Property owners want say in pact

DAVENPORT, Wash. – For more than 60 years, the Spokane Tribe has been seeking compensation for the land it lost when the Grand Coulee Dam was built.

It has waited while wars and political shifts put the tribe’s issues on a back burner. When Congress raised concerns about the deficit, the tribe agreed to take less money in exchange for a shift in management over the land it was promised in 1881.

“We want to be good neighbors,” said tribal Chairman Greg Abrahamson. “We want to enhance” the land.

But a possible settlement the U.S. House of Representatives approved without debate this summer has some Lincoln County officials and landowners angry that they weren’t consulted about possible changes to the management of the south shore of Lake Roosevelt.

Congress needs to know “there’s some concern here,” Lincoln County Commission Chairman Ted Hopkins told members of U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris’ staff during a special meeting Monday. “We want to be part of the process.”

Lincoln County Attorney Ron Shepherd said he worries about who will have jurisdiction over any future crimes that occur on the land. Landowners who aren’t part of the tribe said they worry about losing rights and access to the lake.

At issue is land on the south bank of the Spokane River, which was promised to the tribe in an 1881 federal order as a recognition that the river was key to their way of life and heritage, tribal attorney Howard Funke said. In many other Indian treaties, a tribe was only given rights to the midpoint of a stream.

“The Spokane tribe owns the beds and banks of the Spokane River” in that area, Funke said. It’s the management of that land that would change under the agreement.

But in 1940 when Grand Coulee dam was finished, management of the land was taken over by the Bureau of Reclamation when the Lake Roosevelt reservoir flooded tribal lands. That reservoir “wiped out” their society by cutting off fishing rights, flooding farms, orchards and schools, Funke said. While some white communities in the path of the reservoir were rebuilt elsewhere, the Spokanes were paid $4,700.

In 1941, tribal members went to Washington, D.C., to negotiate for fair compensation. They were in the capital when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and were told the nation had more important concerns, Abrahamson said. The tribe agreed, and waited.

They waited through World War II, Korea and Vietnam. When their neighbors, the Colville Confederated Tribes, filed a lawsuit then negotiated a financial settlement, the Spokanes agreed to stay out of it, even though the claims are similar, to avoid complicating that agreement.

A settlement with the Colvilles was reached and passed by Congress in 1994 with the help of then-House Speaker Tom Foley, and the Spokanes hoped his office would put together a similar agreement for them. But Foley lost re-election to Republican George Nethercutt that year, and the new congressman started over.

At Nethercutt’s urging, the tribe didn’t sue, but asked for a congressional settlement similar to the Colvilles’. For nine years, Nethercutt’s staff worked on a proposal that was 39 percent of the settlement the Colvilles got, because the land they lost is roughly 39 percent of what the Colvilles lost to the reservoir.

When other members of Congress balked at the price tag in view of the federal deficit, the Spokanes offered to take 29 percent of what the Colvilles got – about $64 million – if Congress would shift the management authority from the Bureau of Reclamation to the Bureau of Indian Affairs for the land along what’s known as the Spokane Arm of Lake Roosevelt, below Little Falls Dam. That land has been held in trust for the tribe.

Day-to-day management would remain with the National Park Service, but the tribe would have more say on the way it was managed.

“It’s not like the tribe is saying ‘We’re going to serve it up for our own purposes,’ ” Funke said.

Last year, though, Nethercutt gave up his House seat in an unsuccessful run for the Senate, and his successor, McMorris, who kept many of Nethercutt’s staff, inherited the issue. McMorris’ staff worked out many of the details with federal agencies and the tribe, but legislative director Jack Silzell admitted they dropped the ball in talking with local officials and landowners.

There could be some advantages to the shift, commissioners speculated. While the Park Service severely restricts private docks on the lake, the tribe might be willing to allow more of them.

“The tribe will not deny shoreline access,” Funke said.

But commissioners can only speculate, because, as Hopkins pointed out several times, they weren’t consulted.

Some residents questioned the amount of the payout. One suggested the tribe should only be paid what the land was worth in 1940, which he thought was about 15 cents an acre. Another suggested land values will go down because the tribe could have more authority.

But most were primarily suspicious of the shift in authority and worried that the deal made it this far – approved by the House, awaiting a vote in the Senate – without their input. Although a memorandum of understanding must be worked out to cover the management of the land, neither the county nor its residents are guaranteed to be part of that.

“We just don’t want our rights taken away from us,” county resident Dick Miller said.

Abrahamson disputed the suggestion that land values will go down and said the tribe is willing to discuss everything connected to the transfer.

“We’re here to be friendly,” he said. “Every entity the tribe has dealt with, we’ve come up with an agreement.”