The U.S. Senate’s Committee on Indian Affairs has scheduled oversight hearings on tribal gaming. The committee typically holds such hearings once a session—sessions last two years.
It will be able to talk to a full National Indian Gaming Commission, with all three members. This wasn’t the case two years ago. Under the Obama administration the commission rarely had all three members.
The members include Chairman Jonodev Chaudhuri, of the Muscogee Nation, Kathryn Isom-Clause, of the Pueblo of Taos, and E. Sequoyah Simermeyer, of the Coharie Tribe.
Although the NIGC is fully staffed, the Bureau of Indian Affairs is not. When President Trump took office he took away the BIA’s ability to decide off-reservation land into trust applications and instead gave that power to the Associate Deputy Secretary of the Interior, Jim Cason.
He has already rejected one such application, in Michigan. The administration is also considering a rule that would make it more difficult for tribes to acquire land off the reservation and put it into trust.
Earlier this year Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told the committee that in the past such decisions had been made with “great inconsistency.” He promised: “I’ll get to the bottom of it.”
So far Trump has not nominated anyone to be Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, the official who heads the BIA.
