10/10/2000 SELECT BOARD Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Board of Selectmen Minutes—Verbatim i October 10, 2000 Selectman Marsters: carries out the intent of Congress in making acknowledgment decisions. A similar Bill in the House, HR-361 is expected to be marked up by the House Resources Committee soon. This bill suffers many of the same problems as 5-611, so that makes the question, what are the problems with this Bill, 5-611? When we sent the Tribal Council back to the BIA, we thought that under the current BIA procedure,there is a point in the whole procedure where the town does get to participate and get their feedback. Under this new bill which is being proposed now in the Senate and in the House by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee,the town does not have any input what so ever. ....the attorneys were hired, not our attorneys, some of the attorneys that were hired in... Connecticut, S-611 creates a significant advantages for participants and does not give other interested parties such as local governments, us, a fair opportunity to participate. These problems include the following; local governments do not receive notice of petitions, local governments are not specified as interested parties entitled to participate in the procedures. It is not provided that the interested parties, the town, have a right to participate. So I think things have changed. At least they have in my eyes since we have sent things back to the BIA. Those words could be changing down there as we speak right now. And this leads me to... my recommendation, which would be to the $50,000. There maybe, Les and Jan, this would answer your questions, Jan wanted to bridge the gap, and I think one way we could bridge the gap, and Les wanted more information. Basically we are asking for the same thing, and I think, one way we could do that, one simple answer is—full disclosure. Disclose to us, what is in that 2000 page petition, and I make that in a formal request to the Tribal Council tonight. Disclose to us, the map of the lands that you consider your ancestral lands. I think Jan's idea is a great one, bring everybody up here, the BIA, the Tribal Council, the Selectmen and any citizen concerned to get any question answered that you want. I feel that the Board of Selectmen should work under the assumption that we would disclose anything that we are doing. We go to our attorneys, z