[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 106 (Thursday, August 4, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 4, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
   LITTLE TRAVERSE BAY BANDS OF ODAWA INDIANS AND THE LITTLE BAND OF 
                           OTTAWA INDIANS ACT

                                 ______


                               speech of

                          HON. BILL RICHARDSON

                             of new mexico

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, August 3, 1994

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (S. 1357) to 
     reaffirm and clarify the Federal relationships of the Little 
     Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians and the Little River Band 
     of Ottawa Indians as distinct federally recognized Indian 
     tribes, and for other purposes:

  Mr. RICHARDSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Chairman, I think we have debated this long enough. Let me 
summarize.
  First, this committee, our subcommittee, held three hearings, 
substantive hearings over the years, as part of the Natural Resources 
Committee, on this specific case.
  We have had experts--the inventor of the Federal acknowledgment 
process, Bud Shepard; Christine Grabowski, Ph.D.; Karen Cantrell, 
Ph.D.; and native American experts.
  They have all testified that the current process does not work.
  The gentleman from Wyoming and I have a bill that we will take up to 
streamline the process, to set deadlines, to give an independent 
commission a chance to fix this process that I think everybody 
acknowledges is not working.
  Mr. Kildee has been an expert on native American affairs, not in the 
Natural Resources Committee, but there is probably nobody in this 
Congress who knows more about Indian education.
  What we are talking about are tribes that are the political 
successors to the signatories of the 1836 Treaty of Washington and the 
1855 Treaty of Detroit.
  Now, John Collier, during the time of the Indian Reorganization Act, 
found that these were Indians, but there was not adequate funding to 
make them a tribe. Most of the members of these tribes and full-
blooded, they are half-blood Indians and have higher blood quantums 
that many tribes in the United States.
  So, Mr. Chairman, I think we should move ahead with this bill, with 
Mr. Upton's bill; we should pass them. The committee should support the 
efforts of the Natural Resources Committee in September where Mr. 
Thomas of Wyoming and I will move a bill to amend this process and then 
we will follow through with this new Federal acknowledgment process 
that the Congress is fixing.
  If you leave it up to the BIA to fix, it is never going to happen. 
The BIA, for whatever reason, has not done a good job in handling it. 
Those are the facts.
  This is not something that I am making up, this is something that for 
2 years as chairman of the subcommittee, we have had problems with the 
BIA on reorganization issues, on self-governance issues, on trust 
funds. They mismanage trust funds. Two billion dollars' worth of trust 
funds from native American tribes in royalties, documented, again, by 
my friend, Mr. Synar.
  They mismanaged it. We want to improve the management of the BIA. We 
are doing that with this new bill on acknowledgment that we are going 
to be doing in September, but in the meantime, should we leave some of 
these tribes to suffer the indignity of not being recognized as an 
Indian tribe by their own Government?

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