Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act
On October 31, 1988, “An Act to partition certain reservation lands between the Hoopa Valley Tribe and the Yurok Tribe, to clarify the use of tribal timber proceeds, and for other purposes” (the “Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act”)[1] was enacted by 1st Session of the 100th Congress of 1988, after being introduced by U.S. Senator for California Alan MacGregor Cranston[2] as S. 2723. The Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act (“HYSA”) provided an administrative alternative to the improvised methods the BIA was forced to adopt after the 1973 rulings recognized the continuing status of the Yurok Reservation and the BIA's failure to treat the Yurok Tribe appropriately. When the U.S. Congress partitioned the former joint reservation into the Yurok Reservation and the Hoopa Valley Reservation, it explicitly divorced the Resighini Rancheria from all rights and resources of the Yurok Tribe and the restored Yurok Reservation unless the Rancheria voted to extinguish their separate and distinct tribe and reservation by joining the Yurok Tribe.[3]
In the ten years immediately before the U.S. Congress considered passing the HYSA, the Yurok Tribe and the Yurok Tribe's Ancestral Land had been a primary or contributing factor in the passage of three major acts of legislation (Redwood National Park, AIRFA, and the California Wilderness Act). In the fifteen years immediately before the U.S. Congress considered passing the HYSA, the Yurok Tribe had been party to Three cases heard by the Supreme Court of the United States that dealt directly with the Yurok Tribe's cultural rights and resources (Mattz, Jessie Short, and Lyng). As such, the U.S. Congress was expressly aware that the rights and resources of the Yurok Tribe that it requiring the Resighini Rancheria to waive and release, and the Resighini Rancheria did too.
The Resighini Rancheria chose exclusive control of the smaller parcel held in trust for the members of the Resighini Rancheria, and the gaming review from the Casino owned by the Resighini Rancheria at the time, over a shared interest in the Yurok Tribe and Yurok Reservation. To that end, members of the Resighini Rancheria received their share of the HYSA payment that formally separated the Resighini Rancheria from legal claims to rights and resources of the historic tribe of Yurok People.
Each member of the Resighini Rancheria met with Tribal leadership and representatives of the Government of United States prior to deciding their individual election on whether to take the buyout and surrender their rights to the Yurok Tribe and were fully informed of the consequences of that choice. The Resighini Rancheria released all legal claims and rights to any and all things Yurok, and limited their claims exclusively to (1) lands within the boundaries of the Resighini Rancheria; (2) claims established through direct lineal descent where no descendant exists within the Yurok Tribe; and, (3) the gains/profits resulting from conduct of members of the Resighini Rancheria after the Rancheria was created in 1939. All other Yurok lands, Yurok culture, People of the Yurok Tribe, the Klamath River, the Klamath River Basin, and the lands and waters at the mouth of the Klamath River – as well as any other land, objects, or culture originating from within the Yurok Tribe’s unceded Ancestral Land – irrespective of whether it was located within the current reservation boundaries, rightfully belong to the Yurok Tribe, and not the Rancheria.