[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 175 (Tuesday, November 7, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H11784-H11785]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 GOVERNMENT ATTACKS ON AMERICAN INDIANS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from American Samoa [Mr. Faleomavaega] is 
recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, on January 25, 1995, I and my good 
friends, Mr. George Miller, Mr. Bill Richardson, Mr. Pat Williams, and 
Mr. Peter DeFazio, introduced the Indian Federal Recognition 
Administrative Procedures Act of 1995. H.R. 671, is an effort to create 
an efficient and fair procedure for extending Federal recognition to 
Indian tribes. In my remarks at that time, I stated that introduction 
of the legislation was only the starting point for further discussions 
and debate and that I looked forward to the advice and input of 
colleagues, the agency, and tribes. I hope to continue to work with 
Chairman McCain Cochairman Inouye, and the members of the Senate 
Committee on Indian Affairs to craft a bill which provides a fair and 
timely procedure to provide Federal recognition to Indian tribes.
  Mr. Speaker, the current test is not fair, nor is it administered in 
a timely manner. I have recounted from this floor many times the 
process we have put Indian tribes through. The current recognition 
process requires tribes to provide written records of tribal 
governments during periods when the U.S. Government disbanded the 
tribes and told them to assimilate into the larger society. Decades 
after we told them to stop keeping records and assimilate, now we tell 
them they are not Indian because they do not have written proof of 
tribal activities during these periods. The poor Lumbee Indians of 
North Carolina have been seeking recognition for over 100 years, and 
even though they have been Indians all that time and much longer before 
that, the Bureau of Indian Affairs thinks the current system of 
recognizing tribes is just fine as it is.
  Mr. Speaker, the current system is terrible, and I intend to fix this 
deplorable mess. I am making every effort to see this bill become law 
during the 104th Congress so we can replace the current process created 
by administrative regulation with a system approved by elected 
officials.
  Mr. Speaker, I also feel compelled to comment on how repugnant I find 
the process of having to go through any form of recognition process. 
The racist 50-percent blood test, the measurement of teeth and head 
shape is demeaning and meaningless. We need to move forward, and while 
we should have done so years ago, it does not mean we should not take 
action now.
  Mr. Speaker, since January a number of occurrences have provided me 
with some of the discussion and input that I was looking for on the 
acknowledgement process. The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs held a 
hearing in July on S. 479, a bill very similar to H.R. 671. 
Nonrecognized and recognized tribes, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, 
Indian organizations, and experts submitted testimony on the bill and 
the existing recognition process. In addition, the White House has held 
a number of meetings with nonrecognized tribes so that they could 
discuss recognition with administration officials. As a direct result 
of those meetings, the Department of the Interior set up a task force 
of administration people and representatives of nonrecognized tribes to 
assist the Department in formulating a position on whether the 
recognition criteria could be improved. Further, only this month an 
administrative law judge, in the first challenge to a decision against 
recognition, has essentially reversed the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In 
doing so, the judge was critical of the Bureau's methodology and 
interpretation of their own criteria. The judge's views of the existing 
criteria can be considered a suggestion that the criteria could be 
improved.

  Mr. Speaker, I have reviewed all of those developments and taken into 
account the views of the interested parties. As a result, I have 
modified H.R. 671 to improve both the procedures and the criteria that 
were in the original bill. The modifications will advance the goals of 
recognition reform legislation--providing a more objective, consistent, 
and streamlined standard for acknowledging groups as federally 
recognized Indian tribes.
  Mr. Speaker, I have made the following changes to H.R. 671. The 
procedures under which the independent commission would hear and decide 
petitions for recognition have been slightly modified. Provisions that 
would have excluded groups from petitioning for recognition or 
continuing to seek recognition have been removed. Most importantly, the 
criteria for recognition have been improved. The improvements take into 
account the almost unanimous view of the experts and affected tribes 
that the criteria used in the existing administrative process, which 
were carried into H.R. 671, do not really test whether a group should 
be recognized or not and that it is only through these changes that we 
will enact a process that is both fair and able to resolve the 
recognition issue in the time frame anticipated.
  Mr. Speaker, the changes I have outlined this afternoon and which 
will be incorporated into legislation I am introducing today are 
important because there are 545 Indian nations within our country, plus 
scores of tribes seeking recognition, all of which will be affected in 
one way or another by this legislation.
  Mr. Speaker, I also want to take a few minutes to speak out in 
opposition to the proposed tax on Indian gaming.
  The history of how this Nation has treated the American Indians is 
deplorable. We have taken their lands again and again, and we have 
negotiated treaties and reneged those same treaties again and again. I 
thought those times had passed, but even as I speak, the assault 
continues.

  Last month the House adopted a tax on Indian gaming as part of its 
budget reconciliation bill. For the first time 

[[Page H 11785]]
the Congress is considering taxing other governmental entities on 
income which is used for governmental purposes such as building roads, 
hospitals, medical clinics, and providing education to children. My 
analysis of why this tax of up to 35 percent of net revenue is being 
considered only on Indian tribes, and not on the gaming activities of 
State and local governments, lead me to the conclusion that our new 
majority believes they can use the Indians yet again as a political 
punching bag to beat up on and take advantage of. Why is it that the 
party which comes to this well everyday to decry the ``tax and spend 
Democrats'' is so anxious to raise a new tax, but only on American 
Indians?
  I was not surprised when the Washington Post published an editorial 
in opposition to this proposed tax, but today even the Washington Times 
editorialized against the idea. When this action is considered in the 
context of the 11-percent cut in funding for the Bureau of Indian 
Affairs contained in the Interior appropriations conference report we 
will consider later today, it is clear that the assault on America's 
favorite whipping boy has resumed. This action is especially hard to 
accept when money which could be used to provide educational 
opportunities to the poor, the same problem our Speaker spoke so 
forcefully in favor of last week, will be used to give tax breaks to 
those making up to $200,000 per year.
  Mr. Speaker, this is not the course we should be taking, and I urge 
my colleagues to vote against these attacks on the American Indians.
  Mr. Speaker, I also urge my colleagues to provide a better procedural 
format so that Indians could be recognized. Mr. Speaker, we have 545, 
to my last reading, sovereign Indian tribes as part of our Nation's 
heritage. Yet, after these processes over the years, our first policy 
was let us kill off the Indians, then let us assimilate and make them 
part of the American society; and then after that, no, let us terminate 
them. Now, Mr. Speaker, we are going through the process of let us 
recognize them again.
  Mr. Speaker, it is time we make these changes to better the needs of 
the first Americans.
  Mr. Speaker, I submit the following editorial for the Record:

               [From the Washington Times, Nov. 7, 1995]

                           Taxing the Tribes

       Given all the hype about gambling on Indian reservations, 
     it's Foxwoods--the wildly successful casino complex run by 
     the Pequot tribe in Connecticut--that probably comes to mind 
     when the subject comes up.
       But Foxwoods is not representative of all tribal gaming 
     efforts. Most reservations are in remote locations, far from 
     the sort of densely populated cities that provide customers 
     for the Pequots; without the same volume of business enjoyed 
     by the Pequots, most tribes' casinos struggle to produce 
     modest revenues. Even so, conferees on the budget 
     reconciliation bill will be deciding whether to impose a new 
     federal tax on those gaming revenues, a tax that will range 
     from 15 percent to 35 percent of casino income. The 
     Republican Congress should not be in the business of 
     instituting new taxes: The Indian gaming tax should be 
     discarded in conference.
       House tax writers seem to have fixed on tribal gaming as a 
     convenient source of revenue for the federal Treasury. In 
     political terms it is understandable: At least at Foxwoods 
     and a few other well-placed Native American casinos, there is 
     a lot of money being generated; and Indians are not a potent 
     voting bloc. In other, substantial cash can be had without 
     generating substantial constituent backlash. But in 
     constitutional terms, the tax is dubious at best.
       The way the tax is written, tribal governments are treated 
     as non-profit organizations, and the gaming revenues are 
     treated as ``unrelated business income.'' It must be news to 
     the tribes that they are mere charities, rather than 
     sovereign governmental entities. On reservations, tribal 
     authorities are the local governments, both in fact and in 
     well-established law. Yet the House would treat these 
     recognized governments differently than every other non-
     federal governmental entity: That is, there is no proposal to 
     tax the gaming revenues produced by state-sponsored gambling.
       Tribal governments have been struggling for decades to 
     develop businesses and enterprise on reservations, often with 
     little luck. Conditions are bleak enough on many reservations 
     that alcoholism is high and life expectancy is low. Gambling 
     may not be an economic panacea, but the casino business has 
     helped provide an economic base that many tribes have used 
     for building prosperous communities with diverse industries. 
     When tribal governments use gaming revenues to build housing 
     and infrastructure and employment, they are engaged in 
     legitimate governmental activities, not unlike states that 
     use their lottery proceeds for road construction, prison 
     building or education.
       The more that tribes are able to build thriving economies 
     in their own territories, the less they will be dependent on 
     funding from Washington. This is not just an issue of whether 
     in the long run the balance sheet will be positive or 
     negative with new Indian gaming taxes, it is an issue of 
     paternalism. Even if Washington were to return to the tribes, 
     in the form of aid, all the money it takes away in taxes--
     frankly, an unlikely prospect--the problem would remain that 
     the federal government would be hindering Indian self-
     sufficiency.
       Most tribes engaged in federally approved gaming already 
     pay taxes of benefits of one sort or another to the states in 
     which their reservations are located. Foxwoods, for instance, 
     pays the state of Connecticut some $200 million. To add a 
     federal tax to that burden, especially when the state's 
     competing lottery games are not taxed, is simply unfair. The 
     Senate version of the spending bill does not call for the new 
     tax on the tribes. If for no better reason than that 
     Republicans should not be in the business of increasing 
     anybody's taxes, conferees should stick with the version and 
     jettison the House tax on Indian gaming.

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