Senate panel passes bills to recognize 7 tribes
By KEN THOMAS, Associated Press Writer
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Published: October 22, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — Seven Indian tribes in North Carolina and Virginia would gain federal recognition and become eligible for federal aid under legislation approved Thursday by a Senate committee.
The Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and six Virginia tribes would be eligible for up to $800 million in federal funds under two bills passed by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. The bills, which bar the tribes from building casinos, have already passed the House.
Lawmakers said Congress does not have the expertise to determine federal recognition of tribes, but noted that they have faced lengthy delays in accessing federal funding for housing, education and health benefits.
In some cases, it has taken 20 or 30 years for their federal recognition to be processed through the Interior Department and that needs to be fixed, said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., the committee's chairman.
"The administrative process is broken," he said.
President Barack Obama has pledged support for the Lumbee Tribe, which has sought federal recognition for more than a century. The administration has not said whether it will support recognition of the Virginia tribes.
Regarding the Virginia tribes, Interior Department spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said "in most circumstances we prefer the uniformity and certainty provided by the existing administrative process."
The six Virginia tribes, which have around 3,000 members, have been seeking recognition since the 1990s. They are the Eastern Chickahominy, Chickahominy, Upper Mattaponi, Rappahannock, Monacan and Nansemond tribes.
Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine told lawmakers earlier this year that the identities of tribal members were stripped away by Virginia's Racial Integrity Act, a state law in effect from 1924 to 1967. Racial identifications of those without white ancestry were changed to "colored" on birth certificates during that period.
There are an estimated 55,000 Lumbee Indians in North Carolina's Robeson, Cumberland, Hoke and Scotland counties. Congress has been considering federal recognition for the tribe since before the first bill was introduced in 1899.
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Your ignorance of history shows through.
Mistreated Indians have not been dead for hundreds of years. Have you never heard of Indian Boarding schools?
Those cultural genocide schools lasted through the 1950s and '60s.
Don't forget the lands that were stolen either. If someone stole your house and waited until you died, would your family not still deserve the house back?
My nephew who was 1/2 Mexican and his mother's Mexican brother were both knifed to death by a tribe member who should be getting out any time now for the double homicide. 4 years for 2 murders and my nephew was under a car trying to escape and stabbed 14 times.
But strangely, history says the Indians weren't all that aggressive in the past but Woolaroc Museum at Bartlesville shows a very cruel way of life a thousand or so years ago.
I see you are not familiar with the federal recognition process. These aren't tribes being "made up" now. These are tribes that have existed all along.
Although the Indian Wars of the 1800s ended, the desire to get rid of the "Indian Problem" did not. The government realized one way to "get rid" of them was to strip them of any federal recognition, hoping the members would die out from lack of monetary support.
This, largely, has not worked, but many of the tribes who were stripped of recognition or were not originally recognized have yet to get it back.
As far as casinos go, if they are on tribal lands they are under the tribes' jurisdiction, not the federal government's. Tribal sovereignty is not a myth, as much as you'd like it to be.