State's tribes have waited long enough

Editor's note: Beginning Monday, June 15, 2009, editorial writers' columns will appear only in The Virginian-Pilot newspaper. Read more about this decision.

Six of Virginia's Indian tribes may - finally - get the federal recognition that should have been theirs decades ago.

The House of Representatives this week passed a measure granting the six tribes and the Lumbee in North Carolina the long-sought designation. It would open up the possibility of hundreds of millions in federal dollars for housing, education and health benefits.

The issue now shifts to the U.S. Senate, where a version of the bill is being sponsored by Sen. Jim Webb, the Virginia Democrat. Similar legislation has reached the same point before, but the momentum is stronger this time around. Earlier this year, Webb's aides took staff members of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on tours of tribal grounds in the commonwealth. Webb has discussed the issue with the committee chair, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota. And late last year, the Senate held hearings on the issue, before time ran out in that congressional session.

The financial benefits are not the only reason the 4,200 members of the tribes - the Eastern Chickahominy, Chickahominy, Upper Mattaponi, Rappahannock, Monacan and Nansemond - want the federal designation. Wayne Adkins, a Chickahominy member, says the move would be a source of pride; elevate the state groups to the same status as 562 other Native American tribes around the country; and give them a stronger claim to recover the remains of members taken to universities and museums.

"A lot of us would like those remains reburied," Adkins told me late Thursday. "You can't put a dollar figure on that."

Webb's office says, as an example, that the Smithsonian holds many remains of Virginia Indians, but it's not required to return the remains to tribes that are not federally recognized. (The museum shouldn't have to be asked to do what's right.)

There's one more reason the commonwealth tribes deserve congressional approval: justice.

Virginia's tribes should be at the head of the line for federal recognition, not the back. It is in the commonwealth where Jamestown was founded more than 400 years ago, and where Europeans got a foothold on the continent. It is the commonwealth where tribes had treaties from the 1600s with the English king, as represented by the governor of the Virginia colony. And it is the commonwealth where, in the early- to mid-1900s, state officials did their best to obliterate the name "Indians" in birth, marriage and death certificates, as part of the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. Because records were altered, the tribes have had a difficult time proving their lineage to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. So the sponsorship of the bills by Webb - and Rep. Jim Moran, D-Alexandria, in the House - helps rectify previous sins by state government.

The Virginia tribes also removed one potential sticking point: They've agreed not to open gaming centers on tribal lands, even though more than 200 tribes across the country already sponsor gambling. The ban was written into the legislation.

It's absurd that congressmen would crack down on newly recognized tribes, especially in states that sponsor the lottery and allow horse racing. Rep. Frank Wolf, of northern Virginia, has long been an outspoken opponent of gambling.

Though unfair, Adkins said, it's a small concession. "We felt we had to do that to get some movement," he noted. The latest push by Virginia tribes to obtain federal recognition started in 1999, after the General Assembly passed a resolution urging Congress to do so.

It's way overdue. The state's tribes have waited long enough.

Roger Chesley is associate editor of The Pilot's editorial page. Reach him at (757) 446-2329 or roger.chesley@pilotonline.com.