Indian trust fund push renews

A five-year effort to pump millions of extra dollars into trust funds for two American Indian tribes has been renewed by South Dakota’s congressional delegation.

U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., introduced a bill this week that would add a combined $132 million to trust funds for the Lower Brule and Crow Creek Sioux tribes. The tribes are located across the Missouri River from each other in central South Dakota.

U.S. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., is the Senate bill’s lone co-sponsor. U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., introduced a House version of the bill this week, but the text of her bill was not yet available Thursday.

The legislative effort to raise the amounts in the trust funds dates to 2004. Boyd Gourneau, vice chairman of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, said in a Thursday interview that he is “cautiously optimistic” about the newest version of the legislation.

“We’ve always been optimistic the last four times we’ve tried,” he said, “but it seems like we get to the end, and something happens.”

The existing trust funds are capped at $28 million for Crow Creek and $39 million for Lower Brule. The new legislation would raise Crow Creek’s fund to $69 million and Lower Brule’s to $130 million.

The trust funds were created during the 1990s as additional compensation for tribal land inundated decades earlier by the construction of Missouri River dams. Congress authorized the tribes to withdraw interest from the funds for schools, health care facilities, water systems, recreational facilities and “such other projects and programs for the educational, social welfare, economic development and cultural preservation of the tribe as the tribe considers to be appropriate.”

Other tribes along the river received similar trust funds. In 2004, Crow Creek and Lower Brule claimed that their compensation was unfairly low in comparison to the other tribes. The disparity resulted from inconsistency in the methods used by the government to determine the compensation amounts, the tribes said.

Herseth Sandlin repeated that claim Tuesday as she introduced the new legislation.

“Regrettably, the compensation amounts varied between separate but similarly-situated tribes along the Missouri River,” she said, according to the Congressional Record. “The result was unfair and inadequate compensation trust funds for Lower Brule and Crow Creek, and therefore, Congress should revisit the compensation levels provided to these tribes in the 1990s.”

The first legislative attempt to raise the trust fund amounts passed the Senate in 2004, but it was never acted on by the House. Subsequent legislation has received committee hearings and amendments but has not met with success in either chamber of Congress.

Julianne Fisher, of Sen. Johnson’s office, said in an e-mailed response to Daily Republic questions that the tribes requested the re-introduction of the bill.

“Due to its success in the past of getting out of the Senate, of course, Senator Johnson thinks that there is a chance for success this time,” Fisher said. “That’s why he introduced it and will do what he can to see the legislation through.”

The new legislation, besides calling for increased amounts in the trust funds, also says the new money is to be considered “full and final compensation” and adds that the tribes “shall release any further claim for compensation.” Those provisions address concerns voiced by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who said during a 2006 committee hearing that the tribes appeared to be making their “third or fourth trip to the trough.”

Past efforts to increase the trust fund amounts never met with a budgetary and economic climate as dire as the one currently hovering over Washington, D.C., and Gourneau admitted that tough economic times could doom the legislation this year.

“We’ll see what kind of wherewithal our delegation has,” he said.

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