[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 138 (Tuesday, October 6, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1923-E1924]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


    INDIAN FEDERAL RECOGNITION ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURES ACT OF 1998

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                               speech of

                          HON. JOHN B. SHADEGG

                               of arizona

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, October 5, 1998

  Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 1154, 
the Indian Federal Recognition Administrative Procedures Act of 1998. 
The bill would overturn the fair and thorough process which is 
currently used to determine whether a Native American group should be 
formally recognized as a tribe by the federal government. It would 
replace this process with one which is politicized and would lower the 
criteria for recognition to the point where tribal recognition would 
have minimal bearing on whether the group is a legitimate tribe.
  H.R. 1154 takes the recognition process away from the non-partisan 
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and places it in the hands of a 
commission of individuals appointed by the Administration. This 
commission will be hand-picked by the Secretary of the Interior without 
the advice and consent of the Senate. These are radical and troubling 
changes. The BIA will not longer be in charge of a process which 
requires professional expertise and clearly falls within the purview of 
the Bureau. Furthermore, the failure of the bill to require that the 
Senate provide its advice and consent to the appointment of 
commissioners circumvents the system of checks and balances imposed on 
the Executive Branch by Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution.
  Furthermore, this bill lowers the criteria for recognizing a tribe. 
Currently, a candidate group must be able to trace its lineage back to 
the point that it was first contacted by settler. The group must 
further prove that they have been identified as an American Indian 
entity on a substantially continuous basis since 1900. These are 
important criteria: recognition as a tribe, and the significant 
benefits which come from such recognition, must be given only to groups 
which truly qualify as tribes.
  The effects of bestowing federal recognition on a tribe are 
substantial. A federally recognized tribe is granted special rights 
including the status of a legally sovereign entity. This means that the 
tribe may no longer be sued by individuals without the tribe's consent 
and thus takes away the individual's right to obtain legal redress from 
the tribe. Sovereign status

[[Page E1924]]

also allows tribes to avoid collecting state sales taxes on gasoline 
and other goods: a problem faced by my state of Arizona and many other 
states. Furthermore, federally recognized tribes are entitled to 
benefits which are not available to non-Indians including increased 
funding for medical care and education.
  The most troubling effect of federal recognition is that it allows 
the tribe to apply to conduct gambling on tribal lands under the Indian 
Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA). Congress has chosen, through IGRA and 
other laws, to tightly control gambling because we recognize that it 
often leads to problems with gambling addiction, increased crime, and 
disfunction within families. Few of us want to see a proliferation of 
new casinos, yet this is a likely result of recognizing new tribes 
since few tribes can resist the lure of the quick and easy profits to 
be made from casino ownership. While IGRA does act as a safeguard, the 
most effective way of limiting the number is to limit the number of 
new, unqualified tribes.

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