"If you didn't attend "You Heard the Fiction, Now Hear the Facts," a Chumash public meeting held on September 16, you missed an opportunity to listen to a tribal chairman, a law professor, two officials from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the executive director of a housing development organization provide the true facts about placing land into trust.

Each speaker brought his own unique point of view to a topic that has become a lightning rod in our community. Sam Cohen, our tribe's legal and government affairs liaison, said it best when he opened up the evening with: "There is nothing worse than fear - especially fear of the unknown."

We tried to assuage the fear of the unknown by providing the audience with as many details as possible about placing simple-fee land into federal trust - from a legal perspective, a tribal government perspective, an administrative perspective and a housing authority perspective."

Get the Story:
Vincent Armenta: Educating community about tribal issues (The Solvang Valley News 9/29)

More Opinions:
Editorial: Work for a strong, cohesive community (The Solvang Valley News 9/29)
Greg Simon: Vintners need to do a little rethinking (The Solvang Valley News 9/29)

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