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<h1 id="reader-title">US Bill Seeks First Native American Land
Grab in 100 Years</h1>
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<p>September 19, 2016 <font color="#ff0000"><i>(doubt it
is either the first or the only - ed)</i></font><br>
</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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 1800s 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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>“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.” </p>
<p>The bill proposes to make more than 100,000 acres of
the Ute reservation lands for the state of Utah. “This
modern day Indian land grab cannot be allowed to stand,”
the committee argued. </p>
<p>The nation further slammed the legislators for utterly
failing to consult and work with leaders of the Native
American community in drafting such a bill when it
proposes taking away more than 26 percent of its lands.
</p>
<p>“Representing more than a quarter of these eastern Utah
lands, the tribe should have been a major participant in
the development of any bill to address problems in
federal land management. We were not,” the committee
warned in their article. </p>
<p>The news comes as more than 100 Indigenous groups have
been organizing major mobilizations against the Dakota
Access pipeline which sparked a wave of international
solidarity. </p>
<p>The US$3.8 billion pipeline would carry shale from the
Bakken oil region in North Dakota to oil refineries on
the Gulf Coast. </p>
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<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
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San Francisco, CA 94110
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