On the recordOctober 8, 2015
I appreciate the gentleman from Alaska yielding. There are some Native American tribes that do not rely on gaming alone for their source of revenue. They can't. It is amazing how often we hear, dealing with North American Native tribes, all of a sudden give lipservice that we would like to empower them, until they actually have a chance to do so; and then, all of a sudden, we change. We are talking about a lot of tribes who have a great deal of land but very little employment. This bill, in fact, is based on recommendations that come from Indian Country. By that, I don't mean the Bureau of Indian Affairs, because they, shamefully, oppose this bill. I do mean groups like Southern Utah Utes, the Confederated Tribes of Colville, the National Congress of American Indians, the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, and community groups like the Chamber of Commerce. All of those people are realizing the importance of this particular bill in empowering Native Americans in this Nation. I hope we do not turn this into a partisan affair by saying, by voting ``no'' on this bill, you might get three Democrat callers on C- SPAN to support your vote. But it still does not make that right. We need to do something differently. In these areas in which the potential employment is based on agriculture, mining, and energy, we don't need more regulations on the Native Americans than there are on everybody else. We don't need duplicative regulations on them more than anybody else.…
