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U.S. House votes 407-16 to return Cherokee lands, but no one takes up the idea in the Senate

Staff file photo by Ben Benton / The Tanasi Memorial is located about 12 miles south of the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum in Vonore, Tenn. Tanasi, the state of Tennessee's namesake, is one of two principal Cherokee town sites that are among the subjects of a bill in Congress that seeks to return 76 acres of ancestral land in Monroe County to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. The actual town site is about 300 yards west of this marker.
Staff file photo by Ben Benton / The Tanasi Memorial is located about 12 miles south of the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum in Vonore, Tenn. Tanasi, the state of Tennessee's namesake, is one of two principal Cherokee town sites that are among the subjects of a bill in Congress that seeks to return 76 acres of ancestral land in Monroe County to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. The actual town site is about 300 yards west of this marker. Staff file photo by Ben Benton / The Tanasi Memorial is located about 12 miles south of the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum in Vonore, Tenn. Tanasi, the state of Tennessee's namesake, is one of two principal Cherokee town sites that are among the subjects of a bill in Congress that seeks to return 76 acres of ancestral land in Monroe County to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. The actual town site is about 300 yards west of this marker.

By Ben Benton 6 min read

For the third time since its original introduction in 2015, a bill seeking to keep a promise to return 76 acres of Cherokee homeland in East Tennessee to its people passed out of the U.S. House and is headed for the U.S. Senate.

“Today, for the third Congress in a row, the House in a wide bipartisan vote passed my bill to return 76 acres of sacred land in Monroe County to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, righting a terrible wrong when their land was forcibly taken from them by the federal government,” U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Ooltewah, said this week in a news release.

The bill passed the House 407-16 with eight members not voting, records show.

The bill stipulates gambling operations cannot be established on the land, and any shoreline work would be subject to TVA approval.

Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Principal Chief Richard G. Sneed applauded the House’s passage Tuesday of the bill and its importance to Cherokee history and one of the tribe’s greatest leaders.