Tribes worried that the new Trump administration will be unfriendly to Indian Country interests got some encouragement when the Tribal Labor Sovereignty Act began to pick up speed in the new session, freed from the threat of an Obama veto.
The bill would exempt tribes and their businesses, including casinos, from national labor laws.
Asked what Trump thinks of the bill, Rep. Todd Rokita said he hadn’t asked him yet. He told an audience at the National Congress of American Indians in Washington D.C. “I’m not sure President Obama would have signed this bill into law.”
Rokita plans to introduce the bill again in the House. He told the group, “I am moving forward with this. This is the cycle to get it done.”
Last week the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs approved S.63 on a voice vote. Senator Steve Daines, a co-sponsor, declared “Indian tribes have a right to sovereignty and that doesn’t entail being regulated under the National Labor Relations Board.” Three Democrats on the committee asked to recorded as “No” votes.
Currently the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that tribes are subject to national labor laws. So far the courts have upheld that interpretation.
Rep. Tom Cole, one of only two American Indians serving in Congress said in November 2015: “Practically every county and city in this country has a golf course. Most states have a lottery. The National Park Service operates hotels. Virginia and other states sell alcohol. Many cities operate convention centers.” He added, “All of these activities are not regulated under the NLRA. It should be the same with tribes.”
Despite this hopeful sign, many fear that the Trump administration will be anti-Indian.
Rep. Markwayne Mullin, a congressman from Oklahoma and chairman of the Native American Coalition, is trying to calm the waters by insisting that remarks that Trump is notorious for saying against Indian gaming don’t reflect his views today.
Indians are not assuaged by actions such as Trump’s restarting the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock Indian Reservation.
In 1993 Trump told a congressional hearing, “You’re saying only Indians can have the reservations, only Indians can have gaming. So why aren’t you approving it for everybody? Why are you being discriminatory? Why is it that the Indians don’t pay tax, but everybody else does? I do.”
The same year he remarked about members of the Mashantucket Pequots in Connecticut: “They don’t look like Indians to me, and they don’t look like Indians to other Indians.”
Mullin said, “The concerns with the president supposedly going after Indian gaming; I want to put that fear to rest. I’ve been talking about this ever since the campaign. He’s made it very clear. When he spoke those words back in the ’90’s about tribal casinos he was the businessman Trump. He was the CEO of Trump Organization and he was competing with tribes.
“He’s made it very clear and he has spoken very frank about this. He is supportive of tribal casinos, he is pro-business and he recognizes that the casinos in Indian country have done an incredible job and have made a tremendous impact in some very rural communities.”
Mullin said that when he was campaigning with the president, “We had a conversation about it and he assured me they’re supportive of tribal casinos, as long as they are abiding by the agreements in Oklahoma or any other state. If they’re not paying what they agreed to pay, then we’d be having a different conversation.”
However, Trump critics insist that two of the president’s cabinet members are anti-Indian, including now Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Tom Price, who is now Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Sessions is considered anti-Indian by Senator Heidi Heitkamp because: “I have serious concerns about Senator Sessions’ opposition to landmark legislation in 2013 that protects victims of domestic violence, including protections I advocated for Native American women.”
Price is considered anti-Indian because he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare,) which some fear would harm the Indian Health Care Improvement Act.
