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Montana Tribe's Long Recognition Struggle Clears Congress

Associated Press

   BILLINGS, MONTANA - U.S. lawmakers granted formal recognition to the
   Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians on Tuesday and directed federal
   officials to acquire land on the tribe's behalf, following a
   decades-long struggle by its members scattered across the Northern
   Plains of the U.S. and Canada.

   A provision to recognize the tribe and make it eligible for millions of
   dollars annually in federal assistance was included in a defense bill
   approved in the Senate on a vote of 86 to 8. The measure now goes to
   President Donald Trump to be signed into law.

   Most of the tribe's more than 5,000 members are in Montana, descendants
   of Native Americans and early European settlers.

   They have a headquarters in Great Falls, Montana but have been without
   a recognized homeland since the late 1800s, when the tribe's leader,
   Chief Little Shell, and his followers in North Dakota broke off treaty
   negotiations with the U.S. government.

   Tribe members later settled in Montana and southern Canada, but they
   struggled to stay united because they had no land to call their own.

   Formal government recognition gives cultural validation to a tribe
   whose members have long lived on the fringes of society and were
   sometimes shunned by whites. More practically, it makes its members,
   many of them poor, eligible for government benefits ranging from
   education and health care to housing.

   "It's truly amazing. I'm almost speechless that this has finally come
   to fruition for us," Little Shell Chairman Gerald Gray said. "Besides
   the dignity part and us fighting for this for over 150 years, it's
   going to provide access to services our people have never had access to
   but have always deserved"

   Providing services to the tribal members through the Bureau of Indian
   Affairs and Indian Health Service would cost roughly $40 million over
   five years, or about $8 million a year, the Congressional Budget Office
   said in a March report. That figure was based on an enrollment of
   roughly 2,600 members, a number that Gray said was outdated and too
   low.

   Tribal leaders first petitioned for recognition through the Interior
   Department in 1978. Members trace their other attempts back to the
   1860s, when the Pembina Band of Chippewa signed a treaty with the U.S.
   government.

   Recognition was granted by the state of Montana in 2000, but denied by
   the U..S. Interior Department in 2009.

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