Committee kills bill to give tribes free parks access

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — A South Dakota House committee has killed a proposal to grant tribal members and their families free access to the state’s parks and recreation areas and to provide free licenses to hunt and fish on non-tribal land. The State Affairs Committee considered legislation Monday (Feb. 7, 2022) offered by Rep. Shawn Bordeaux, a member of he Rosebud Sioux Tribe, who said he got the idea from similar legislation in Minnesota. The committee merged Bordeaux’s two proposals into one bill and voted 11-2 to kill it. Bordeaux says tribal governments got “raked over the coals” when the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1970s decided the U.S. government owed them $105 million for taking the Black Hills, the Mission Democrat said.