WASHINGTON (By Billy
House, Arizona Republic) December 5, 2005
The headline in August read: "Tribes getting land back after 90 years."
For the people of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, whose reservation is 189 miles west of Phoenix, the return of their ancestral La Paz lands would be celebrated with a dedication of blessings, speeches and dances at a remote desert site.
For Rep. Raul Grijalva, a two-term Democrat from Tucson, the first celebration came three weeks earlier when his bill to restore the lands was signed into law by President Bush. Grijalva had worked for two years to give back 15,375 acres taken in 1915 by President Wilson, something the late Sen. Barry Goldwater had twice attempted and failed to do.
In an average two-year congressional session there are more than 10,700 bills or resolutions introduced. About 23 percent are passed in either the House or the Senate, and less than 5 percent are signed into law. This year, the opening year of the current session, Arizona representatives and senators introduced 167 bills, have gotten 20 passed, and have seen just two signed into law.
One was an annual foreign-operations spending bill.
The other was Grijalva's bill, House Resolution 794.
The story of this bill illustrates the uphill battle most legislation
faces, the delicate art of consensus building needed to get a measure
passed, and, in the end, how government sometimes does serve the people
who send elected officials to Washington.
At their invitation, Grijalva attended the tribes' celebration in the
desert, "probably one of the most emotional things I've seen in a long
time.
"I think that sometimes when we do legislation we think in the
abstract," he said last week, "and we function in the abstract. But then
afterward, when you feel and when you sense and when you see the impact,
you go, 'OK, this was a very good thing.' "
Land taken
Grijalva came to Congress in early 2003. But it was while campaigning the year before that he first met with representatives of the Colorado River Indian Tribes.They wanted to talk about an isolated 25-square mile tract of desert called "La Paz Lands," near the California-Arizona line. They came armed with a trail of documents, old Interior Department hearings and records, to tell their story.
Grijalva heard how the land was originally the southern part of the tribes' 270,000-acre reservation in western Arizona along the Colorado River. The reservation extends across the river into California, and is home to 3,600 members of the Navajo, Chemehuevi, Hopi and Mohave tribes.
The reservation was created in 1865 by President Lincoln a month before his assassination. A few years later the government decided to extend the southern boundary to prevent non-Indian encroachment. Under the administration of President Grant, a survey of these "La Paz," or "The Peace," lands was done, and the land was attached to the reservation by presidential order in 1876.
Over the years that followed, there was frequent conflict between the tribes and mining companies seeking minerals on the land.
By 1915 the continuing friction led to President Wilson's order to remove the La Paz section. The reason given was a boundary error in the survey. The tribes received no compensation for the land.
The tribes fought to get the land back, including letter-writing campaigns over the decades to government officials. Later, research compiled by the Interior Department showed there was no boundary error.
But the department argued for several decades that it did not have the authority to overturn a presidential order. Only Congress or the president could do that.
Grijalva decided the tribes' request was valid. In July 2003 he introduced a bill (then called House Resolution), to return the land. It was just his second bill in Congress.
The freshman congressman was optimistic, and later he realized, very naοve. He assumed that merit alone would carry the bill through committees, Congress and to the President.
Goldwater's bills
Grijalva was the second Arizona representative to introduce a bill to return the land. The first was Sen. Barry Goldwater.Goldwater and former Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., introduced bipartisan bills in 1980 and 1981 to restore the La Paz Lands to the tribes. Testifying in 1982 before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Goldwater cited his family's own ties to the land.
"You see, I feel very close to this because my grandfather settled in La Paz in 1860," he said. "At that time there was no question it was Indian land. The Indians were more numerous than non-Indians."
Despite Goldwater's efforts, neither of the bills won Senate approval. The problem was concerns over how water rights would be addressed.
There was even less support in the U.S. House. Former Rep. Bob Stump, R-Ariz., whose district included the reservation, showed little interest when approached by the tribes through the late 1990s. Stump decided not to seek re-election in 2002 after 13 terms in Congress.
Grijalva was elected in 2002 and took over part of Stump's old district, which included the reservation.
Tribal leaders saw an opening.
A new bill
Once Grijalva decided to introduce a bill, he and tribal representatives began reaching out to other members of Congress. Grijalva knew that a Democrat in a Republican-dominated House would need all the help he could find.By July, when he formally introduced the bill, he had the support of Arizona GOP Reps. J.D. Hayworth, Rick Renzi, and Jeff Flake, and Arizona Democratic Rep. Ed Pastor as co-sponsors. Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., would soon join them.
The trick was in consensus building, a process that Grijalva describes as "a bit like making sausage." Grijalva let it be known the tribe was willing to make some concessions. Perhaps just as important, he assured his fellow Arizona lawmakers the bill didn't require any government spending.
The support of Hayworth, Flake and Renzi was especially important because they, along with Grijalva, sat on the House Resources Committee. That panel would have the first look at the bill and determine whether it should advance.
Later that summer, Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., scheduled the first hearing on the bill for April 21, 2004.
Almost immediately, Grijalva began to experience the give-and-take politics of passing a bill.
Months before the hearing, Grijalva was approached by a House Resources Committee staff member who told him the deal might not happen if the land return included gaming rights.
Grijalva's first reaction was to fight. He thought of gaming as a sovereignty issue for the tribes and did not feel comfortable giving that right away while returning the land. But after tribal leaders told Grijalva that getting the land back was more important, he agreed to leave gaming rights out.
The next snag involved two parcels totaling 840 acres created within the La Paz Lands along Interstate 10 as state trust land.
Initially, the tribes wanted these parcels included in the transfer. But they agreed to compromise. The state would continue to have access along I-10.
Then came a question of public access for hunting and fishing. The bill made no provision.
And Grijalva had also not addressed the old question of water rights.
Although the tribes would have preferred to get the La Paz lands back with no strings attached, they agreed not to demand federally reserved Colorado River water rights. But they would gain jurisdiction over patrolling and licensing hunting and fishing.
Grijalva also began hearing that some nearby communities were afraid the land deal would hem them in and limit development along I-10.
Grijalva realized he might have prevented all this had he spent more time beforehand consulting with parties potentially affected by his bill. But now he had to scramble, or as he put it, "to backtrack after the fact." He did and community opposition dissipated.
Grijalva tried to resolve all issues before the bill's first hearing in April 2004. But in the hearing, new concerns were raised by the federal government.
The Bush administration supported "the objective of the bill," said Michael Olsen, the Interior Department's then-counselor to the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs. But Olsen warned that the status of current rights of way and mining leases needed to be addressed.
While I-10 was a perpetual right of way, along with three oil and gas pipelines, Olsen said other rights of way had been establishedand the Bureau of Land Management had issued seven mining contracts.
Despite the questions, Grijalva felt good that the Interior Department supported giving the land back. Sometimes consensus building is seeing the glass half full.
House approval
By September 2004, Grijalva had discussed the right of way and lease issues with the tribes and gotten their approval to let them stand.On Sept. 15, 2004, Pombo's Resources Committee approved the bill's language.
On that same day Grijalva's bill was unanimously voted out of committee. On Sept. 28, 2004, Grijalva's bill was passed in a voice vote by the entire House.
The swiftness of the floor action caught Grijalva by surprise. He had come prepared with a speech, but was never asked to make his case. Sensing how he felt, a more senior Democrat leaned over and told him to "just take it (passage) and not look a gift horse in the mouth."
Grijalva had no time to celebrate. With the national election just five weeks off, he needed to get his bill through the Senate quickly.
But by mid-October the bill was clearly stalled in the Senate. And then time ran out.
Grijalva learned then that no matter how much merit or uncontroversial a piece of legislation may be, rank-and-file lawmakers are not in control of the legislative docket. As everyone's attention turned to the election, Grijalva could only watch his bill die as Congress ended its session.
Second attempt
Grijalva waited through the election and the arrival of the new Congress this year. On Feb. 14, he reintroduced his bill. Having already received a thorough going-over months earlier, the bill was quickly passed by the House on April 12 .The next day the bill was sent to the Senate where McCain, the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, was waiting.
McCain, as well as Arizona's junior senator, Republican Jon Kyl, were both supporters of Grijalva's reworked bill.
Grijalva could finally see the end of the long and winding road.
On July 26, McCain's committee unanimously approved Grijalva's bill. That same day it was sent to the Senate and passed.
Six days later, President Bush signed the bill into law, officially returning the land to the tribes.
In Arizona, tribal Chairman Daniel Eddy Jr., said, "It is the fair and right thing for the federal government to do."
Hard lessons
Grijalva can now joke that he always thought his first successful bill would be something simpler, "like reforming the whole public education system." But he's proud to have helped return the land.At the tribes' celebration, tribal members distributed T-shirts with words imprinted that summed up their struggle: "Victory 1915-2005 - La Paz Lands Restored."
The tribes have not decided how the land will be used, but tribal Attorney General Eric Shepard said any plan will benefit all 3,600 tribal members.
Through it all, Grijalva said his experience underscored for him the general frustration that he believes the American public has "in the almost excruciating slow pace" of congressional action.
"But things get done," he said.
"There are fairness issues, that kind of transcend the party labels, and the conservative-liberal designations. This was one of them."
