Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, S. 199, the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe Reservation Restoration Act, introduced by Senator Tina Smith from Minnesota, directs the Department of Agriculture to transfer approximately 11,760 acres of Federal land in the Chippewa National Forest to the Department of the Interior to be held in trust for the benefit of the Tribe. The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe is a federally recognized Tribe with approximately 10,660 members with a reservation located within the National Chippewa Forest in Cass County, Minnesota. The Leech Lake Band has the largest population of all the Minnesota Tribes yet the smallest amount of land available for its use. Much of the Tribe's land was lost when many of its members were illegally dispossessed of their land via ``secretarial transfers'' during the 1950s. Secretarial transfers were a transaction where the Department of the Interior approved the sale or transfer of Tribal land and/or individually owned Indian allotments without the consent of the Tribe or the individual Indian allottees. This practice resulted in the Tribe having insufficient land to meet the current needs of its membership. The return of the land through S. 199 will assist the Tribe in rebuilding its land base, enable the protection of sacred sites, and allow the construction of housing on some of the tracts near the Tribe's existing communities.…”