WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs (SCIA), praised the Senate’s passage of S. 2959, a bill to amend the White Mountain Apache Tribe Water Rights Quantification Act of 2010 to clarify the use of amounts in the WMAT Settlement Fund; and H.R. 2733, the Nevada Native Nations Land Act.
S. 2959 was sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ). It passed the SCIA on Sept. 7, 2016. It will now go the House of Representatives.
H.R. 2733 would convey the following lands to be held in trust by the United States for the benefit of:
· the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe of the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation, approximately 19,094 acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land;
· the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation, approximately 82 acres of Forest Service land;
· the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, approximately 941 acres of BLM land;
· the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, approximately 13,434 acres of BLM land;
· the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, approximately 6,357 acres of BLM land; and
· the Duckwater Shoshone Tribe approximately 31,269 acres of BLM land.
H.R. 2733 is identical in text to S. 1436, which passed the SCIA on Oct. 21, 2015 and passed the Senate on April 14, 2016. H.R. 2733 will now go to the president for his signature.
“These two bills represent the Senate’s commitment to listen to Indian Country and to act,” said Chairman Barrasso. “I urge the House of Representatives to take up the White Mountain Apache legislation expeditiously so that the president can sign both of these bills into law soon.”
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