Date: 1999-11-17
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker. the nature of selfgovernance is rooted in the inherent sovereignty of the American Indian and Alaska Native tribes. From the founding of this Nation. Indian tribes and Alaskan Native villages have been recognized as distinct. independent. political communities exercising powers of selfgovernment. not by virtue of any delegation of powers from the Federal Government. but rather by virtue of their own innate sovereignty. The tribes sovereignty predates the founding of the United States in its Constitution and forms the backdrop against which the United States has continually entered into relations with Indian tribes and native villages. H.R. 1167 is modeled on the existing permanent selfgovernance legislation for the Interior Department programs contained in Title IV of the Indian SelfDetermination and Education Assistance Act and reflects years of planning and negotiating among Indian tribes. the Alaska Native villages. and the Department of Health and Human Services. This legislation continues the principle focus on selfgovernance programs to remove needless and sometimes harmful layers .of Federal bureaucracy that dictate Indian affairs. By giving tribes direct control over Federal programs run for their benefit and making them directly accountable to their members. Congress has enabled Indian tribes to run programs more efficiently and more innovatively than the Federal officials have in the past. Allowing the tribes to run these programs furthers the congressional policy of strengthening and promoting tribal governments which began with passage of the First SelfDetermination Act of 1975. The Indian tribes and the administration agree that it is now time to take the next logical step toward the selfgovernance process and make selfgovernance programs permanent within the Department of Health and Human Services. H.R. 1167 establishes a permanent selfgovernment program within the Department of Health and Human Services under which the American Indian and Alaska Native tribes may enter into compacts with the Secretary for direct operation control and redesign of Indian health service activities. Tribes entering into selfgovernance programs have to meet four eligibility requirements. First. the tribe must. in the case of the consortium. be federally recognized. Second. the tribe must document with official action of the tribal governing body a formal request to enter into negotiations with the Department of Interior. Third. the tribe must demonstrate financial stability and financial management capabilities as evidenced through the administration of the prior 638 contracts. Fourth. the tribe must successfully have completed a planning phase requiring the submission of final planning report that demonstrates that the tribe has conducted legal and budgetary research in internal government and organizational planning. If we are to adhere and remain faithful to the principles that our founders set forth. the principles of good faith. consent. justice. humanity. we must continue to promote tribal selfgovernance as done in this legislation that I bring before the House today. .I want to thank the gentleman from Alaska . the chairman of the Committee on Resources. for his assistance and support of this bill and urge all of my colleagues to support the passage of this legislation. Mr. Speaker. the nature of SelfGovernance is rooted in the inherent sovereignty of American Indian and Alaska Native tribes. From the founding of this nation. Indian tribes and Alaska Native villages have been recognized as "distinct. independent. political communities" exercising powers of selfgovernment. not by virtue of any delegation of powers from the federal government. but rather by virtue of their own innate sovereignty. The tribes sovereignty predates the founding of the United States and its Constitution and forms the backdrop against which the United States has continually entered into relations with Indian tribes and Native villages. The present model of tribal SelfGovernance arose out of the federal policy of Indian SelfDetermination. The modem SelfDetermination era began as Congress and contemporary Administrations ended the dubious experiment of Termination which was intended to end the federal trust responsibility to Native Americans during the 1950s. The centerpiece of the Termination policy. House Concurrent Resolution 108 in 1953. stated that "Indian tribes and individual members thereof. should be freed from Federal supervision and control and from all disabilities and limitations specially applicable to Indians." While the intent of this legislation was to free the Indians from federal rule. it also destroyed all protection and benefits received from the government. The same year. Congress enacted Public Law 28 which further eroded tribal sovereignty by transferring criminal jurisdiction from the federal government and the tribes to the various state governments. As a policy. Termination was a disaster. Recognizing that Termination as a policy was a disaster. President Kennedy campaigned in 1960 promising the Indian tribes no changes in treaty or contractual relationships without tribal consent. protection of Indian lands base. and assistance with credit and tribal economic development. Indeed. Indian reservations were included in many of the "Great Society" programs of the late 1960s. bringing a muchneeded infusion of federal dollars onto many reservations. In 1968. President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered a message to Congress which stated support for: [A] policy. of maximum choice for the American Indian: a policy expressed in programs of selfhelp. selfdevelopment. selfdetermination. . . . The greatest hope for Indian progress lies in the emergence of Indian leadership and initiative in solving Indian problems. Indians must have a voice in making the plans and decisions in programs which are important to their daily life. In 1970. President Richard Nixons "Special Message on Indian Affairs" also called for increased tribal selfdetermination as he stated: This. then. must be goal of any new national policy toward the Indian people: to strengthen the Indians sense of autonomy without threatening his sense of community. We must assure the Indian that he can assume control of his own life without being separated involuntarily from the tribal group. And we must make it clear that Indians can become independent of Federal control without being cut off from Federal concern and Federal support... Together. these messages sparked Congress to work on legislation that laid the foundation of modem federal Indian policy for the remainder of this century. And so. five years later. Congress enacted one of the most profound and powerful pieces of Indian legislation in this Nations history. In 1975. Congress passed the Indian SelfDetermination and Education Assistance Act. Pub. L. 93638. This legislation gave Indian tribes and Alaska Native villages the right to. assume responsibility for the administration of federal programs which benefited Indians. In addition to assuming the authority to make operating and administrative decisions regarding the way these federal programs would be run. tribes that chose to enter into Indian SelfDetermination Act contracts. which came to be known as "638 contracts" were given the right to receive the federal funds that the agencies--generally the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Indian Health Service (IHS)would have ordinarily received for those programs. The Act did not. however. relieve the federal government of its trust responsibility to the tribes. Congress enacted the Indian SelfDetermination Act with the expectation that the direct responsibility for running these programs would enhance and strengthen tribal governments. As a means of supervise the tribes activities. "638" contracts required volumes of paperwork to be filed. If a tribe wanted to operate more than one program. it would have to exercise an additional 638 contract which required a separate approval process. Though the Act was intended to decrease Federal involvement in the daily lives of reservation Indians. its specific performance and reporting requirements kept BIA as a pervasive force in Indian affairs. At the time of its enactment. the 638 contract program did not allow tribes to move funds between programs to adapt to changing and unforeseen circumstances during a funding period. Thus. the tribes powers to design or adapt programs according to tribal needs remained restricted. The inflexibility of 638 contracts also created problems with cash flow. Payments were made to tribes on a costreimbursement basis. often many months after the tribe might have incurred major expenses. The tribes main complaint. however. was that the 638 contract process made tribal staff primarily accountable to and measured by. not their own tribal councils but BIA employees at the Agency. Area and Central Officers. They had to follow strict federal laws. rules and regulations that were often of little relevance to daytoday existence on an Indian reservation. Furthermore. if trust assets were involved. the BIA had to concur in all decisions made. Thus. while the Indian SelfDetermination Act was and is still acknowledged as a watershed moment in the history of tribal selfgovernance. by the mid1980s many tribal leaders agreed that it was time for even greater change. They felt that the federal bureaucracy devoted to 638 program oversight had simply grown out of control and the percentage of federal dollars allocated for Indian programs actually spent on the reservationswas still far too small. To address these concerns. the Indian tribes asked Congress to consider amendments to the SelfDetermination Act. At the same time. a group of tribal representatives began meeting to discuss proposals for trimming the BIA bureaucracy and amending the Act as well. But during the fall of 1987. a series of articles appeared in the Arizona Republic entitled Fraud in Indian Country. that detailed an egregious history of waste and mismanagement within the BIA. These articles spurred House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior and Related Agencies Chairman Sidney Yates (DIL) to conduct an oversight hearing on these alleged abuses. I At the hearing. Department of Interior officials proposed that funds appropriated to the Bureau of Indian Affairs be turned over to the tribes to let them manage their own affairs in an attempt to address these charges. But. the officials testified. by accepting the federal funds. the tribes would release the federal government from its trust responsibility. Tribal leaders disagreed with this quid pro quo. but supported the concept of removing BIA middlemen from the funding process. With Chairman Yates encouragement. tribal representatives met with the Secretary of the Interior and other Department officials the very next day to further hash out this concept. By midDecember of 1987. ten tribes had agreed to test the Departments proposal. Out of this proposal the Tribal SelfGovernance Demonstration Project was born. In 1988 Congress enacted Pub. L. No. 100472 and established Title III of the Indian SelfDetermination Act which authorized the Sec.retary of Interior to. negotiate SelfGovernance compacts with up to twenty tribes. These tribes. for the first time. would be able to "Plan. conduct. consolidate. and administer programs. services. and functions" heretofore performed by Interior officials. The Act required that these programs be "otherwise available to Indian tribes or Indians." but within these parameters the tribes were authorized to redesign programs and reallocated funding according to terms negotiated in the compacts. Tribes would be able to prioritize spending on a systemic level. dramatically reducing the Federal role in the tribal decisionmaking process. But perhaps the biggest difference between "638" contract process and the SelfGovernance program is that instead of funds coming from multiple contracts there would be one compact with a single Annual Funding Agreement. The original ten tribes that agreed to participate in the demonstration project were the Confederated. Salish and Kootenai Tribes. Hoopa Tribe. Jamestown SKlallam Tribe. Lummi Nation. Mescalero Apache Tribe. Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. Quinault Indian Nation. Red Lake Chippewa Tribe. Rosebud Sioux Tribe. and Tlingit and Haida Central Council. In 1.991 President Bush signed Pub. L. 102184. which extended the Demonstration Project for three more years and increased the number of Tribes participating to thirty. The bill required the new tribes participating to complete a oneyear planning period before they could negotiate a Compact and Annual Funding Agreement. The 1991 law also directed the Indian Health Service to conduct a feasibility -study to examine the expansion of the SelfGovemance project to IHS programs and services. In 1992. Congress amended section 314 of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act to allow the Secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate SelfGovernance compacts and annual funding agreements under Title III of the Indian SelfDetermination Act with Indian tribes. The SelfGovernance Demonstration Project proved to be a success both in the Interior Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. Thus. in 1994. Congress responded by passing the "Tribal SelfGovernance Act of 1994" and permanently established the SelfGovemance program within the Department of Interior-. This action solidified the Federal governments policy of negotiating with Indian Tribes and Alaska Native villages on a governmenttogovernment basis while retaining the federal trust relationship. The Tribal SelfGovernance Act allowed so called "SelfGovemance tribes" to compact all programs and services that tribes could contract under Title I of the Indian SelfDetermination Act. The Act required an "orderly transition from Federal domination of programs and services to provide Indian tribes with meaningful authority to plan. conduct. redesign. and administer programs. services. functions. and activities that meet the needs of the individual tribal communities." Tribes entering the SelfGovernance program had to meet four eligibility requirements. First. the tribe (or tribes in the case of a consortium) must be federally recognized. Second. the tribe must document. with an official action of the tribal governing body. a formal request to enter negotiations with the Department of Interior. Third. the tribe must demonstrate financial stability and financial management capability as evidenced through the administration of prior 638 contracts. Fourth. the tribe must have successfully completed a planning phase. requiring the submission of a final planning report which demonstrates that the tribe has conducted legal and budgetary research and internal tribal government and organizational planning. The 1994 Act. however. did not make changes to the demonstration project status of