Currently 566 Native American tribes claim federal recognition status. But more than 200 more could join those ranks under new rules proposed by the Obama administration. That could put them on the road to prosperity, since federal recognition is a requirement for opening a casino.
Under the new rules, tribes would be required to document political influence or authority only since 1934, rather than as early as 1789. In addition, they would not have to demonstrate that third parties have identified them as tribes since 1900. The current rules were adopted in 1978.
Kevin Washburn, director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, called the changes “long overdue.” The new rules, published in May, have been endorsed “as a matter of long-overdue justice and fairness” by the National Congress of American Indians, the nation’s largest organization of tribal governments. The group said current rules had “severely deteriorated,” containing “irrational documentation requirements” and other conditions that caused delays for decades.
For example, New York’s Shinnecock Indian Nation said it spent $33 million over 32 years before it won recognition in 2010. “Most tribes don’t have those sorts of resources to put together a petition. People are turning in 50,000 to 100,000 pages and spending exorbitant amounts of money. The new rules are like a hundred times better than what’s currently in place,” said Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, director of the Indian legal program and a professor at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University.
Nedra Darling, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, said the new rules would provide uniform standards for all tribes. “Whether to grant federal recognition and whether a tribe is eligible for Indian gaming are two wholly separate questions, governed by wholly separate standards and evaluated under wholly different processes,” she said. The public has until September 30 to comment before the BIA will decide to adopt the new rules.
Along with celebration, the proposed rules have caused controversy. Some gambling opponents said the new rules are too lenient. Cheryl Schmit, director of the anti-gambling group Stand Up for California, said, “These rules are basically a gaming incentive. You’ll have gaming investors hooking up with these tribes and helping them finance their recognition. It is astonishing that the federal government would attempt to ram through these rules while providing no impact assessment of the social and economic costs on communities across our state.”
Schmit noted California already has 71 tribal gaming facilities, the most in the U.S. She said so far 81 unrecognized tribes in the state have filed petitions with the BIA, and 34 of those could win recognition under the new rules. She added that could lead to more than 20 more casinos in high-density areas such as San Francisco and Los Angeles.
In addition, some tribes are concerned that any newly gained recognition could be temporary. The Chinooks and Duwamish tribes in Washington State had been approved during the Clinton administration, but after George W. Bush became president in 2001, the BIA withdrew their recognition, due to opposition from larger neighboring tribes. The Chinooks helped Lewis and Clark and the Duwamish tribe included Chief Seattle, for whom the state’s largest city is named.
Former Democratic U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, president of Antioch University Seattle, said he doubted the new rules could help the Chinooks or the Duwamish win back federal recognition because they contain a provision that says before reapplying, a tribe whose petition already had been rejected, must get permission from third parties that opposed their applications. For the Chinooks, that would mean winning permission from longtime opponents, the larger, neighboring Quinault tribe.
Former Chinook Tribal Chairman Gary Johnson of South Bend, Washington, said two days after attending a White House luncheon with Bush to kick off the bicentennial celebration of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in July 2002, he was informed the Chinook Tribe would lose its recognition. “It’s just all political,” he said, adding federal recognition could help the tribe survive, but the new rules would be “more of the same, and maybe worse. We’d be very excited if they were fair and could offer us some justice, but right now our work is to get them to reconsider and make some changes.”
