Tule River Indian Reservation Land Trust, Health, and Economic Development Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, the members of the Tule River Tribe are descendants of the original inhabitants of the San Joaquin Valley that occupied the territory along the rivers and creeks flowing from the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Tulare Lake in south-central California.

Like many other tribes in California and around the country, the Tule River people have suffered many injustices and inequities over the years, including forced removal and relocation of the tribe to the roughly 54,000-acre reservation which they have resided in for 140 years.

H.R. 4685, and Mr. McCarthy, will add to that existing land base by deeming that approximately 34 acres of Bureau of Land Management land be held in trust for the tribe. It is a small amount of acreage in the bigger picture. This land is situated between the tribal fee land and the reservation land, near the only entrance to the reservation, and it is entirely cut off from Federal lands in the vicinity.

Mr. Speaker, this is a very small amount of land, as I said, but as the vice chairman of the tribe stated in testimony before the committee, ``every acre of land is important'' to the Tule River people.

I want to commend the sponsor of the bill, Majority Leader Mr. McCarthy, for bringing this legislation to the floor. It passed by unanimous consent. I urge its quick adoption.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source