Unfinished Justice: Completing the Restoration and Acknowledgement of California Indian Tribes

Abstract

T HE 95TH CONGRESS DIRECTED the American Indian Policy Review Commission to conduct extensive research on the conditions of unacknowledged and terminated Indian groups. Until the 1970s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs had employed the in deciding cases of acknowledgement or status clarification of an Indian group. Candidates had to meet one or more of the following criteria: possess a history of treaty relations with the United States; be designated as a tribe by an Act of Congress or Executive Order; be treated by the Federal Government as having collective rights in tribal lands or assets; be recognized as tribe or band by other (acknowledged) tribes or bands; or exercise political authority over its own members, through a form of government or leadership.' By the 1970s, some California tribes had been seeking federal acknowledgement for decades or generations. Many of these tribes could fulfill some or all of the Cohen criteria, but were denied acknowledgement, primarily because the Bureau of Indian Affairs was reluctant to undertake to allocate funds and services to them, or assume fiduciary and administrative responsibilities for additional tribes. During the termination era of the 1950s and early 1960s, no California tribes were acknowledged because the direction of federalIndian policy was speeding toward the elimination of intergovernmental relations with all California tribes. In the mid-1970s, the American Indian Policy Review Commission first expressed the need for an independent office to review petitions for acknowledgement under consistent standards without prejudicing the welfare of those Indian groups who already enjoyed a government-to-government relationship with the United States.2 Congress never authorized the creation of the Acknowledgement and Research Branch, nor administrative procedures to review or evaluate requests for Federal acknowledgement, nor to grant acknowledgement to Indian tribes. Still, in 1978, the Department of Interior, acting partly in response to and partly with trepidation regarding proposed legislation, while lacking statutory direction, promulgated regulations to establish formal administrative procedures to extend federal acknowledgement. Under the current regulations, petitioners must meet the following seven criteria (at 25 Code of Federal Regulations Sec. 83.7):