Credit where credit is due

President Donald Trump announced that he had signed three bills "to support tribal sovereignty and native culture" in a tweet on Dec. 27.

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[I]n recent months, the president has acted on several issues that affect the Native American community. On Nov. 26 he created a task force to look into the crisis of missing and murdered women in Native American communities.

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The three bills include compensation to the Spokane tribe for the loss of their lands in the mid-1900s, reauthorization of funding for Native language programs and federal recognition of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Montana. For the Spokane, the compensation act comes more than half a century after the Grand Coulee Dam flooded more than 21,000 acres of their land. The bill orders the Bonneville Power Administration, an American federal agency based in the Pacific northwest, to pay the tribe $6 million per year for 10 years and $8 million each year afterwards in compensation for the losses of their land. However, the bill also prevents the Spokane from claiming a share of the hydropower revenues generated by the dam, which they were previously entitled to.

  The Hill

Of course there had to be a catch. The share of the power revenues could eventually come from private income if Trump/GOP succeed in privatizing all the operations they'd like to, but the land loss compensation will always come from tax payers. And the revenue share may well have amounted to more than $8 million a year. At any rate, the bill takes money away, so the actual compensation is going to be less than $8 million however you slice it.

Meanwhile, the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act, which became law in 2006 but expired in 2012, will be reauthorized, granting $13 million in funds to smaller groups of Native American students each year starting 2020 until 2024.