<b>Artman nominated to BIA top post</b>

The White House announced Aug. 1 that President Bush will nominate Carl Joseph Artman as assistant secretary for Indian affairs at the Interior Department, where he will lead the BIA if confirmed by the Senate.

Artman’s confirmation would make good on a pledge by newly installed Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne to fill the post that has been vacant since February 2005.

Artman is a member of the Oneida Indian Nation of Wisconsin and has served it as chief counsel. During his tenure, he regularly represented the tribe in Washington. He is currently an associate solicitor for Indian affairs within Interior.

The National Congress of American Indians welcomed Artman’s nomination. Joe Garcia, the NCAI president, said the appointment will reaffirm a working relationship between Indian country and Interior for the remainder of the Bush presidency.

Confirmation hearings are likely to occur after the traditional recess of Congress in August, according to NCAI.

<b>Tribal Labor Relations Act gets a late hearing</b>

Though the decision at issue is still under appeal in the courts, the House of Represen-tatives set out to clarify tribal standing under the National Labor Relations Act in a July 20 oversight hearing of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

More than two years ago, in 2004, the National Labor Relations Board jolted Indian country with a decision subjecting the wholly owned casino of a tribe on tribal lands to the NLRA. The NLRA exempts the United States, states and their subdivisions from its definition of “employer,” meaning the NLRB had no jurisdiction over their employment practices. Before 2004, board decisions held that tribal enterprises on tribal lands are also government entities, exempting them too from the NLRA definition of employer.

In effect, the 2004 ruling encouraged union organizing of tribal casino employees, a step staunchly resisted by tribes as an infringement on sovereignty and self-governance – as well as a threat to gaming, given that states might now demand labor provisions in Indian Gaming Regulatory Act compacts. The tribe in the case is the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians in California, and the labor board’s ruling is known throughout Indian country as the San Manuel decision.

The decision “abandoned 40 years of precedent,” in the words of Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, who chaired the meeting in the absence of Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., the regular committee chairman. From the opening gavel, Johnson threw the support of the committee’s anti-regulatory Republican majority to Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., sponsor of a bill to correct the board’s “misinterpretation” by spelling out the equivalent sovereignty of tribes with other sovereigns under the act.

Ron Johnson, assistant secretary and treasurer of the Prairie Island Indian Community in Minnesota, testified that Hayworth’s bill, House Bill 16, would simply restore the status quo without extending a new status or rights to tribes. He insisted that Prairie Island, along with many other tribes, has employment protections in place that make NLRB oversight superfluous. “Our tribe understands that we depend on the efforts of all of our employees for the tribe’s growth and well-being, and we have already implemented policies and procedures to promote the fair treatment of all of our employees. Additional federal regulation is not warranted and could unnecessarily increase labor costs.”

Joe Garcia, president of the National Congress of American Indians, spoke favorably of labor unions but added that their standing in a tribal enterprise is for sovereign tribes to decide. Tribal policies “must come from within the tribe’s government, rather than being imposed from the outside,” Garcia said.

He reviewed the likely problems of NLRB interference in the attributes of tribal sovereignty, including the prospect of union “discord” in governance and elections where a majority of tribal employees are also tribal members.

Rep. Rob Andrews, D-N.J., responded by noting at several points that government rights are supposed to end where individual rights begin.

It is late in the legislative year, especially this election year, for an oversight hearing. The July 20 oversight hearing adjourned without a vote, raising doubt as to whether H.R. 16 can be voted out of committee to the House floor by the session’s end.