Sponsors (3)
Introduced September 4, 2025 by Jennifer Kiggans · Last progress September 4, 2025
The bill grants the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Tribe formal federal recognition, legal certainty, and access to federal programs while strengthening tribal land status and preserving resource rights — but it also shifts costs and jurisdictional effects to local governments and taxpayers, limits some tribal economic options (notably gaming), creates enrollment and governance trade-offs for who benefits, and imposes administrative and litigation risks during implementation.
Members of the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Tribe gain formal federal recognition and become eligible for federal programs, services, and protections tied to tribal status.
The Act strengthens tribal sovereignty and self-governance by allowing the Tribe's existing lands to be taken into federal trust and designated part of the reservation.
The law creates clearer, administrable rules for membership and leadership—fixing which membership roll governs eligibility and recognizing tribal election outcomes—supporting governance continuity.
Placing tribal land into federal trust and reservation status can remove property from local tax rolls and change local jurisdiction, reducing local tax revenue and shifting service burdens.
The prohibition on gaming on the specified lands forecloses potential tribal revenue, jobs, and local economic activity that a gaming facility could have produced.
The Act’s membership definitions and reliance on the most recently submitted roll (and the enrollment cutoff at enactment) can exclude later enrollees or descendants, denying them eligibility and rights under the law.
Based on analysis of 9 sections of legislative text.
Grants federal recognition to the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Tribe, makes members eligible for federal services, allows certain land to be taken into trust, and prohibits tribal gaming.
Grants federal recognition to the Cheroenhaka (Nottoway) Indian Tribe of Southampton County, Virginia, making the Tribe and its enrolled members eligible for federal services and benefits available to recognized tribes. It fixes the Tribe’s membership roll and governing documents to the most recent versions submitted before enactment, recognizes the current tribal governing body (or successors elected under tribal rules), and directs the Interior Department to set the Tribe’s federal service area within 120 days. Allows the Secretary of the Interior, upon the Tribe’s request, to take into trust fee land the Tribe owned on or before January 1, 2007, within Southampton County and to treat such land as reservation land if the Tribe requests; requires a final written trust decision within three years. The Act explicitly bars the Tribe from conducting any gaming under federal or inherent authority and preserves existing hunting, fishing, trapping, gathering, and water rights of the Tribe and its citizens.