Associated Press
SEATTLE — The Bush administration has reversed a last-minute decision by the Clinton administration and refused recognition to the Duwamish Tribe, whose forebears include Chief Seattle.
Neal McCaleb, assistant Interior secretary for Indian Affairs, announced the decision Thursday.
Representatives of the 560 would-be tribal members were gearing up to appeal the decision.
"We’re at war," tribal chairwoman Cecile Hansen said Friday.
She’s a descendant of Chief Seattle, who was born in the 1780s and was leading the Duwamish and Suquamish people in 1851, when whites began settling the Puget Sound region. The Duwamish were the first tribe to sign the 1855 Point Elliott Treaty that ceded 54,000 acres here to the U.S. government.
Hansen said the tribe was working with four attorneys on the challenge.
The Clinton administration’s decision to recognize the tribe was made Jan. 19 — one day before President Bush was inaugurated. It reversed a 1996 rejection.
In 1996, government officials focused on the period between 1915 and 1925, maintaining that the tribe before 1915 was different than the modern petitioners, who date from 1925.
Duwamish officials, who have been pressing for federal recognition since 1979, submitted church records, oral histories, news accounts and other sources to cover the 10-year gap, offering family trees with color-coded bloodlines.
The recognition was placed on hold by a Bush moratorium — one of his first acts after he was sworn in — that suspended all Clinton administration rulings not yet been published in the Federal Register.
In a Wednesday statement, McCaleb said he found the petitioners had failed to satisfy three of seven mandatory criteria for federal recognition, which carries economic, political and social benefits including health care, education assistance and money for housing.
He said the would-be tribe failed to prove:
_They had been identified "on a substantially continuous basis as an American Indian entity."
_They had maintained a continuous community from historical times to the present.
_They had maintained political authority or influence on a substantially continuous basis since historical times.
The notice of final determination also said that because of the last-minute nature of the Clinton administration ruling, the former acting assistant secretary, Kevin Gover, "neither signed his recommended final determination nor the required three copies of the Federal Register notice before the change in administration"
Until such notices are published, "there is no completed agency action," the notice said.
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