John Sinclair, chairman of the Little Shell Band of Chippewa, is in Washington, D.C., today to testify to exactly that point.

Matthew Brown of the Associated Press reports here that the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, including Chairman Byron Dorgan (D., N.D.) and Montana Sen. Jon Tester, say the process for obtaining federal recognition for tribes is broken.

“They point to the experience of Montana’s Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa, which filed its recognition petition in 1978, the same year the current process was established by Congress.

“It took 31 years for the tribe to get a negative decision from Interior’s Bu-reau of Indian Affairs – an outcome Montana’s Congressional delegation has vowed to overturn,” Brown writes.

Sinclair says the Little Shell spent $2 million over the years trying to meet requirements that generated 70,000 documents – a stack 35 feet high. “The process is completely run amok,” he says.

“Simply put, the administrative recognition process is a mess and, in all fair-ness and justice to Indian people, the Congress must step in and fix it,” he says in a statement.
Meanwhile, the state of Montana recognized the tribe nearly a decade ago. Its 4,300 members have no reservation, but mostly live in and around Great Falls.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Federal recognition, Little Shell Chippewa, Native American news, U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester

This post seems to demand an honor song. This one is from the Little Otter Singers during June’s Honor The Earth Pow wow on the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Reservation of Northern Wisconsin.

Buck Richardson, the minority program coordinator with the Rocky Mountain Healthcare Network, says that for too many years, Native American veterans missed out on services because of the disconnect between agencies. “A lot of Indian vets didn’t know what their benefits were,” Richardson says.

Tomorrow, Richardson and Kevin Howlett, who directs Tribal Health for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in Montana, will travel to Washington, D.C., to testify about the issue before the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs.

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., a member of the VA committee and author of the Rural Veterans Health Care Improvement Act, requested the hearing last month, reports Martin Kidston of the Helena (Mont.) Independent Record, here.

“With this hearing, we’ll be able to dig deeper into the challenges facing Montana’s Indian veterans and how we can better get them the care they’ve earned,” Tester says.

Kidston reports that more than 4,500 Native Americans are enrolled in the VA. The actual number of Indian vets in the state, however, is believed to be much higher. Per capita, Montana has one of the nation’s highest veteran populations in the country.

The hearing will look at Montana as a model. The state has nine tribal veteran representatives. Nationwide, there are now more than 227 such representatives who serve in other states such as Alaska, Alabama, New Mexico and Oklahoma.

Gwen Florio

Tags: buffalo post, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Indian Health Service, Native American news, Native American veterans, Rocky Mountain Healthcare Network, Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, Veterans Administration