Several counties in California, which has more Indian casinos than any other state, are unhappy about proposed federal rules changes that would make it easier than ever before to recognize a tribe.
“It’s causing some alarm at the local government level in California,” Minh Tran, county counsel for Napa County, recently told his local paper, the Napa Valley Register. Napa County and several other local governments are urging the Congress to hold oversight hearings on the proposed regulations, the first change to the process in more than 35 years.
Under existing rules, the Bureau of Indian Affairs requires a tribe to show that it has existed since the U.S. Constitution was adopted in 1789. They are required to produce genealogical records and other evidence.
Tribes have tried for decades to change this process, which many consider onerous and very time-consuming. Under the proposed rules, a tribe would only have to show that it has existed since 1934. Rules of evidence would also be streamlined.
According to the head of the BIA, Department of the Interior Assistant Secretary Kevin Washburn, “Reform of the process is long-overdue.” He has been working on improving the recognition progress since he came to the bureau.
More than 80 Indian tribes in the Golden State have petitioned for federal recognition since the rules were adopted.
Napa County has a special interest in the case of the Mishewal Wappo Tribe whose 340 members seek to regain their aboriginal homeland in California’s Wine Country. The tribe lost federal recognition in the 1960s. The Wappos have tried since 1979 to get it back. Unsuccessfully, since the act of Congress that disestablished the tribe has never been repealed.
That act is the subject of a federal lawsuit, which claims that the process was done illegally.
Napa and Sonoma Counties worry that the Wappos will build a casino once they are recognized and able to put land into trust.
