On Professor says 1829 census shows Ho-Chunk ties to Beloit area

Posted on April 2 at 1:39 a.m. ( Suggest removal )

Although the original Ho-Chunk (Wisconsin Winnebago] partially inhabited the Beloit and south central Wisconsin-northern Illinois region when the grass was tall and the buffalo roamed, many other tribes did also.
Each had their own burial mounds.
The Wisconsin Winnebago ceded all their remaining lands east of the Mississippi to the American government in the treaty of 1837 and were moved to Iowa, then Minnesota, then South Dakota and then were finally granted their current reservation in Nebraska. They are known as the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, both federally recognized and under federal jurisdiction by or in 1934.
Many original HoChunk [Winnebago] tribal members never left Wisconsin or have returned.
They were (after many requests) granted 40 acre homestead plots [the same as non-Indians].
None of these lands were considered reservation, nor trust lands.
This is important because the Wisconsin HoChunk of today,(their ancestors formerly known as the original Wisconsin Winnebago, a name given to them by the Sauk and Fox tribes) weren't granted federal recognition or placed under federal jurisdiction in WI until 1963. Then land could be placed into trust status.
In 2009, in a U.S. Supreme Court case [Carcieri v. Salazar], the court ruled by an 8-1 decision, that only tribes under federal jurisdiction as of 1934 (the year that the Indian Reorganization Act was enacted) could receive new "Land into Trust".
Any lands that were previously placed into federal trust for Indians, before 2009 and the BIA's mistake, will remain that way.
However, congress will have to pass a law for new lands to be placed into federal trust for Indians or Indian tribes.
It will most likely be a long time and many federal court challenges, (unless congress creates a new law [some refer to it as the Carcieri fix]), before Beloit sees a HoChunk casino (their 7th casino in the state, five of them would be Class III. The BIA, the courts, and congress take a dim view at wealthier tribes using their monetary and political muscle to push aside poorer tribes).
Beloit and Rock County would have been better off staying with the poorer Bad River and St. Croix Chippewa's former IGA and resubmitting it.
However, the HoChunk may have a friend who is also the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs for the BIA, Larry Echo Hawk, who appears to be creating his own Carcieri fix by ignoring the Supreme's Court's 8-1 decision.