Amelia Schafer
ICT
A bipartisan bill aimed at improving energy costs and creating new jobs includes certain provisions tribal leaders warn would undermine tribal sovereignty and weaken federal protections.
The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act or S. 5653, aims to fast track the development of pipelines, energy projects and data centers on public lands by proposing changes to the regulatory process in place for granting and processing project permits.
Part of the fast tracking process would mean diminishing tribal nations’ ability to engage in meaningful consultation over projects involving their homelands and sacred or religious sites.
“It says that it’s addressing the affordability and jobs issue, but actually, it just means bigger infrastructure projects for the wealthy,” Jodi Archambault, Hunkpapa and Oglala Lakota and a policy analyst told ICT. “This bill guts many of the provisions in the Clean Water Act, in the Endangered Species Act, all throughout NEPA, the National Historic Preservation Act, it takes away the power of the tribes to care and protect the places that are very important to us.”
The senate is expected to vote on the bill Monday night.
Title III of the bill includes proposed changes to Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. The proposed changes would strip tribes of their ability to voice concerns over project impacts on cultural and religious sites by allowing federal agencies to choose not to consult with tribes, a protection guaranteed under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act.
Further, the proposed changes would limit a tribe’s options to seek legal action if a project does violate its rights.
The bill proposes shortening the review process timeline for projects and allowing agencies to only need to consider the impacts of mining activities on federal land even if a project covers state and private lands.
“It’s a very dangerous bill,” Archambault said. “It basically just speeds everything up and it locks everybody into place in a very short window of time. And so it again, this goes back to who profits from these big projects.”
While the bill proposes changes to landmark resolutions such as the Clean Water Act and The Endangered Species Act, some of the most concerning changes come from proposed changes to Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, leaders said.
“These proposed changes violate treaty and trust obligations,” said Mark Macarro, President of the National Congress of American Indians during the organization’s annual conference on Oct. 19.
Section 106 has long served as a key protection for tribes in protecting lands not under their current jurisdiction, specifically for tribes who have been relocated from their homelands and no longer hold direct jurisdiction over sites.
“This change is extremely disruptive and could literally be destructive,” Macarro, a citizen of the Pechanga Band of Indians, said. “In the end, the one thing that needs to be done at the moment, is that there needs to be a denial of this pending legislation draft that’s there right now.”
National environmental organizations, the Native American Rights Fund and National Congress of American Indians have all spoken out against the bill, warning if implemented, these changes could have dire environmental consequences.
Bill revisions on Saturday only addressed a small number of tribal leaders’ concerns, according to a Nov. 8 release from 11 tribal advocacy groups.
“Despite claims that the revised legislation responds to Tribal concerns, the proposed changes to Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act in Title III of BAAJA continue to fundamentally undermine Tribal sovereignty, weaken longstanding federal protections, fail to ensure meaningful government-to-government Tribal consultation, and threaten sacred sites and cultural resources,” the joint release said.
Representatives such as Rep. Melaine Stansbury, D- New Mexico, and Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kansas, and a citizen of the Ho-Chunk Nation, urged other Senators to join them in voting no on the bill and stand in solidarity with tribal leaders.
“There were changes made in response to some of the opposition that are just completely non-negotiable that would essentially take away the ability of tribes to define their cultural sites, [and] defend them in a court or law,” Stansbury said in a post Monday morning. “I appreciate that our colleagues are trying to get something big and historic done but it cannot be at the expense of our communities.”
