market; they've been doing this for years, and if we are required to do that, we will turn primarily to the tribal governments for their advice on how to proceed because, as I said, they know more about it than we do.

The CHAIRMAN. We'll, we don't have all the I's dotted and T's crossed, but I would hope that the Administration would support at least a framework of the direction of this bill.

Mr. GOVER. Well, I think we do in two respects. First of all, we think negotiated resolutions are most appropriate here; and, second, identifying a means for guaranteeing that the victims of torts are compensated is arrived at and the Administration shares those goals.

You know, one thing that I failed to mention before is we just don't know enough about some of these issues. We know that there are incidents taking place out there. We know that there are at least some circumstances where the victim of a tribal tort cannot be compensated. We don't know how often that happens as opposed to how often it is resolved appropriately. We know there are at least some circumstances where State taxes that have been determined to be lawful are not being collected. What we don't know is how big is that problem.

As you indicated, a lot of the numbers being thrown around are a little bit beyond my ability to believe, and what we really ought to do is spend some good time understanding the problem because I think that will get us a lot closer to a solution that the tribes, as well as the Administration and the States and everybody else involved in this issue, will find appropriate. But I'm a little bit afraid of legislating by anecdote, and we're sort of driving in the dark here on broad legislation when we really don't understand the scope of the problem.

Now, we would be happy to be charged with collecting information of this type and doing these sorts of surveys, and that is actually what is recommended in this HHS report is that the Bureau and IHS go out and do that sort of information-gathering and that information dispersal to the tribes. But we're not prepared at this point to sign on to the particulars of this bill, but we certainly are willing to work with it and work with you to find something we all agree on.

The CHAIRMAN. Okay, thank you.

Senator Inouye, do you have some questions?

Senator INOUYE. Just a few, sir.

Mr. Secretary, as you may be aware at this moment, tribal leaders throughout the land are gathering to organize and establish in the United States a bank of major proportions, a national bank.

Would you encourage the establishment of a major insurance company run by Indians for Indians?

Mr. GOVER. I'm trying to think-you know, this is one of those things where what I tell the tribes is that's none of our business. You guys do your thing. Certainly, if that is something that tribes want to go forward with, we would assist them in any way that's reasonable that we have the ability to do, and so I guess the answer is that we would support a tribal initiative of that sort.

Senator INOUYE. And you have-you would be willing to assist

Mr. GOVER. Yes; I should point out, again, tribes know more about that than the Bureau of Indian Affairs does. We may be of some marginal assistance, but they have more expertise than the Bureau of Indian Affairs does.

Senator INOUYE. Ms. Hoffman, I have been impressed with the services that your agency has provided over all these years.

Do you believe that this measure should structurally and legislatively include your service?

Ms. HOFFMAN. Yes; I do. I actually-I do. It's something that our agency believes in and we've been working with Indian tribes, and it would be something that we would be interested in pursuing. I guess, the short answer is yes.

Senator INOUYE. In the involvement that you have had so far was your service requested by the Indians?

Ms. HOFFMAN. In some instances, yes; in others, it was the Department of the Interior, and occasionally we've actually had Congress ask us to look into certain things. I should explain we don't go in unless we do have consensus on our services. Mediation doesn't work unless the parties, all of them want us.

Senator INOUYE. And would you say that your services have been successful in bringing about the results?

Ms. HOFFMAN. For the most part. The definition of a mediated result sometimes is sweet and sour and both sides-everybody around the table believes that they've been heard and they can live with the resolution. The jury is out on some of our projects because they're still going on, but I think for the most part if you were to talk to our colleagues and constituent groups, they would say, yes, they are relatively pleased with what we've been doing.

Senator INOUYE. Thank you.

Mr. Fagan, I must add that I am very much impressed with the enlightened approach that the State of Colorado has taken to dispute resolution. I would hope that other States would look upon your store as a model.

Could you provide this committee with a little memorandum on how this all began and the suggestions that you would make to other States because I am certain that other States will be calling upon us to find out how you did it?

Mr. FAGAN. Yes, sir; I would be happy to do that, and I appreciate your comments. I think our Governor, Governor Romer, has worked hard with the tribes to make things work out for everybody, and has taken that as a consistent approach. I'm not as familiar as Senator Campbell is with some of the more contentious issues like water development projects and whatnot, but I think in general we really work hard to have partnerships for our mutual benefit because that's the best long-term solution.

Senator INOUYE. Mr. Columbus, listening to you and your presentation and your response to questions I feel much assured that there is some room for agreement here. I think that if we all sit down and try to work this out, something will come out of this.

Mr. COLUMBUS. From your lips to God's ears, Senator. That would be a great result.

Senator INOUYE. I think we can work out something.

Mr. COLUMBUS. We would be very, very happy to work with you,

Senator INOUYE. Well, that is step number one.
Mr. COLUMBUS. There you go.

Senator INOUYE. I see your hand going up, Billy.

Mr. FRANK. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to comment on the Federal mediation.

In 1976 right after the United States v. Washington the tribes and the counties and the State used the Federal mediation, not on particular disputes but just the situation was very bad out there in 1976 after the bulk decision. And we started to put the bays and a lot of the neighbors' misunderstanding on net pins that the State had out in front of these houses along the bays, and Indian fishermen, as well as non-Indian fishermen, and all of this was coming to a boil, a boiling point. People didn't have a lot of information, and we brought in the Federal mediators and they did a great job. I mean, we're still continuing on with these forums within our bays and coves and a lot of creeks and tributaries that are running into the bays, but we're on a recovery. We're cleaning it up and doing a lot of positive things, so all of that works.

Senator INOUYE. So from your experience, Mr. Frank, you would be in favor of including the Federal agency as part of the law? Mr. FRANK. Yes; we need everybody's help.

Senator INOUYE. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Gorton.

Senator GORTON. Billy, you made no comment on the tort claim part of this bill.

Do you have any thoughts on it?

Mr. FRANK. On the what?

Senator GORTON. Having to do with torts and insurance and the like?

Mr. FRANK. Well, one of the things that we have to do is we have to somehow stay out of court, and, like you've read some of the language in the past U.S. Supreme Court decision, there's a big question mark out there always on Indian tribes and the sovereign right and what we do within our own country, in our own backyard. And, as you know, Senator, we've all tried to say let's take care of it ourselves, in our own backyard. We need tools to do that, we need the U.S. Congress to step up and try to give us the opportunity to settle our problems with the State of Washington or any other State, with the counties, with the local governments, the ports, the cities, the industry, the agriculture people, everyone that's on these water sheds and along these bays, private property citizens. We have a lot of issues out there, and there's a lot of misinformation going around about Indian people, that they're the bogeymen.

An example is private lands and shellfish—there is no shellfish on private lands. They've all been destroyed and they're gone. We won't even walk on the land, but that's an issue, and it's in the newspaper all the time. And that bogeyman, the Indian, is going to come onto your property.

Well, he don't want to go onto your property. What would he go on the property for? But these cases, all of a sudden they take on another thing and all of a sudden we're sitting in front of a judge, and I think that's wrong. I think we have to have some tools here at this level to allow us to settle a lot of our things. A lot of things

are not going to be settled overnight, but for the next 10 or 20 years, and 30 and 50 out, the tribes are going to look better and a lot of this—actually, we feel it in our own backyard, our children feel it; anything that we do together. We can do positive things together or we can do negative things together, but we feel the positive things that we do whether it's health programs, whether it's decisions that we work out in some type of an agreement. If it's compacts over there, that makes our day-compacts. We understand that the treaties that we signed, the peace treaties that we signed, are treaties. It allows us Indian commerce; it allows us to trade with our neighbors.

Now, we do understand that there are roads out there that have to be built, that there's traffic that is passing by. We don't need all that traffic to come into our stores or our gas stations, or our game and casinos. But we need to work together to understand that part of that traffic and part of these people out here pay their way. The U.S. Congress pays their way today, but it's not enough. We have more people out there that are starving, they don't have health benefits. We have a long ways to go, and I hope that this forum and to make this bill better and working with our Senator, Senator Gorton as well as all of our Congressional people, that we can sit down together and find a way to resolve anything that we have in front of us. There are emergency things happening everyday. We have forums to address those, and let's start doing it. We don't have time to sit and fight one another.

Thank you.

Senator GORTON. Mr. Chairman, just for the record the figures and statistics that Congressman Istook used in the earlier hearing came from the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and were the result of a survey, and some of them were more than half of the States in the mid-1990's.

The figures I used for the State of Washington $60 million in cigarette taxes came from the State Department of Revenue, and Mr. Frank testified quite negatively-and I tend to sympathize with him-on cigarette seizures.

Of course, in the absence of being able to enforce taxes in the regular fashion one of the ways the court said that it can be done by States is when they get good information, they simply seize contraband cigarettes on the highways that are bound for Indian reservations without taxes because in fact they are contraband, and there have been a significant number of those seizures on the highways in the State of Washington this year, and they create a great degree of unhappiness. Far better is the situation in which the taxes are collected just exactly as the taxes are collected on any other kind of taxation, and not in that episodic fashion, which, of course, hit some tribes and probably doesn't hit others, and I think that's what Mr. Columbus was talking about. Some States, as in New Mexico, may decide as a matter of State policy that they don't want to collect, don't want to impose them, for that matter, and I don't see any reason that we should interfere in that choice. But to say that when the Supreme Court of the United States has said that a tax is imposed that just begins negotiations over it is some

Mr. Fagan, does Colorado impose both a general retail sales tax and a State income tax?

Mr. FAGAN. Yes; we do, sir.

Senator GORTON. If an ordinary citizen of Colorado feels that they don't get enough in the way of services from Colorado for the taxes they pay, do you negotiate with them to lower their taxes on an individual basis?

Mr. FAGAN. No; but I'm not sure that that's a parallel situation. Senator GORTON. Well, it seems rather parallel to me.

Mr. Gover, you made so much of what you said I agree with it. You're very straight-forward with this, but one part of your opening statement seemed to me to be curious.

What services provided by States as a general matter through their taxpayers are unavailable to Indian citizens of those States? Don't the vast majority of Indian kids go to State schools?

Mr. GOVER. Yes; they do.

Senator GORTON. Aren't Indians entitled to whatever Welfare payments or public assistance payments that the State has for all other citizens?

Mr. GOVER. I believe that they are, but quite often they are not able to get them because the States take the attitude that you're on an Indian reservation; there's a BIA program for that, and they make it very difficult for an individual applicant, and I think that's one of the issues we have to look at.

Senator GORTON. I think it is too because I think that's clearly unconstitutional.

Mr. GOVER. Let me clarify my point, though. My statement actually assumed that the States do provide all of those services and was not an accusation that they do not. What I was saying is that I believe that on balance when you look at the amount of taxes that are drawn by the State out of the reservations, and compared to the amount of State services provided to the reservation, that the balance of that exchange strongly favors the States, and that I think that is a reason for-that's a subject that ought to be inquired because it helps to account for the depressed conditions of reservation economies. But I was not actually suggesting that the States do not provide services.

Senator GORTON. And I'm speaking about individuals. An individual citizen of the State is entitled to equality and treatment without regard to whether that individual is Indian or non-Indian. Is that not the case? This is just a general proposition.

Mr. GOVER. Yes.

Senator GORTON. Let me ask you I find some force behind your statement that certainly those tribes that have looked into insurance and have obtained insurance know more about it than the Bureau of Indian Affairs does.

What kind of role is applicable there? If we were do determine that we wanted to make certain that every tribe had tort claim insurance for the normal run of torts-automobile accidents and the like, the kind of liability policies that most of us have as individuals and that most business undertake-in your view would the best way to do that be that each individual tribe should look for, whether required not, its own insurance? I'm certain you don't