Montana lawmaker wants to revisit idea of reservations

Source: Associated Press

Montana lawmaker wants to revisit idea of reservations

By AMY BETH HANSON
January 7, 2023

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A white state lawmaker in Montana is questioning whether land set aside long ago for Native Americans should exist anymore.

Republican Sen. Keith Regier is proposing asking Congress to study alternatives to reservations. The measure, submitted this week and riddled with racial stereotypes, is unlikely to pass and would have no practical effect if it did. But it’s causing tensions to surface at the Republican-controlled Montana Legislature that kicked off this week.

Native American lawmakers say they’re now spending time responding to the proposed resolution rather than focusing on their own legislative priorities, including extending the state’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Task Force for another two years, creating a grant program to train community-based groups to search for missing people and encouraging the state to determine the economic impact of reservations on the state’s economy.

“I hate spending energy and time on this kind of stuff because I feel like it sidetracks us,” state Sen. Shane Morigeau, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, said Thursday. “But at the same time, it clearly signals to me that we have a lot of educational work to do in this state.”

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/politics-new-mexico-state-government-montana-18a03c0ddfd91164d80d9b67390a8cce