Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 117.djvu/899

 117 STAT. 880

PUBLIC LAW 108–67—AUG. 1, 2003

Public Law 108–67 108th Congress An Act Aug. 1, 2003 [H.R. 74]

To direct the Secretary of Agriculture to convey certain land in the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, Nevada, to the Secretary of the Interior, in trust for the Washoe Indian Tribe of Nevada and California.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. FINDINGS AND PURPOSES.

(a) FINDINGS.—Congress finds that— (1) the ancestral homeland of the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California (referred to in this Act as the ‘‘Tribe’’) included an area of approximately 5,000 square miles in and around Lake Tahoe, California and Nevada, and Lake Tahoe was the heart of the territory; (2) in 1997, Federal, State, and local governments, together with many private landholders, recognized the Washoe people as indigenous people of Lake Tahoe Basin through a series of meetings convened by those governments at 2 locations in Lake Tahoe; (3) the meetings were held to address protection of the extraordinary natural, recreational, and ecological resources in the Lake Tahoe region; (4) the resulting multiagency agreement includes objectives that support the traditional and customary uses of National Forest System land by the Tribe; and (5) those objectives include the provision of access by members of the Tribe to the shore of Lake Tahoe in order to reestablish traditional and customary cultural practices. (b) PURPOSES.—The purposes of this Act are— (1) to implement the joint local, State, tribal, and Federal objective of returning the Tribe to Lake Tahoe; and (2) to ensure that members of the Tribe have the opportunity to engage in traditional and customary cultural practices on the shore of Lake Tahoe to meet the needs of spiritual renewal, land stewardship, Washoe horticulture and ethnobotany, subsistence gathering, traditional learning, and reunification of tribal and family bonds. SEC. 2. CONVEYANCE ON CONDITION SUBSEQUENT.

Subject to valid existing rights, the easement reserved under section 3, and the condition stated in section 4, the Secretary of Agriculture shall convey to the Secretary of the Interior, in trust for the Tribe, for no consideration, all right, title, and interest in the parcel of land comprising approximately 24.3 acres, located within the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit north of Skunk

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