments on the question of their tribal status, or the adequacy of 
their recognition petition. Rather, I believe very strongly that 
neither the members of the Natural Resources Committee, nor of the full 
House, are in a position to make a rational and informed decision as to 
whether this group constitutes a federally recognizable tribe.
  True, as the chairman of the committee has previously pointed out, 
``[t]his is not about us being experts. It is about weighing the 
evidence that the experts have given us. That is our job on this and so 
many other subjects.'' However, we have heard from only one of the 
experts, a Dr. McClurken, and there is not one member of the committee, 
nor of our staffs, with the specialized educational background 
necessary to make an informed decision in this area. Properly done, the 
process of recognition requires an evaluation of complex and often 
ambiguous data and issues of ethnohistory, cultural anthropology, and 
genealogy. Not only do we lack that expertise, but there are precious 
few members of this committee with any more than the most superficial 
knowledge on the subject at all. Such a decision is replete with out-
of-the-ordinary complexities which require more than just a simple one-
page staff memo to understand fully. Needless to say, if those of us 
charged with the day-to-day oversight of Indian affairs do not have the 
necessary expertise--or even knowledge--in this area, how will the 
balance of our Members appropriately exercise those judgments as they 
will be called upon to do today?
  Aside from our lack of expertise, other considerations militate 
against removing the recognition process from the BIA in this case. 
Foremost among these in the fact that recognition should be based on 
established principles free from the eddies and currents of partisan 
politics and influence--this was the reason the FAP criteria were 
established in the first place. Congress is by nature, however, a 
highly partisan institution. A single, powerful Member in the majority 
party is perfectly capable of moving a recognition bill through this 
body with little reference to its actual merits. As one attorney has 
noted:

       Neither this Committee nor the Senate Committee has adopted 
     any self-policing criteria [to use] to judge the petitions. 
     It has to do with the nature of the arguments that are put 
     forward before [the Committee], the proponents of the 
     legislation bring their historians and anthropologists and 
     say absolutely this is a tribe. The member or sponsor of the 
     bill lobbies the members of the Committee on behalf of his 
     [petitioning] constituent and depending on whether he's 
     persuasive or not perhaps he is successful. Some professional 
     staff pointed out to me one day, what happens the day that 
     Dan Rostenkowski[, Chairman of the House Ways and Means 
     Committee,] goes to George Miller[, Chairman of the House 
     Natural Resources Committee,] and says the [Illini] tribe are 
     alive and living in downtown Chicago. That should not be the 
     way the federal recognition is granted. There has to be some 
     sort of criteria and I think that is the bottom line.

  Moreover, a bill introduced by a member of the party in control of 
the majority has a much better chance of passage than does one 
introduced by a minority Member.
  In other words, while we clearly have the power to recognize a tribe, 
that does not mean that the wisest use of that power is its exercise. 
In the absence of any discernible criteria by which we judge tribal 
status, and of any particularized background or knowledge, the Congress 
should leave the decision up to those best qualified to make it: the 
BIA.
  There is simply no precedent for congressional passage of a bill like 
S. 1066. Since 1978, the year the BIA promulgated the FAP regulations, 
Congress has approved 18 acts pertaining to recognition of tribal 
groups. None of these, however, can be characterized as a recognition 
bill such as S. 1066. More than half of the cited acts were bills 
restoring Federal recognition to groups that had once been officially 
recognized, but were terminated by legislation--a status to which the 
Pokagon cannot lay claim. The rest involved unique circumstances not 
applicable here.
  More than half the bills cited as legislative recognition legislation 
are actually restoration bills--the word ``restoration'' appears in the 
title of each act cited. There is a clear legal distinction between a 
recognition bill, which establishes the government-to-government 
relationship between the United States and a tribe for the very first 
time, and a restoration bill, which simply reinstates a relationship 
which once existed but was expressly terminated by statute or treaty. 
No amount of obfuscation can turn one into the other. These 10 bills, 
therefore, cannot possibly serve as precedent for the Pokagon case.
  Of the eight remaining acts, four were related to the recognition of 
tribes in the context of eastern land claims. In these bills, Congress 
extended recognition to several groups as part of settlements of the 
tribes' legal claims to land in Maine, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. 
Another act pertained to a tribe that had already been recognized as 
part of another tribal entity; one acknowledged a band as a subgroup of 
another recognized tribe; and one act involved a group that was 
aboriginally indigenous to Mexico and thus specifically excluded from 
the administrative regulations.
  This leaves only one act, the Texas Tiwa legislation. In 1968, 
Congress transferred responsibility over the Tiwa Tribe, now known as 
the Ysleta del Sur Puebo, and their lands to the State of Texas, 
thereby terminating any Federal relationship with the tribe. The act 
read, in pertinent part:

       Responsibility, if any, for the Tiwa Indians of Ysleta del 
     Sur is hereby transferred to the State of Texas. Nothing in 
     this Act shall make such tribe or its members eligible for 
     services performed by the United States for Indians because 
     of their status as Indians . . . and none of the statutes of 
     the United States which affect Indians because of their 
     status as Indians shall be applicable to [them].

  Congress later reversed itself, thereby restoring recognition to the 
Tiwa, when informed by the State that the latter could not legally hold 
tribal land in trust for the tribe.
  Despite previous attempts to characterize the Tiwa Act as recognition 
legislation, it is not; the Tiwa Act was restoration legislation, a 
status set forth in the very name of the act itself. As I have 
previously noted, recognition and restoration are two completely 
different legal concepts, and consequently the Tiwa Act [restoration] 
is not precedentially analogous to the Pokagon case [recognition]. 
Furthermore, no similar transfer of responsibility has ever taken place 
between the United States and Michigan with regard to the Pokagon, nor 
has the United States ever held land in trust for this group.
  In sum, the Pokagon are not automatically entitled to recognition 
simply because they are descended from treaty signatories. Given that 
fact, no amount of verbal obfuscation can transmute this bill into 
anything other than what it is: recognition legislation. As such, the 
Pokagon should pass through the same recognition process required of 
every other tribe in this country, and not exempted by this ill-
considered legislation for which there is no congressional precedent.
  The Pokagon next posit that they are justified in bypassing the FAP 
because the process is cumbersome and ineffective. The FAP has come 
under fire over the last few years. There are those who argue--
correctly in some instances--that the process takes longer to complete 
than is provided for in the agency's regulations, costs each group 
financial resources they do not have, and is subject to the whims of 
the BIA staff. In limited defense, I point out that because the FAP 
establishes a permanent government-to-government relationship with a 
tribe, the BIA is very cautious about its determinations. This kind of 
exhaustive research takes a lot of time, as does the process of 
preliminary review, notification to the tribe of deficiencies, and 
waiting for the tribe to respond to these deficiencies with a 
supplemental petition. In addition, the FAP teams have been 
historically underfunded by this Congress and there have never been 
more than two. Still, the process clearly has its faults.

  Regardless, the Pokagon are hardly in a position to complain about 
the process. First, their petition was only recently placed on active 
consideration: January 28, 1994. How can they complain about a process 
that they have not even participated in yet? Second, the BIA recently 
finalized a number of significant new regulations designed to address 
many of the concerns expressed about the process. So, not only are the 
Pokagon complaining about a process to which they have not yet given a 
chance to work, they are complaining about a process which no longer 
exists in the same form. Finally, all indications are that the BIA will 
issue a positive finding in the Pokagon's case. I am sure that the 
gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. Richardson] and Michigan [Mr. Upton] are 
aware of this, yet here we are.
  Furthermore, while I have always agreed that the FAP is in need of 
repair, it is not as reckless as the bill's proponents would have this 
House believe. For example, we have repeatedly heard Members state that 
there is a backlog of 120 cases waiting to be processed, and that only 
eight tribes have made it through the process since its inception. 
However, those numbers--oft-parroted as the premier example of why the 
FAP should be bypassed--are patently spurious and unsupported by the 
record.
  There were 40 petitions on hand when the FAP office organized in 
October, 1978, and 110 petitions or related inquiries have been filed 
since then for a total of 150 cases. Of these, 9 groups have been 
recognized; 13 have been denied recognition; 1 was determined to be 
part of a recognized tribe; 1 had its status confirmed by the Assistant 
Secretary for Indian Affairs; 1 had its status clarified by legislation 
at the BIA's request; 1 had its previously terminated recognition 
restored; 3 were legislatively acknowledged; 1 withdrew its petition 
and merged with another petitioner; and 7 require legislative action to 
permit processing. This means that a total of 37 cases, not 8 as others 
contend, have been resolved since 1978: 26 by the BIA, 4 by Congress, 1 
of its own accord, and 7 because they are precluded from petitioning.
  Of the 113 remaining cases, 26 are incomplete petitions and thus are 
not yet eligible for review. A full 74 cases are similarly unreviewable 
because the groups have submitted only letters of intent to petition 
informing the BIA that at some unspecified time in the future they will 
submit their actual petitions.
  That leaves us with 13 cases that could possibly be considered to be 
pending. In 3 of those, the BIA has already completed its review and 
announced its findings; those findings do not become final for 
regulatory purposes, however, until the close of a prescribed comment 
period. Of the remaining 10 cases, 6 are presently under active 
consideration. That leaves 4 cases--not 120, but 4--that are currently 
backed-up and awaiting review. In simpler terms, only 3 percent of the 
total number of cases filed with the BIA are pending BIA action. This 
is hardly an insuperable barrier justifying congressional redress.
  In any event, the logical solution to the problems posed by the FAP 
process is to correct them. Several bills have been introduced over the 
past few years to overhaul and streamline the process. Despite the 
chorus of Democrat complaints about the process, though, the majority 
has--until last month--never seriously pursued any of these bills in 
committee, seeming to prefer instead the introduction of a string of ad 
hoc recognition bills designed to circumvent the process entirely.
  Finally this May, the subcommittee chairman and I introduced H.R. 
4462, a bill to radically overhaul the FAP process by, inter alia, 
extracting it from the BIA entirely; a similar bill exists in the 
Senate. The chairman has stated on several occasions that he intends to 
pass this bill out of the House this session. In fact, we held a 
lengthy hearing on the legislation just last Friday. Given that we are 
on the verge of reforming the process and addressing those same 
concerns which motivate some tribes to seek legislative recognition, I 
think it makes little logical sense to deracinate a tribe therefrom.
  Bypassing the process not only ignores the problem, but is unfair to 
all of the recognized tribes. There exists a formal government-to-
government relationship between the recognized tribes and the United 
States. If Congress creates tribes at will, without meaningful uniform 
criteria or substantial corroborated evidence that the group is indeed 
a tribe, then we dilute and weaken that relationship. A sizable 
majority of tribes have objected to similar bills for just this reason. 
We have received resolutions that support the FAP process and a strict 
adherence to a systematic procedure from tribes in 12 States, from 
regional intertribal organizations representing all the tribes of the 
Pacific Northwest, Montana and Wyoming, the United South and Eastern 
Tribes--representing all the tribes from Maine to Florida and west to 
Louisiana--all of the 10 southwestern Pueblo tribes, and 25 of the 26 
tribes of Arizona.

  Passage of S. 1357 is also patently unfair to all of the other 
petitioning groups. If the process is so ineffectual that the Pokagon 
should be excused from it, then what of the other 100 or so groups 
presently in the process? If we decide to recognize the Pokagon in 
whole or in part because we deem the FAP process to be necrotic, does 
not equity require that we immediately put before the House bills to 
provide for the recognition of all these other groups too? It is sadly 
ironic that the Pokagon would have us consider their cause unique. 
Finally, what about those groups that have been denied recognition 
under this superfluous FAP process; do we now open our doors to them 
and allow them another bite of the recognition apple? It would be 
patently unfair to require some groups to be judged under the 
administrative standards and allow other groups to be judged in 
Congress under no discernible standards simply because they are able to 
avail themselves of an influential congressional sponsor.
  Aside from the obvious inequities to other native groups, I cannot 
help but consider the effects of a case in which we are wrong in our 
assessment of a group seeking legislative recognition. As I have 
repeatedly stressed, we are not equipped to make an informed decision 
in this area. It has been estimated by one authority that at least 15 
percent of groups currently seeking recognition are essentially bogus 
Indian groups, or Indian descendent recruitment organizations, composed 
of predominantly non-Indian persons. If we make a mistake, and 
recognize a group that should not have been accorded that status, then 
we sully the relationship with the tribes even further.
  Moreover, legislative acknowledgment of the Pokagon in the absence of 
any established recognition criteria raises serious constitutional 
questions. Despite our plenary power over Indians, Congress may not 
arbitrarily confer Federal recognition as an Indian tribe on any group 
claiming to be a tribe. If we act to recognize the Pokagon, or any 
other group, in the absence of any set guidelines, then it seems to us 
that we act ultra vires--outside the bounds of what is constitutionally 
permissible.
  In conclusion, while the recognition process is in need of repair, it 
is not as crippled as many would have us believe. There is only a 
backlog of at the most 4 petitions, not the 120 cases often cited. 
While I concede that the process is imperfect, the most rational 
solution is to fix it. Continually seeking to bypass it only ignores 
the problem and forces us to address it over and over again. In 
addition, it undermines the role of the BIA, is unfair to both the 
recognized and unrecognized tribes, and raises constitutional concerns.
  This committee must decide if it will continue to support the 
utilization of an equitable and standardized method of determining 
which Indian groups should be recognized by the Federal Government, or 
if it will return us to the pre-1978 days of piecemeal and arbitrary 
recognition through individual bills such as S. 1066. While it is 
clearly within our power to recognize Indian tribes, we have tried our 
hand at it before. Because we did it so badly and so politically, 
however, leaders from both parties on the committees of jurisdiction 
and from throughout Indian country insisted on a better way--the 
administrative FAP process of the BIA. Passage of bills like S. 1066 is 
contrary to the recommendations of the American Indian Policy Review 
Commission, opposed by the overwhelming majority of tribes, and 
contrary to logic. We have seen that passage by the House of the Lumbee 
recognition bill late last session has opened the floodgates of 
recognition legislation.
  S. 1066 can only serve to undermine further an already beleaguered 
recognition process, to encourage other groups to circumvent that 
process, and to place recognition in an arena where emotional 
arguments, influential sponsors, and the partisan nature of Congress 
replace merit and fact. For these reasons, I strongly oppose passage of 
S. 1066.
  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from 
Michigan [Mr. Upton], the author of this legislation.
  (Mr. UPTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. UPTON. Mr. Chairman, when I was a boy, there was a television 
series called ``Broken Arrow.'' It was about an Indian agent at the 
Apache Reservation and his friendship with the great chief, Cochise.
  If the same series were filmed toady, they would have to call it 
``Broken Promises,'' for no phrase better describes the sorry history 
of our relationships with the peoples who preceded us on this 
continent.
  In the 1950's, of course, we shook our heads in disapproval at the 
way many of these people were treated, safe in the knowledge that all 
this had happened half a century or more earlier. Surely there were no 
more broken promises.
  Well, here we stand at the threshold of a new century and guess what? 
The Indian Agents are still around, in the form of the Bureau of Indian 
Affairs--the beloved BIA--and, what's more, they are still making 
promises and they are still breaking them.
  Let me give three recent examples:
  First, the Potawatomis applied to the BIA for recognition in 1981. A 
decade later, in 1991, the BIA wrote to them and said, ``We will place 
the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians' petition for Federal 
acknowledgment on active consideration on November 18, 1991.''
  In the very next sentence, the BIA went on to say, ``The 
acknowledgment regulations at 25 CFR 83.9(f) require that a proposed 
finding be published within one year of the date the petition is placed 
on active consideration.''
  Again, this was in June 1991, 196 years after the Potawatomis signed 
their first treaty with the U.S. Government.
  Second, on January 28 of this year, the BIA wrote to the band and 
said, ``[We] will begin active consideration of the petition requesting 
Federal acknowledgment of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians as of 
January 28, 1994.''
  Almost 3 years after BIA said they would place the band on active 
consideration they got around to doing it. Coincidentally, this was 
days before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee begin active 
consideration of the bill before us today. Funny thing.
  Third, at the Senate hearings in February, BIA's witness told our 
colleagues, ``We anticipate completing the Pokagon petition by July 
1994.''
  July 1994 has come and gone and there is no sign anywhere that the 
BIA has made any progress on this petition.
  It is now 199 years since the Potawatomis signed that first treaty 
with the U.S. Government.
  Some of my colleagues believe, or say they believe, that this bill 
represents some kind of special treatment for this group of Indians, 
presumably at the expense of others. Their logic eludes me. There are 
545 tribes currently enjoying recognition; will cutting the pie a 546th 
time or a 547th time do some great injustice to tribes in other States 
or congressional districts? I doubt it.
  Some say we shouldn't ``go around'' the BIA's administrative process, 
but the Federal Acknowledgement Process, the FAP, is a broken arrow. In 
the words of my good friend from Wyoming. ``The FAP is in practice a 
dismal failure.''
  He and some of my other good friends on the Natural Resources 
Committee have introduced seven separate bills to fix the FAP, but they 
are moving about as fast as the BIA. In recent testimony on that 
legislation, one of the principal authors of the current FAP system 
said:

       The vague and subjective nature of the regulations has 
     directly resulted in need for massive amounts of time and 
     money to prepare and evaluate a petition. The current process 
     is impossibly slow. The acknowledgment regulations have been 
     in place for 16 years this coming October. During that 
     period, the BIA has resolved a total of 24 cases. That works 
     out statistically to be 1.3 cases per year. At that rate it 
     will take 110 years to complete the process or until the year 
     2078 AD. Of the 21 cases completed by the BIA, 18 were 
     completed during the first 10 years of the existence of the 
     acknowledgment staff. Only three cases have been completed in 
     the last six years. Of the nine groups that are in the 
     ``active'' stage of the process, one was in the process for 
     six years before a final determination was issued; one group 
     has been waiting for a proposed finding for three years and 
     another for two years despite the regulatory requirement that 
     such a decision be rendered within one year. One group, the 
     Snohomish have been enmeshed in the process for 13\1/2\ years 
     at this writing. Of the four groups waiting for the Bureau to 
     start working on their petition, one has been waiting for 11 
     years, two for six years and one for three years. The Samish 
     tribe of Washington State has been involved in the process 
     and subsequent litigation for 16 years.
       The times mentioned above are the time it takes the Bureau 
     to complete a petition and do not reflect the time that it 
     takes for the petitioner to find finances, locate and employ 
     professional researchers, to research and prepare an adequate 
     petition and then respond to requests for information from 
     the BIA. All of this will take the most efficient and 
     organized of the petitioners no less than three years. For 
     most groups it takes from four to six years. The Bureau's 
     estimate of eight months for a petitioner to complete a 
     petition is a ludicrous attempt to avoid the provisions of 
     the Paperwork Reduction Act.

  Mr. Chairman, legislation to fix the FAP is in no danger of passage 
soon. Even if it were enacted tomorrow, we know from experience that 
BIA would need years to promulgate the regulations. We think that 199 
years are enough.
  The gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Roemer] and I did not wake up one 
morning and say, ``Gee, let's introduce an Indian bill.'' We did so 
because we have finally lost patience in the BIA and its fatuous FAP 
process. We have lost patience with bureaucratic delay, useless 
redtape, and broken promises.
  This group of Americans has signed many agreements with the U.S. 
Government.
  More importantly, they have kept these agreements. They have paid 
their taxes, obeyed the laws, and served in the Armed Forces.
  They have kept the faith for two centuries.
  It is time we did the same.

                              {time}  1430

  Mr. Chairman, I include for the Record this editorial by the Herald 
Palladium from February 14, 1993; and a paper written by Casey 
Eyeleshymer in support of recognition:

                   Pokagons Deserve U.S. Recognition

       Native American tribes not receiving federal services have 
     had to petition for federal recognition under the 1934 Indian 
     Reorganization Act. Getting that federal recognition has 
     proved difficult for the Pokagon band of the Potawatomi 
     Indians in Southwest Michigan and northern Indiana.
       Their petition was denied for the first time in 1940, but 
     not because they didn't meet the requirements. The Department 
     of the Interior was out of money and had no more to spend on 
     programs for Indians. So an administrative decision was made 
     not to extend recognition to any tribes in Michigan's Lower 
     Peninsula.
       Today, more than a half of century later, the Potawatomi 
     still wait as their latest petition sits at the federal 
     Bureau of Indian Affairs.
       Recognition as an independent Indian nation will allow the 
     Pokagons to assume their rightful legal place in relationship 
     to the U.S. government.
       ``The Potawatomi, though rich in heritage, are really 
     slighted for not getting the same recognition from the 
     federal government as other Indian tribes from around the 
     country,'' says Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, who has joined 
     the Potawatomi in their fight for recognition. Federal 
     recognition also would make the Potawatomi eligible for 
     federal programs available to other American Indians for 
     housing, health care, education and job training.
       These programs could be used to provide better health care 
     and job opportunities for the Potawatomi, many of whom are 
     poor. Tribal officials hope the group can become more self-
     sufficient in time.
       While we would not like to see Potawatomi Indians or any 
     other group become overly dependent on government assistance, 
     any help that is given should be distributed equally and 
     fairly.
       It's not right that other Potawatomi bands, including the 
     Hannahville Indian Community in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, 
     receive services to which Potawatomi in Berrien, Cass, Van 
     Buren and Allegan counties are not entitied.
       Local Potawatomi tribal leaders started another drive for 
     federal recognition in 1981. The petition requires thousands 
     of hours of research, and each member must trace his or her 
     ancestry back to the treaty. The tribe itself must prove its 
     continuous presence in our area.
       That petition was completed and submitted to Washington in 
     November 1989. Boxes and boxes of information were sent. So 
     far, local tribal leaders have heard nothing. The petition 
     still is under review by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
       On Feb. 4, Reps, Upton and Tim Roemer, D-South Bend, 
     introduced a bill to give federal recognition by law to the 
     Pokagon band of the Potawatomi Indians. The legislation was 
     discussed last week by Upton at tribal headquarters in Cass 
     County's Silver Creek Township.
       We support this bill and hope it brings an end to the long 
     struggle by area Potawatomi for something by area Potawatomi 
     for something that is rightfully theirs.
       Federal recognition for the Pokagon band is long overdue.
                                  ____


                  The Potawatomi: Keepers Of The Fire

       ``The Indians survived our open intention of wiping them 
     out, and since the tide turned they have even weathered our 
     good intentions toward them, which can be much more 
     deadly.''--John Steinbeck, ``America and Americans''

       From long before the 1600's to the 19th century, 
     southwestern lower Michigan was dominated by a native 
     American people called the Potawatomi. They were a noteworthy 
     tribe which gave the world such great Indian chiefs as 
     Topinabee, Weesaw, Pokagon, Pontiac and many others. The 
     Potawatomi were a passive group by nature, but they became 
     involved in many wars with the more aggressive tribes who 
     surrounded their peaceful northern woodland home. The 
     neighboring Indian tribes and the civilization forced upon 
     them by the European settlers would one day break up the 
     woodland Indians including the Potawatomi. Although theirs 
     was a never-ending battle to prosper with not only their 
     pride, culture, heritage, land, and natural resources intact, 
     this fight was made more difficult by the encroachment of the 
     white man or ``Hairy face.'' This cultural battle little by 
     little whittled away at their pride and resistance forcing 
     them to bargain away some of their priceless possessions in 
     an attempt to survive as a united people. Although many 
     tribes can claim that European ``civilization'' caused them 
     to relocate and suffer hardship, the Potawatomi disbanded due 
     to the white man's attempts to move and civilize them.
       The Potawatomi were a people who believed in staying 
     together. They generally built villages along rivers such as 
     the St. Joseph or resided on the shores of the Great Lakes 
     such as Lake Michigan. During the winter months they lived in 
     buildings called long houses. The multi-family houses often 
     had many fireplaces in the house, normally one for each 
     family. In the summer they lived in teepees where they piled 
     up logs in the shape of an inverted cone and covered it with 
     animal skins or bark. There was a hole that could be opened 
     at the top to let out smoke or cool the air and provided 
     ventilation in the teepees in the hot humid days of summer. 
     (Clifton, p. 20)
       The Potawatomi, were a passive people; however, the 
     neighboring five nations--the Oneida, Cayuga, Mohawk, Seneca 
     and Onondaga were not quite so peace loving. The Iroquois 
     tribes wanted the land around ``Mitchigami'' or Big Water. 
     The Potawatomi, not wanting war, retreated from Mitchigami to 
     the Green Bay area around east central Wisconsin. They lived 
     there for many years in harmony with the other native tribes, 
     the Miami and Menominee. Still, the Iroquois nations 
     persisted on conquering the Potawatomi. They came all the way 
     from New York to meet the Green Bay area tribes. The Iroquois 
     were well equipped with firearms from having made an alliance 
     with the French army. Being hungry and tired from the long, 
     arduous journey the Iroquois were easily defeated by their 
     foes, the Potawatomi. The Iroquois, at any rate, did not 
     learn from their first attempt and attacked the Green Bay 
     area two more times. The Iroquois were defeated on both 
     attempts. The Potawatomi pursued and nearly destroyed their 
     enemies completely. (Clifton, p. 25)
       In the late 1660's the French established numerous trading 
     posts all throughout the northern midwest. The Indians took 
     advantage of this by selling their furs to the trappers and 
     traders. The French government gave the Indians supplies to 
     assist them, such as traps, food and firearms. During the 
     winter months the government loaned the Indians traps and 
     supplies which would be paid off the following spring. The 
     Indians were adopting the business practices and beginning to 
     think more on terms of the whiteman. This European trading 
     and loan system, I feel, was one of the turning points in 
     the corruption in the Indians world or rather the 
     ``unwhite'' Indian world as it introduced them to western 
     culture. The Indians saw the settlers as helpful and were 
     glad to have them there, but they would soon learn the 
     devastation the white man would bring in the years that 
     followed.
       The settlers and the Indians thought they had at least one 
     thing in common; peace. To bring about this peace the white 
     man conceived a number of treaties to document these 
     thoughts. The settlers took advantage of the naive trusting 
     personalities of the Potawatomi and produced several major 
     treaties. If the Potawatomi resisted in authorizing the 
     treaties, the white men would bribe the chiefs by promising 
     teachers, blacksmiths, whiskey and tobacco. (Clifton p. 64)
       After the French and Indian War of 1763, the British 
     government tried to keep the whiteman east of the Appalachian 
     Mountains and along the coast. Colonists routinely ignored 
     this law and many began a western migration. To the detriment 
     of the Indians, the British government lost the American 
     Revolutionary War in 1776, and the effort to contain the 
     colonists east of the mountains was no longer valid or 
     enforced by the British. The settlers began streaming across 
     the mountains in droves. (Reader's Digest; America's 
     Fascinating Indian Heritage. p. 105)


                            the act of 1803

       In 1803 Congress passed a new law stating that the Indians 
     must leave their land and resettle their reservations to the 
     west of the Mississippi River thus pushing them into Kansas 
     and neighboring states. While the Indians were angered, most 
     went without violent uprisings or strong protests.


                           the treaty of 1821

       The treaty of 1821, was signed in August in Chicago when 
     General Cass representing the United States met with Chiefs 
     Topenabee, Weesaw and 53 other Potawatomi leaders. The 
     Indians agreed to give them the Michigan counties of Van 
     Buren and parts of Berrien county which lie east and north of 
     the Saint Joseph River, with some exceptions. The total take 
     for the U.S. government was nine entire counties and parts of 
     five others, all in Southwest Michigan, and a strip ten miles 
     south of the Michigan-Indiana line. In turn, the U.S. would 
     give $5000 in cash each year to the Potawatomi tribe for a 
     period of twenty years. Also an additional $1000 was provided 
     to the tribe for a period of fifteen years to provide for a 
     farmer, blacksmith, and a school teacher. This may seem as if 
     it were a good deal in 1821 prices, but the U.S. government 
     took five million acres of the Indian's native land for about 
     five cents an acre, and then sold it to white settlers for a 
     tremendous profit. Not only were the ethics wrong for this 
     treaty, but the Potawatomi were deluged by people of marginal 
     relation, half breeds, and others who also wanted their share 
     of the money as well. They were consuming much of the 
     Indian's desperately needed funds.


                        the sauks and the foxes

       In 1804, the U.S. government met with representatives of 
     these two tribes and wanted to negotiate for their tribal 
     homelands. The representatives of the government gave the 
     Indians alcohol and got their agreement to a treaty to cede 
     all tribal lands east of the Mississippi River to the 
     government. Later it was learned that the ``chiefs'' were not 
     given the power to negotiate for their tribes, and were not 
     really chiefs at all, but the government representatives did 
     not care. (R. David Edwards, p. 266.) The two tribes were 
     allowed to stay on their land until 1829, when they were 
     forced to move west of the Mississippi. In 1832, about one 
     thousand tribesmen and women rallied around a leader by the 
     name of Black Hawk. Black Hawk felt that he could convince 
     the U.S. government to allow them to return to their 
     ancestral lands in Illinois. When he tried to enter Illinois 
     to convince white settlers to allow them to return, they were 
     met with a militia trying to expel them. Black Hawk now 
     realized that his cause was hopeless and tried to negotiate 
     an exit to the western bank of the river. White settlers 
     panicked and fired upon the Indians. The angry Black Hawk and 
     his followers later conducted raids on settler's farms. Over 
     two hundred settlers and about one half of Black Hawk's 
     warriors were killed in these fights. The news of Black 
     Hawk's failures quickly spread to other woodland Indians 
     including the Ojibwa, the Iowa, the Sioux, and the 
     Potawatomi. They knew that they could not stand up to the 
     government and with their passive nature would later submit 
     to these pressures. (Reader's Digest, America's Fascinating 
     Indian Heritage. p. 153.)


                           the treaty of 1833

       Though not actually a treaty this document just reinforced 
     the Act of 1803 by authorizing the use of force against the 
     Indians who refused to voluntarily relocate and pushed them 
     west to make sure all the Indians were relocated to make way 
     for white expansion into the new territory acquired in the 
     Louisiana Purchase. The Treaty of 1833 was considered one of 
     the darkest pages in American history since it forced native 
     American peoples to be forced from their ancestral homes to a 
     new land hundreds of miles away sometimes at the point of a 
     bayonet. (Wilbur M. Cunningham, page 116.)
       Over eighty odd years the Indians signed approximately 60 
     treaties. This is twice as many treaties than was made by any 
     other single tribe. Since Governor Lewis Cass knew the 
     Potawatomi well, many of these treaties were a direct result 
     of his familiarity with the tribe. Governor Cass had one 
     explanation:

       ``The Indians always arrive at our treaty grounds poor and 
     naked, they expect to receive some part of the consideration 
     at the moment to sign the treaty. This * * * furnishes the 
     only motive for their attendance, and much the most powerful 
     motive for their assent to the measures proposed to them.'' 
     (Clifton, p. 62.)

       The signing of the treaties seemed to be the end for some 
     Potawatomi. Around two thousand moved west to Kansas. Still 
     some others moved northeast to Canada. The lucky Catholic 
     Potawatomi remained with the help of the great Chief Leopold 
     Pokagon. with his mighty tongue and a sharp understanding of 
     the treaties, he convinced the U.S. to let his band of 
     Potawatomi remain in southwestern lower Michigan. Also 
     important in this decision was the fact that the government 
     could not forcibly move the Pokagon Tribe since they had 
     adopted European traditions of owning land and farming 
     peacefully and federal law prohibited removal of 
     ``civilized'' Indians. Added to this was the fact that they 
     did not fit what the white man thought of as savages.
       The early French missionaries taught Christian tenants to 
     Pokagon's father. Pokagon himself was baptized by Father 
     Frederick Reze in 1837. (Edmunds, p. 264) His Christianity 
     and the fact that he and his followers owned land allowed 
     them to be exempt from the relocation. The relocation of many 
     of the Potawatomi continued to splinter and weaken their 
     tribe. Many of the Midwestern tribesmen were collected by 
     Alexis Coquillard to be forcibly relocated to west of the 
     Mississippi. Some escaped to Canada where their ancestors 
     remain today, others ran away to Wisconsin, but later 
     submitted to the relocation since they were starving. Many 
     others also submitted and were moved to Missouri and Kansas. 
     Today, the Prairie Band is located in Kansas, The Citizen's 
     Band is located in Oklahoma. There are other settlements 
     along Lake Huron shoreline in Ontario as well the Huron 
     Band's reservation in Michigan (Clifton 1987).
       The Potawatomi were once a proud woodland Indian. The 
     encroachment of the whiteman and his ``civilization'' led 
     directly to their disintegration. The fact that some were 
     allowed to stay, some escaped to Canada, and others moved 
     more peacefully allowed the group to become splintered. While 
     many tribes stayed relatively intact, like the Cherokees and 
     the Sioux, the Potawatomi have faded. They are currently 
     trying to reinstate the tribal rights. Many of their rights 
     were apparently taken from them under questionable 
     circumstances. It also seems wrong that the government 
     negotiated with them when they were very naive and unfamiliar 
     with European ways.

  Mr. THOMAS of Wyoming. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I 
may consume.
  Mr. Chairman, I am a strange one to argue with the logic of my friend 
in terms of bureaucracy, because I could not agree with him more. I 
could not agree more that it does not work. However, when he talks 
about the eligibility and he talks about the need of this particular 
tribe, which I do not deny, what about the San Juan Southern Paiute 
Tribe? What about the Principal Creek Indian Nation? What about the Red 
Clay Intertribal Indian Band? What about 137 others? They have the very 
same argument that the gentleman does, the very same argument.
  Mr. Chairman, what do we say to them? Do we say, ``Well, we had some 
political friends here and we got it done, but you cannot do it''? That 
is what we are talking about. That is wrong. It is absolutely wrong.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut 
[Mr. Shays].
  Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I oppose this bill, the Pokagon Tribe 
recognition, as I did earlier for the Ottawas. The debate occurred 
basically on the prior bill, so I do not intend to speak very long, but 
just to reemphasize that there is a process that Congress established 
that we should abide by, and go through that process. The one 
difference between this bill and the other bill, admittedly, I have to 
say, is that this tribe has gone through the process where it was under 
active consideration, and the BIA has only 1 year left by their own 
regulations to come up with a verdict.
  The bottom line, Mr. Chairman, is that every time we recognize a 
tribe by bypassing the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and we decide, based 
on what limited knowledge we have to determine whether a group, a 
tribe, known by the State or local government should be a Federal 
tribe, we are simply making it more likely that those who do not 
deserve to be tribes will become tribes.
  What my concern is, the reason why I stand on the floor today, is 
that what is motivating too many tribal applications around this 
country is the hope that they can in fact enjoy gambling revenues, and 
what is motivating too many who are helping these tribes, other tribes, 
not this one, is the hope that they can reap part of the benefit of 
gambling.
  In my judgment, when we create a federally recognized tribe, we have 
created a sovereign nation-state within a nation. They do not have to 
abide by certain laws. They can forget OSHA, they can forget minimum 
wage, they can forget many things. It is not something we do lightly. 
They get automatic Federal aid.
  However, Mr. Chairman, what concerns me the very most of all is 
gambling is sweeping through this Nation, and they could not do it one 
way as quickly as they wanted, so now they see the opportunity to do it 
through the Indians, bypassing the process, find someone politically 
powerful enough to get a bill through, and then we end up with this 
Federal recognition.
  Mr. Chairman, like the past bill, I urge that we not support this 
one.
  Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from 
Indiana [Mr. Roemer].
  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Chairman, I would first like to thank the gentleman 
from New Mexico, Mr. Richardson, for his hard work and expertise on 
this issue, and thank the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Fred Upton, who 
joined with me in introducing this legislation 2 years ago.
  Mr. Chairman, this is a simple piece of legislation. As many of the 
Members walk in to ask what we are voting on, I would just say that 
there are three reasons to vote for the recognition of the Pokagon Band 
of the Potawatomi Indians: First of all, because Congress does, in 
fact, have a role; second, if we want to reinvent Government, if we 
want to make Government work better, we will vote ``yes''; third, 
because this is the right and the just thing to do for the dignity of 
this Indian tribe.
  Mr. Chairman, last week, when we talk about a congressional role, and 
with all due respect to the gentleman from Wyoming [Mr. Thomas], he has 
said Congress should not enter into this debate. He said a little bit 
earlier, ``You do not gather up votes to see if you can pass this 
legislation. It should go through a process, and it is unfair if we do 
this.''
  Mr. Chairman, I would argue, and argue adamantly, that the process we 
have set up is unfair and unworkable and unjust. If we do not do 
something about voting on this in our constitutional role, then we are 
not doing what we are sent here to do by our constituents.
  Mr. Chairman, just last week Members of Congress voted on the 
Suspension Calendar to approve the Auburn Indians for this recognition, 
and the Auburn Indians had been a terminated tribe from the 1950's. 
Last week, July 25, we voted on a similar occasion to recognize the 
Auburn Indians.
  Second, the recognition process, and the gentleman from New Mexico 
[Mr. Richardson] has spoken very eloquently to this, the recognition 
process is not only broken, it is unworkable. It is unworkable. It 
started in 1979. There have been 129 petitions. They have, out of 129 
petitions, resolved 25, and they have approved 9, 16 years later, 16 
years, and we are going to say, ``No, we do not have a role. We are 
going to let the bureaucracy work its will, and maybe in the year 2010 
we will get to the Pokagon Potawatomi Tribe.''
  Mr. Chairman, I think we need to vote on this we need to set the 
process in working order. Mr. Chairman, I hope that this problem is 
fixed through the committee process and through the system in the very 
near future, and hopefully these votes that we are casting are moving 
that process along.
  Finally, Mr. Chairman, this is the just and the right thing to do. We 
can say up here today that the bureaucrats will eventually do it, that 
someone will someday solve this problem, but we can give them an answer 
today with a ``yes'' vote.
  Mr. Chairman, we can either say we will continue to let the 
bureaucratic, unworkable redtape process continue to throw havoc into 
the system, or we will give the Pokagon Potawatomi Tribe an answer 
today with an affirmative vote. That is the right thing to do, it is 
the just thing to do, and it is the reinventing governmental action to 
take. I encourage my colleagues to vote ``yes.''
  Mr. THOMAS of Wyoming. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I 
may consume.
  Mr. Chairman, I just simply want to invite the gentleman to join with 
us in trying to reinvent. This is not reinventing, this is politically 
going around the system. How badly does the gentleman feel about the 
others? I do not hear him talking about any other tribes, just his. 
That is too bad.
  Mr. Chairman, we have a process here that needs to be resolved, and 
that is the whole issue.
  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. THOMAS of Wyoming. Certainly, I yield to the gentleman from 
Indiana.
  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Chairman, as the gentleman knows, he has worked on 
this process a few years now, the Micmac Indians, the Auburn Indians, 
and now the last vote we cast, this vote we cast, I think it is unfair 
not to include them.
  Mr. THOMAS of Wyoming. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, that simply 
is not accurate and the gentleman knows that. Those were land 
settlements. The Auburns were terminated by the Congress and they were 
reinstated. Those are totally different situations. It is unfair to say 
that those are the same. They simply are not. Would the gentleman like 
to comment on that?
  Mr. ROEMER. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Chairman, I 
would argue with the gentleman that it is unfair to let the BIA 
continue to say to Congress, ``We are not going to fix the system, we 
are going to take 16 years to work these problems out, therefore, do 
not vote on it, Congress.''
  Mr. THOMAS of Wyoming. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, we are 
working on it. We are trying to fix it, rather than go around it. I 
would probably do the same thing. If I were the gentleman, I would 
probably vote for it. I think it is wrong in structure, and that is why 
I oppose it.
  Mr. ROEMER. If the gentleman will yield further, I would say to the 
gentleman that I hope to work with him in fixing the process. That is 
certainly something we have to do as well.
  Mr. THOMAS of Wyoming. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my 
time.
  Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from 
American Samoa [Mr. Faleomavaega].
  (Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA asked and was given permission to revise and extend 
his remarks.)
  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Chairman, I do not want to sound repetitious 
while we debate the merits of this bill, but first of all I want to 
again commend the chairman of our Subcommittee on native American 
Affairs of the Committee on Natural Resources, the gentleman from New 
Mexico (Mr. Richardson). I want to also recognize and commend the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton), as the chief sponsor of this 
legislation, Senate bill 1066.
  Mr. Chairman, like Senate bill 1357 that we just passed a few minutes 
ago, I would restate again my concerns of how inadequate the current 
system is for recognition of American Indian tribes by the Federal 
Government.

                              {time}  1440

  Again, I submit the current administrative process simply does not 
work; and that's the reason why the languages within its constitutional 
rights and privileges, needs to deal with native American Indian tribes 
so they can be recognized by enactment of appropriate legislation.
  Mr. Chairman, while I respect any good friends, and colleagues from 
Wyoming and Connecticut for not supporting this bill--we have an honest 
disagreement on how to properly address the grievances and critical 
needs of native American Indians.
  Mr. Chairman, the correct administrative process for recognition of 
Indian tribes is not only a disgrace but typical of how we sometimes 
have had to deal with the needs of native Americans.
  Mr. Chairman let's talk about process again. I can account for at 
least four historical processes that native American Indians were 
subjected to by the Congress and the Federal Government.
  First, the initial process was to kill Indians; secondly, we then 
devised another process called assimilation; that is, make them all 
Americans--the fact is Indians were not even granted U.S. citizenship 
until 1924; then another process was promulgated by the Federal 
Government to terminate the Indian tribes, that is, no longer recognize 
them as native American Indians; now, we come to an administrative 
process that was developed by administrative regulations of the BIA.
  The problem, Mr. Chairman, is that the system doesn't work. Some 
tribes simply do not have the financial resources to pay experts and 
legal practitioners; some tribes complain of the fact that BIA 
bureaucrats themselves do not have capable experts to review historical 
and cultural knowledge of these tribes.
  Mr. Chairman, I recall one gentleman, a member of the Lumbee Indian 
Nation of North Carolina, who for 50 years has testified before 
Congress and the BIA on how Indian he was--still after 100 years, the 
Lumbee Nation is not federally recognized.
  Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support Senate bill 1066.
  Mr. THOMAS of Wyoming. Mr. Chairman, would the gentleman from New 
Mexico, chairman of the subcommittee, enter into a colloquy for just a 
second?
  Mr. RICHARDSON. I certainly will.
  Mr. THOMAS of Wyoming. As the gentleman will recall, in the past we 
sought to remedy the need for a membership list, and I had an 
amendment.
  Would the gentleman suggest that what we did last time would equally 
apply to this bill?
  Mr. RICHARDSON. Yes, the gentleman has my commitment that on this 
bill as well as on the previous bill, the gentleman's concern on the 
membership lists will be dealt with in the technical corrections bill 
that the gentleman and I will pass in September.
  Mr. THOMAS of Wyoming. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate that, and I thank 
the gentleman.
  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Montana [Mr. Williams], a very valuable member of the subcommittee who 
chaired the hearing on the Federal acknowledgment process, the most 
recent one that we had.
  Mr. WILLIAMS. Mr. Chairman, up in Montana we have, as I think most 
people recognize, a number of Indian reservations, Indians of great 
renown. One cannot spend significant amounts of time with them as I 
have done or be the senior member of the House committee on Indian 
affairs without recognizing that all the native Americans share, it 
seems to me, one attribute. I do not know if they are to be praised or 
faulted for this attribute, but it is clear that they all share it. It 
is called patience. They are extraordinarily patient people, patient in 
the face of broken promise after broken promise after broken promise. 
You see, native American people who live on America's Indian 
reservations have the worst housing conditions of any people in this 
country but they are patient, because we have told them it will get 
better, and so they have continued to be patient almost, in my 
judgment, to a fault.
  Native Americans living in their homeland have the lowest income 
levels of any people in America, but they have been told to be patient 
and they have been, to a fault. But their income levels do not rise.
  Adult native Americans have the lowest longevity of any people in 
this country. We tell them that will change if they will just be 
patient, and so patient they have been, and die early they do, 
including their children, who have the highest mortality rates of any 
children in this Nation, but we tell them to be patient and they are.
  We asked the Little Traverse Bay Band of the Odawa to be patient, and 
they were throughout their entire existence, until finally, carefully 
and cautiously they came to this Congress and said, ``We really would 
like to be recognized as a tribe, which we are. Please recognize us.'' 
So we have voted on the bill of the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. 
Kildee], and the House of Representatives has said, ``Yes, let's do 
that.''
  Now comes the Pokagon of the Potawatomis who first petitioned this 
Congress in 1861, and the Congress said, ``Be patient,'' and so they 
have been patient. They came back hoping not to disturb us, but they 
came back in 1930 and said, ``Remember us? We talked to you in 1861. 
You told us to be patient. We were. We'd like to be recognized.'' That 
was in 1930.
  They came back at the beginning of the last decade, in 1981, and 
said, ``What about us?'' We said, ``Be patient.'' And they have been.
  These people are too patient. This Congress is too slow to act. BIA 
is too slow to act. Today is the day for at least these 2 bands of 
these proud Indians. Let us recognize them. Let us tell them patience 
does not get it anymore. We are prepared to follow their lead. Please 
vote for this legislation.
  Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Miller], the distinguished chairman of the Committee on 
Natural Resources.
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding.
  Mr. Chairman, I want to commend our colleague, the chairman of the 
subcommittee and, for all of the work that they have put in on this, 
the gentleman from Montana [Mr. Williams] who just spoke, the gentleman 
from Indiana [Mr. Roemer], and the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Upton].
  Mr. Chairman, there is no other instance in which the Members of the 
Congress would suggest that their constituents should have to go back 
to a bureaucracy to render a decision that is as badly flawed as the 
Acknowledgement Process within the Department of the Interior. The 
gentleman from Wyoming [Mr. Thomas] knows that it is flawed and we have 
discussed this and we want to work it out and redesign it, do what we 
have to do to make it work. He does not think that we should recognize 
tribes until that is done. But we should not make what have become the 
problems of the bureaucracy the problems of this band of Indians. They 
have gone through this in good faith, in good effort year after year 
after year, and the process is now so badly flawed that it is unable to 
render them a decision on the merits, and that is when the Congress of 
the United States should step in. We get far more requests for 
recognition than we deal with in the committee. I would prefer to have 
an administrative process and I think one of the highest priorities of 
our committee in the next session is either to get rid of this process 
or to fix this process.
  But again that problem should not be visited upon this band or the 
Potawatomis. Why should they have to pay for the sins of the 
bureaucracy, for the failures of the bureaucracy? You would not do this 
to any of your constituents. You would not send them back into the IRS. 
You would not send them back into the EPA if the process was as unable 
to render a decision on the merits as this one is. That is the job of 
the Congress. We are to sort out these difficult issues. We try to 
rectify in some instances justice where it has been deprived. That is 
what this committee has brought to the floor, that is what the 
subcommittee has labored long and hard on. I would hope my colleagues 
on the floor would pass this legislation. It is long overdue and it is 
rightfully due.
  Mr. THOMAS of Wyoming. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the 
gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays].
  Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I was not going to speak until I heard the 
chairman of the committee speak on this issue, and I am very perplexed 
by his comments, that we would not ask.
  I have a tribe in my district, called the Golden Hill Paugossetts and 
they want to be recognized, and I am telling them there is a process to 
go through, and I am telling them that they have to prove that process, 
and if they abide by that process, that I believe they should be in 
fact an Indian tribe.

                              {time}  1450

  I am telling them I will not bypass the process. I am telling them to 
go through the BIA as the chairman says Members are not doing. The 
reason I am doing that is I do not have the capability to determine if 
in fact they are a tribe or not.
  What concerns me with this tribe is that when they met with me they 
said that they wanted this, they wanted me to make sure they were 
federally recognized, that they had 200 acres in the city of 
Bridgeport, and that they were given a sum of money, and that they were 
allowed to have gambling. When I said no and other Members in 
Connecticut said no, when we said no the tribe accused us of kind of 
untoward things like because they are a black Indian tribe, and there 
are black Indian tribes and white Indian tribes, because they were a 
black Indian tribe that there was something racist behind this.
  My problem, Mr. Chairman, is I am tired of blaming the BIA for what 
we established in law and asked them to develop in regulations. If we 
do not like the process, change the process, do not circumvent the 
process.
  My point to this full House is what I fear beyond anything I can say, 
there is nothing I fear more than the fact that we have allowed this 
process to be circumvented.
  I have a tribe in my district that wants to circumvent it like 
everyone else, and they want gambling, and they want to be a tribe, and 
because we have not gone forward, somehow we should be held 
accountable.
  Fix the process. Get a fair process, Mr. Chairman, but do not bypass 
the process.
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SHAYS. I am delighted to yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, the point the gentleman is 
making is that the tribe under discussion with him wants to be 
recognized, and the gentleman has told them to go through the process.
  Mr. SHAYS. The gentleman is correct.
  Mr. MILLER of California. That is fine. This band went through the 
process and simply were not treated fairly within the process. They 
have been denied that treatment.
  I have no problem. If you want to send people into this process, you 
can send people into this process, and it develops an awful lot of 
evidence, and an awful lot of good information. It just does not render 
a decision. So the gentleman ought also to withhold himself the ability 
as a Member of Congress representing those people to deliver justice 
when people are treated unjustly within the system.
  And we are right, we should fix the system, and we will fix the 
system. But we cannot use that for people who have languished in the 
system. The gentleman's tribe has not languished in the system for the 
length of time that these other tribes that we have selectively 
legislatively recognized. They have languished there in many instances 
for 70 years. The time has come when we must make that declaration. 
That is the difference.
  Mr. SHAYS. Reclaiming my time, I thank the chairman for making that 
point. I do not disagree that there are some who are having an 
extraordinarily difficult time, in the case of this tribe they are 1 
year from learning the decision, and in the case of the tribe earlier 
they have not gone through the process.
  But my biggest concern is with gambling out there, that this process 
will be circumvented by people with financial interests and an intent 
to cash in. And I caution this Congress more than I can ever say, stop 
bypassing the BIA process. Get a system that will work. It is our job, 
not the BIA's. Then let us follow that system.
  Mr. THOMAS of Wyoming. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I 
may consume.
  Mr. Chairman, I do not disagree with the gentleman from Montana. I 
have two tribes that I represent in Wyoming. Those tribes went through 
the process, by the way. I do not disagree with what we have said here.
  But the chairman of the committee has selectively said let us do this 
for this tribe. What about the other 130, should we not do it for them? 
Are they different? Do they not qualify somehow?
  It also says this tribe has been unsuccessful. That is not true. They 
are now being considered. There are only four tribes being considered 
and they are one of them. So it is a matter of process. And I 
understand your jurisdiction and that you are for that. But I think it 
is a mistake for us to go around a process and selectively treat tribes 
and leave the other tribes to be victims of the process. We need to 
change the process and we need to treat people equally under that 
process.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Chairman, let me just conclude. I think this has been a good 
debate. Let me say that both the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. 
Shays], and my good friend, the gentleman from Wyoming [Mr. Thomas], 
have made some good points about the process. We disagree on how to fix 
it. But I think we all agree that we need to move ahead and establish a 
process that the Congress stipulates should be followed by the BIA. The 
regulatory system that the BIA has established does not work.
  Let me say in this case with the Potawatomis, the BIA supports this 
bill. This tribe was in the process. It rose to the top of the list. As 
we talk about this famed BIA process, as soon as this bill started 
moving, all of a sudden it is now at the top of the list. The BIA 
supports the immediate recognition. They have reviewed their petition. 
They are a tribe. They are a tribe in the BIA's opinion. I do not think 
we need to go through the convincing evidence that this tribe has 
already submitted. They have submitted convincing evidence that they 
are the political successors to the signatories of several treaties 
between the Potawatomis and the United States.
  I am going to very briefly read some treaties between the United 
States and this tribe. The Treaty of Greenville, 1795; the Treaty of 
Grouseland, 1805; the Treaty of Spring Wells, 1815; the Treaty of the 
Rapids of the Miami of Lake Erie, 1817; the Treaty of St. Mary's, 1818; 
the Treaty of Chicago, 1821; the Treaty of the Mississinewa on the 
Wabash, 1826; the Treaty of St. Joseph, 1827; the Treaty of St. Joseph, 
1828; the Treaty of Tippecanoe River, 1832; and the Treaty of Chicago 
II, 1833.
  This tribe secured the rights to remain in Michigan, and I think as 
the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] mentioned, in 1935 they were 
acknowledged by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, ``You are Indians. 
However, we don't have any money, so you can't become an Indian 
tribe.''
  In the 1800's, as the gentleman from Montana [Mr. Williams] 
mentioned, they petitioned. Delay, broken promises, 1935, broken 
promises because they were told, ``Oh yes, you are Indians, but we 
cannot give you any money.''
  So here we sit today with a great Native American lineage. I dare one 
Member to say to these native Americans that they are not, because 
their lineage of being first Americans is probably stronger than many 
of us here in this Chamber if not everyone in this Chamber and in this 
country.

  So, Mr. Chairman, we are going to fix this process. There is no 
question it needs help. There is no question this committee is 
committed, as the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] said, to do 
that. We have legislation. We plan to move it in September. It sets up 
an independent commission. It sets time deadlines. It tells the BIA 
they have got to, based on historical record and not bureaucracy and 
redtape or excuses about acting or not acting for this reason, that 
they are to move. For this reason we should not hold hostage this 
deserving tribe and this deserving Member from Michigan, and the entire 
delegation of Michigan, and many other tribes that might not look at a 
new process that will work.
  Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the bill shall be considered 
under the 5-minute rule by sections, and each section shall be 
considered as read.
  The Clerk will designate section 1.
  The text of section 1 is as follows:

                                S. 1066

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. FINDINGS.

       The Congress finds the following:
       (1) The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians is the 
     descendant of, and political successor to, the signatories of 
     the Treaty of Greenville 1795 (7 Stat. 49); the Treaty of 
     Grouseland 1805 (7 Stat. 91); the Treaty of Spring Wells 1815 
     (7 Stat. 131); the Treaty of the Rapids of the Miami of Lake 
     Erie 1817 (7 Stat. 160); the Treaty of St. Mary's 1818 (7 
     Stat. 185); the Treaty of Chicago 1821 (7 Stat. 218); the 
     Treaty of the Mississinewa on the Wabash 1826 (7 Stat. 295); 
     the Treaty of St. Joseph 1827 (7 Stat. 305); the Treaty of 
     St. Joseph 1828 (7 Stat. 317); the Treaty of Tippecanoe River 
     1832 (7 Stat. 399); and the Treaty of Chicago 1833 (7 Stat. 
     431).
       (2) In the Treaty of Chicago 1833, the Pokagon Band of 
     Potawatomi Indians was the only band that negotiated a right 
     to remain in Michigan. The other Potawatomi bands 
     relinquished all lands in Michigan and were required to move 
     to Kansas or Iowa.
       (3) Two of the Potawatomi bands later returned to the Great 
     Lakes area, the Forest County Potawatomi of Wisconsin and the 
     Hannahville Indian Community of Michigan.
       (4) The Hannahville Indian Community of Michigan, the 
     Forest County Potawatomi Community of Wisconsin, the Prairie 
     Band of Potawatomi Indians of Kansas, and the Citizen Band 
     Potawatomi Indian Tribe of Oklahoma, whose members are also 
     descendants of the signatories to one or more of the 
     aforementioned treaties, have been recognized by the Federal 
     Government as Indian tribes eligible to receive services from 
     the Secretary of the Interior.
       (5) Beginning in 1935, the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi 
     Indians petitioned for reorganization and assistance pursuant 
     to the Act of June 18, 1934 (25 U.S.C. 461 et seq., commonly 
     referred to as the ``Indian Reorganization Act''). Because of 
     the financial condition of the Federal Government during the 
     Great Depression it relied upon the State of Michigan to 
     provide services to the Pokagon Band. Other Potawatomi bands, 
     including the Forest County Potawatomi and the Hannahville 
     Indian Community were provided services pursuant to the 
     Indian Reorganization Act.
       (6) Agents of the Federal Government in 1939 made an 
     administrative decision not to provide services or extend the 
     benefits of the Indian Reorganization Act or any Indian 
     tribes in Michigan's lower peninsula.
       (7) Tribes elsewhere, including the Hannahville Indian 
     Community in Michigan's upper peninsula received services 
     from the Federal Government and were extended the benefits of 
     the Indian Reorganization Act.
       (8) The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians consists of at 
     least 1,500 members who continue to reside close to their 
     ancestral homeland in the St. Joseph River Valley in 
     southwestern Michigan and northern Indiana.
       (9) In spite of the denial of the right to organize under 
     the Indian Reorganization Act, the Pokagon Band has continued 
     to carry out its governmental functions through a Business 
     Committee and Tribal Council from treaty times until today.
       (10) The United States Government, the government of the 
     State of Michigan, and local governments have had continuous 
     dealings with the recognized political leaders of the Bank 
     from 1795 until the present.

  The CHAIRMAN. Are there any amendments to section 1?
  If not, the Clerk will designate section 2. The text of section 2 is 
as follows:

     SEC. 2. FEDERAL RECOGNITION.

       Federal recognition of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi 
     Indians is hereby affirmed. Except as otherwise provided in 
     this Act, all Federal laws of general application to Indians 
     and Indian tribes, including the Act of June 18, 1934 (25 
     U.S.C. 461 et seq.; commonly referred to as the ``Indian 
     Reorganization Act''), shall apply with respect to the Band 
     and its members.

  The CHAIRMAN. Are there any amendments to section 2?
  If not, the Clerk will designate section 3. The text of section 3 is 
as follows:

     SEC. 3. SERVICES.

       Nothwithstanding any other provision of law, the Band and 
     its members shall be eligible, on and after the date of the 
     enactment of this Act, for all Federal services and benefits 
     furnished to federally recognized Indian tribes without 
     regard to the existence of a reservation for the Band or the 
     location of the residence of any member on or near an Indian 
     reservation.

  Mr. THOMAS of Wyoming. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the 
remainder of the bill be printed in the Record and open to amendment at 
any point.
  The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from 
Wyoming?
  There was no objection.
  The text of the remainder of the bill is as follows:

     SEC. 4. TRIBAL MEMBERSHIP.

       Not later than 18 months after the date of the enactment of 
     this Act, the Band shall submit to the Secretary membership 
     rolls consisting of all individuals eligible for membership 
     in such Band. The qualifications for inclusion on the 
     membership rolls of the Band shall be determined by the 
     membership clauses in the Band's governing documents, in 
     consultation with the Secretary. Upon completion of the 
     rolls, the Secretary shall immediately publish notice of such 
     in the Federal Register. The Bands shall ensure that such 
     rolls are maintained and kept current.

     SEC. 5. CONSTITUTION AND GOVERNING BODY.

       (a) Constitution.--
       (1) Adoption.--Not later than 24 months after the date of 
     the enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall conduct, by 
     secret ballot and in accordance with the provisions of 
     section 16 of the Act of June 18, 1934 (25 U.S.C. 476), an 
     election to adopt a constitution and bylaws for the Band.
       (2) Interim governing documents.--Until such time as a new 
     constitution is adopted under paragraph (1), the governing 
     documents in effect on the date of enactment of this Act 
     shall be the interim governing documents for the Band.
       (b) Officials.--
       (1) Election.--Not later than 6 months after the Band 
     adopts a constitution and bylaws pursuant to subsection (a), 
     the Secretary shall conduct elections by secret ballot for 
     the purpose of electing officials for the Band as provided in 
     the Band's constitution. The election shall be conducted 
     according to the procedures described in subsection (a), 
     except to the extent that such procedures conflict with the 
     Band's constitution.
       (2) Interim government.--Until such time as the Band elects 
     new officials pursuant to paragraph (1), the Band's governing 
     body shall be the governing body in place on the date of the 
     enactment of this Act, or any new governing body selected 
     under the election procedures specified in the interim 
     governing documents of the Band.

     SEC. 6. TRIBAL LANDS.

       The Band's tribal land shall consist of all real property, 
     including the land upon which the Tribal Hall is situated, 
     now or hereafter held by, or in trust for, the Band. The 
     Secretary shall acquire real property for the Band. Any such 
     real property shall be taken by the Secretary in the name of 
     the United States in trust for the benefit of the Band and 
     shall become part of the Band's reservation.

     SEC. 7. SERVICE AREA.

       The Band's service area shall consist of the Michigan 
     counties of Allegan, Berrien, Van Buren, and Cass and the 
     Indiana counties of La Porte, St. Joseph, Elkhart, Starke, 
     Marshall, and Kosciusko.

     SEC. 8. JURISDICTION.

       The Band shall have jurisdiction to the full extent allowed 
     by law over all lands taken into trust for the benefit of the 
     Band by the Secretary. The Band shall exercise jurisdiction 
     over all its members who reside within the service area in 
     matters pursuant to the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (25 
     U.S.C. 1901 et seq.), as if the members were residing upon a 
     reservation as defined in that Act.

     SEC. 9. DEFINITIONS.

       For purposes of this Act--
       (1) the term ``Band'' means the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi 
     Indians;
       (2) the term ``member'' means those individuals eligible 
     for enrollment in the Band pursuant to section 4; and
       (3) the term ``Secretary'' means the Secretary of the 
     Interior.

  The CHAIRMAN. Are there any amendments to the bill?
  If not, under the rule, the committee raises.

                              {time}  1500

  Accordingly the committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore (Mr. 
McNulty) having assumed the chair, Mr. Menendez, Chairman of the 
Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union, reported that 
that committee, having had under consideration the Senate bill (S. 
1066) to restore Federal services to the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi 
Indians, pursuant to House Resolution 502, he reported the Senate bill 
back to the House.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. McNulty). Under the rule, the previous 
question is ordered.
  The question is on the third reading of the Senate bill.
  The Senate bill was ordered to be read a third time, and was read the 
third time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the passage of the Senate 
bill.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the ayes appeared to have it.
  Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a 
quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not 
present.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Evidently a quorum is not present.
  The Sergeant at Arms will notify absent Members.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 248, 
nays 174, not voting 12, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 373]

                               YEAS--248

     Abercrombie
     Ackerman
     Allard
     Andrews (ME)
     Andrews (NJ)
     Andrews (TX)
     Applegate
     Bacchus (FL)
     Baesler
     Baker (LA)
     Barca
     Barcia
     Barlow
     Barrett (WI)
     Becerra
     Beilenson
     Berman
     Bevill
     Bishop
     Blackwell
     Bonior
     Borski
     Boucher
     Brewster
     Brooks
     Browder
     Brown (CA)
     Brown (FL)
     Brown (OH)
     Bryant
     Byrne
     Callahan
     Camp
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Chapman
     Clay
     Clayton
     Clement
     Clyburn
     Coleman
     Collins (IL)
     Collins (MI)
     Condit
     Conyers
     Coppersmith
     Costello
     Coyne
     Cramer
     Danner
     Darden
     de la Garza
     Dellums
     Derrick
     Deutsch
     Dicks
     Dingell
     Dixon
     Dooley
     Doolittle
     Durbin
     Edwards (CA)
     Ehlers
     Emerson
     Engel
     English
     Eshoo
     Evans
     Farr
     Fazio
     Fields (LA)
     Filner
     Flake
     Foglietta
     Ford (MI)
     Frank (MA)
     Franks (CT)
     Frost
     Furse
     Gejdenson
     Gephardt
     Geren
     Gibbons
     Gilchrest
     Gilman
     Glickman
     Gonzalez
     Green
     Gunderson
     Gutierrez
     Hall (OH)
     Hamburg
     Hamilton
     Harman
     Hastings
     Hayes
     Hefner
     Hilliard
     Hinchey
     Hoagland
     Hochbrueckner
     Hoekstra
     Holden
     Horn
     Hoyer
     Hunter
     Jacobs
     Jefferson
     Johnson (GA)
     Johnson (SD)
     Johnson, E. B.
     Johnston
     Kanjorski
     Kaptur
     Kennedy
     Kennelly
     Kildee
     Kleczka
     Klein
     Klink
     Knollenberg
     Kopetski
     Kreidler
     LaFalce
     Lambert
     Lancaster
     Lantos
     LaRocco
     Leach
     Lehman
     Levin
     Lewis (GA)
     Lipinski
     Long
     Lowey
     Maloney
     Mann
     Manton
     Margolies-Mezvinsky
     Markey
     Martinez
     Matsui
     Mazzoli
     McCloskey
     McCollum
     McDade
     McDermott
     McHale
     McKinney
     McMillan
     McNulty
     Meehan
     Meek
     Menendez
     Mfume
     Mica
     Miller (CA)
     Mineta
     Mink
     Moakley
     Mollohan
     Moran
     Morella
     Murphy
     Murtha
     Myers
     Nadler
     Neal (MA)
     Neal (NC)
     Oberstar
     Obey
     Olver
     Ortiz
     Owens
     Pallone
     Pastor
     Payne (NJ)
     Payne (VA)
     Pelosi
     Peterson (FL)
     Pickle
     Pombo
     Price (NC)
     Quillen
     Rahall
     Rangel
     Ravenel
     Reed
     Richardson
     Ridge
     Roemer
     Rose
     Rostenkowski
     Roybal-Allard
     Rush
     Sabo
     Sanders
     Sangmeister
     Sarpalius
     Sawyer
     Schenk
     Schroeder
     Schumer
     Scott
     Serrano
     Sharp
     Shepherd
     Shuster
     Skaggs
     Skelton
     Slaughter
     Smith (IA)
     Smith (MI)
     Smith (NJ)
     Spence
     Spratt
     Stark
     Stokes
     Strickland
     Studds
     Stupak
     Sundquist
     Swift
     Tejeda
     Thornton
     Thurman
     Torkildsen
     Torres
     Towns
     Traficant
     Tucker
     Unsoeld
     Upton
     Velazquez
     Vento
     Visclosky
     Volkmer
     Waters
     Watt
     Waxman
     Whitten
     Williams
     Wilson
     Wise
     Woolsey
     Wyden
     Wynn
     Yates

                               NAYS--174

     Archer
     Armey
     Bachus (AL)
     Baker (CA)
     Ballenger
     Barrett (NE)
     Bartlett
     Barton
     Bateman
     Bentley
     Bereuter
     Bilbray
     Bilirakis
     Bliley
     Blute
     Boehlert
     Boehner
     Bonilla
     Bunning
     Burton
     Buyer
     Calvert
     Canady
     Castle
     Clinger
     Coble
     Collins (GA)
     Combest
     Cooper
     Cox
     Crane
     Crapo
     Cunningham
     Deal
     DeLauro
     DeLay
     Diaz-Balart
     Dickey
     Dornan
     Dreier
     Duncan
     Dunn
     Everett
     Ewing
     Fawell
     Fields (TX)
     Fingerhut
     Fish
     Fowler
     Franks (NJ)
     Gallegly
     Gallo
     Gekas
     Gillmor
     Gingrich
     Goodlatte
     Goodling
     Gordon
     Goss
     Grams
     Grandy
     Greenwood
     Hall (TX)
     Hancock
     Hansen
     Hastert
     Hefley
     Herger
     Hobson
     Hoke
     Houghton
     Huffington
     Hughes
     Hutchinson
     Hutto
     Hyde
     Inglis
     Inhofe
     Inslee
     Istook
     Johnson (CT)
     Johnson, Sam
     Kasich
     Kim
     King
     Kingston
     Klug
     Kolbe
     Kyl
     Lazio
     Levy
     Lewis (CA)
     Lewis (FL)
     Lewis (KY)
     Lightfoot
     Linder
     Livingston
     Lloyd
     Lucas
     Manzullo
     McCandless
     McCrery
     McCurdy
     McHugh
     McInnis
     McKeon
     Meyers
     Michel
     Miller (FL)
     Minge
     Molinari
     Moorhead
     Nussle
     Orton
     Packard
     Parker
     Paxon
     Penny
     Peterson (MN)
     Petri
     Pickett
     Pomeroy
     Porter
     Portman
     Poshard
     Pryce (OH)
     Quinn
     Ramstad
     Regula
     Roberts
     Rogers
     Rohrabacher
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Roth
     Roukema
     Rowland
     Royce
     Santorum
     Saxton
     Schaefer
     Schiff
     Sensenbrenner
     Shaw
     Shays
     Sisisky
     Skeen
     Smith (OR)
     Smith (TX)
     Snowe
     Solomon
     Stearns
     Stenholm
     Stump
     Swett
     Synar
     Talent
     Tanner
     Tauzin
     Taylor (MS)
     Taylor (NC)
     Thomas (CA)
     Thomas (WY)
     Thompson
     Torricelli
     Valentine
     Vucanovich
     Walker
     Walsh
     Weldon
     Wolf
     Young (AK)
     Young (FL)
     Zeliff
     Zimmer

                             NOT VOTING--12

     Carr
     DeFazio
     Edwards (TX)
     Ford (TN)
     Laughlin
     Machtley
     Montgomery
     Oxley
     Reynolds
     Slattery
     Washington
     Wheat

                              {time}  1526

  Mr. YOUNG of Alaska changed his vote from ``yea'' to ``nay.''
  Messrs. McMILLAN, POMBO, and DOOLITTLE changed their vote from 
``nay'' to ``yea.''
  So the Senate bill was passed.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

                          ____________________