Sonny Bono: “I do want to recognize the Cabazon Indians' legitimate complaint that they were not notified by the Department of the…”

“I do want to recognize the Cabazon Indians' legitimate complaint that they were not notified by the Department of the Interior, and, therefore, had to play catch-up in this situation and have a legitimate complaint. So I just want to say, hopefully, as this legislation progresses, that we will do everything we can to encourage the tribes to work out a settlement on their dispute, but recognize that it is an Indian dispute and that they should settle that between themselves. We do not really have a good guy or a bad guy here. It is just that this situation came, and we do understand it, and they have my support as well. So we hope it will settle as this legislation goes on. This has been going on for 80 years, and what happened, basically, is the Torres-Martinez land was flooded and they have not had a home. Eventually they had to sue, and that litigation has been going on for 15 years. We have finally brought this to closure, which is very important because it not only deals with the tribes but it deals with the local communities, as well. We have a highway, Highway 86, that cannot be repaired because of this litigation and we lose 10 people, annually 10 people die, and we would love to repair this highway. This would finally permit us to fix this highway and get rid of those needless deaths on an annual basis.”