US Bill Seeks First Native American Land Grab In 100 Years

Source: Telesur



Protesters demonstrate against the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux
reservation in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, Sept. 9, 2016. | Photo: Reuters

Published 19 September 2016

Two Republican congresspeople are seeking to pass a controversial bill through the U.S. House of Representatives that would seek the first land grab of Native American lands in 100 years, members of the Ute nation have warned.

The Utah Public Lands Initiative was proposed by Utah Congressperson Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz and seeks to “roll back federal policy to the late 1800's when Indian lands and resources were taken from tribal nations for the benefit of others,” the Ute Business Committee said in an article for the Salt Lake Tribune Saturday.

Bishop and Chaffetz will present the bill to the House in few weeks, and if passed it would see 18 million acres of public lands in Eastern Utah downgraded from protected lands and turned into oil and gas drilling zones that are exempted from environmental protections, Think Progress reported earlier this year when the bill was unveiled.

“The actions of Bishop and Chaffetz would seek to divest the Ute Indian Tribe of their ancestral homelands,” the committee added while also bringing back “failed policies of tribal land dispossession that have had a devastating and lasting impact upon tribal nations for the past century.”

Read more: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/US-Bill-Seeks-First-Native-American-Land-Grab-in-100-Years-20160919-0029.html