WASHINGTON -- Connecticut Rep. Christopher Shays
has asked a House Appropriations subcommittee to
increase funding for the Bureau of Indian Affairs’
office that helps American Indians establish claims to
legally recognized tribal status.
According to
Shays, the agency “lacks the staff and resources to
conduct thorough reviews of applications for
recognition.” Only three research teams, with a total of
nine researchers, are available to handle the 230
petitions currently before the bureau.
“Granting federal recognition,” Shays told the
committee, “means creating sovereign nations, within our
nation, and must be done with the utmost care.” The
issue of recognition is complicated, noted Betsy
Hawkings, Shay’s chief of staff, because of the vast
financial possibilities that become available to
federally recognized tribes in the form of gaming
concessions.
Nedra Darling, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Indian
Affairs, declined to comment on Shay’s remarks.
A 2002 General Accounting Office report to a House
subcommittee said that “weaknesses in the process have
created uncertainty about the basis for recognition
decisions, calling into question the objectivity of the
process.”
Once a tribe is recognized, it has the right under
the Indian Gaming Reservation Act to build and operate
casinos, potentially a huge source of revenues. The
major reason, said Hawkings, that “the workload at the
[bureau] has increased so significantly is because the
stakes are so high.”
Shays has said he believes failing to fund the bureau
properly could have significant effects on Connecticut,
a state which is “quickly becoming the gaming capital of
the Northeast.”
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal had
stronger words for the bureau, calling the current
recognition process “essentially lawless.”
Darling said that, to be acknowledged, groups must
meet seven mandatory criteria, set forth in federal
regulations.
Blumenthal said that “recognition of any tribe has
very far reaching and irreversible repercussions,”
including establishing certain land rights, and immunity
from certain kinds of civil and criminal prosecution, as
well as the right to establish casinos.
Greater funding, said Blumenthal, is only a
“short-term fix.” In the long term, he said, “there
needs to be fundamental reform,” including the creation
of an independent, bipartisan agency along the lines of
the Federal Communications Commission, which would be
immune to the influence of politics and money.
The proposed budget in the House would reduce funding
from $1.6 billion in 2003 to $1.1 billion. Shays
maintained that funding should be restored to the
previous level or higher.
The Appropriations subcommittee is not likely to rule
on the issue before midsummer, when a conference
committee will reconcile the House and Senate versions
of the bill and establish an overall funding level for
the Department of the Interior.
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