"Last week, in Washington, D.C., I testified before the House Natural Resources Committee at the oversight hearings held on the Interior Department's recently released ''guidance'' on taking land into trust for tribes and its broad ramifications.

The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe gave testimony because we were tremendously affected by the new ''guidance'' policy that introduced a ''commutable distance factor'' in determining land-into-trust applications for off-reservation gaming. The Mohawks received a denial on our trust application that, prior to the new guidance, received approvals and favorable determinations from Interior - including a recent environmental approval or Finding of No Significant Impact last December under Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. Given the series of favorable determinations over a period of nearly 12 years, it is wholly apparent that Interior is not only a vortex of contradictions, but is intent on making up rules as they go along, as it suits them.

This new guidance should have all of Indian country concerned for several reasons.

Assistant Interior Secretary Carl Artman made on-the-record statements at the hearing that the guidance is not a policy change, but an ''internal management tool.'' Indian country should be worried with wonder, asking both Kempthorne and Artman: Exactly how dumb do you think we Indians are? Parading the guidance out to Indian country and the U.S. House of Representatives as a management tool that allowed the agency to simply clear their desks of land-into-trust applications in one fell swoop and testifying that this is not policy is altogether laughable."

Get the Story:
Lorraine White: We won't let Interior off the hook so easily (Indian Country Today 3/7)