From Indianz.com –

Connecticut newspaper says tribes deserve respect even if they are not recognized by the federal government:

The proposed rules were “significantly” changed, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy told a group of business leaders in Danbury Wednesday, and now are expected to effectively block attempts by the Schaghticokes in Kent to win federal recognition.
The revisions, announced by the BIA last Thursday, specify that for any petition to move forward it would need consent by all parties who were involved in earlier unsuccessful attempts.

Given that Connecticut, the state’s attorney general and the town of Kent all vigorously objected to federal recognition for the Schaghticokes — a designation approved in 2004 and then overturned in 2008 — any new effort would go nowhere.

Good news for the state. Not such good news for the Native Americans, who obtained their reservation by the General Assembly of the Colony of Connecticut in 1736. The original 2,500-acre reservation, one of the oldest in the country, was pared down in the 1800s and early 1900s to the present day steep, rocky 400 acres in Kent…

Get the Story:
Editorial: Still struggling with the Native American identity (The Danbury News-Times 5/29)