Opinion: Fleischmann’s Cherokee Lands Act passes U.S. House for fourth time, but will Senate act?

Staff File Photo By Ben Benton / The Chota Memorial is about 12 miles south of the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum in Vonore, Tenn, and is among sites that are the subject of a congressional bill that seeks to return 76 acres of ancestral land to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
Staff File Photo By Ben Benton / The Chota Memorial is about 12 miles south of the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum in Vonore, Tenn, and is among sites that are the subject of a congressional bill that seeks to return 76 acres of ancestral land to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

Will the fourth time be the charm?

For three consecutive sessions of Congress, the U.S. House has passed U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann's Eastern Band of Cherokee Historic Lands Act, which would return 76.1 acres of land along the Little Tennessee River and Tellico Reservoir in Monroe County to the Eastern Band of Cherokee.

On Tuesday, the Republican-led House passed it during the 118th Congress on a unanimous voice vote.

But since Fleischmann first introduced the bill in 2015, the U.S. Senate has been the sticking point. The bill has not drawn a sponsor in the Senate from either side of the aisle.

"I hope my colleagues in the Senate recognize the crucial importance of returning and preserving this sacred land and act quickly to send the bill to President Biden for his signature," the congressman said in a statement.

The area in question is where the Eastern Band of Cherokee honored the birth and life of Sequoyah, an influential Native American leader of the late 18th and early 19th century. The land includes the Tanasi Memorial, Chota Memorial, Sequoyah Museum and areas in which administrative support can be offered for the properties.

Returning the land to the Cherokee keeps a promise the Tennessee Valley Authority made to the tribe when adjacent land was used to complete the Tellico Dam in 1979, Fleischmann said.

TVA, according to United Press International archives, bought 22,000 acres to build the dam in the 1960s and 1970s for $4.7 million through its powers of eminent domain.

Max Ramsey worked on the planning and impact of the dam for TVA in the 1960s and 1970s and later became chairman of the board of the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum, so he had a unique perspective on communication between the federal utility and the tribe.

"When TVA was being developed," he told The Tennessee Magazine in 2016, "it was understood by TVA that one day the tribe would seek to have some of those Tellico lands returned to them."

Fleischmann said Cherokee tribal leaders approached him about the bill in 2015, saying a promise had been made to them.

"I researched this," he said at the time, "they were absolutely right and even the promise breakers were very honest with me about the facts, so the facts were never in dispute. There's no question that the 76 acres in Tanasi were promised to the Cherokee a long time ago, and that promise was unfulfilled."

The bill passed the House during the 115th Congress, 383-2; passed during the 116th Congress unanimously by voice vote; and passed the 117th Congress, 407-16.

We hope the bill finds traction in the Senate this time around.

Upcoming Events