LCCR Joins Native Groups in Call for House Committee
Feature Story by Tyler Lewis - 12/12/2006
The nation’s leading civil and human rights coalition has joined the push for the re-establishment of a standing House Committee on Indian Affairs during the 110th Congress, which begins its session in January.
“The United States government has a unique relationship with Native Americans that carries with it a legal and moral obligation of the highest order. It is long past time that the House reconstitutes a permanent Committee on Indian Affairs to give full effect to its unique responsibility to the Indian nations,” said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), in a December 11 letter to the House.
Native groups, including the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), the National American Indian Housing Council, and the National Indian Gaming Association, have made the formation of the new standing committee their top priority. Currently, most Indian legislative issues are handled by the House Resources Committee, but native groups insist that their issues often get lost in the shuffle of the committee’s many priorities.
“Far too often tribal concerns are pitted against the concerns of members who are trying to move non-Indian related legislation out of the House Resources Committee,” said NCAI president Joe Garcia, in a November 8 letter to incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D. Calif. “Time and time again, Indian legislation has been sacrificed for individual parochial interests on non-Indian issues.”
The House and Senate had Indian-specific committees in some form or another until 1946 when Congress’ “termination policy” collapsed the Indian committees into larger committees. Termination policy attacked tribal sovereignty and ended federal recognition of more than 50 tribal governments.
The Senate revived its Committee on Indian Affairs in 1997 and made it a permanent standing committee in 1984. LCCR’s Henderson said that the failure of the House to revive its committee “is the last vestige of a destructive policy of Termination that has been in all other ways soundly repudiated by policy-makers.”
Observers say that the likelihood of the House creating the Committee on Indian Affairs is pretty good. Rep. Dale Kildee, D, Mich., and Tom Cole, R. Okla., both members of the House Congressional Native American Caucus, support it.
