Congress pays Keweenaw Bay Indian Community $33.9 million for stolen land
S. 642 — Keweenaw Bay Indian Community Land Claim Settlement Act of 2025 · Filed by Gary Peters (D-MI) · 1 cosponsor · Introduced Feb 19, 2025 · Passed chamber
Your members of Congress
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What it does
The bill gives the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community $33.9 million. The federal government took about 4,000 acres from their reservation between 1850 and 1937. This payment makes up for that taking. In return, the Community gives up all claims to those lands. People who own the land now get clear ownership.
Who it affects
The Keweenaw Bay Indian Community gets $33.9 million. They can use it for services, growth, and buying land. People who own land in the reservation now have clear title.
One thing to notice
The Community cannot use the settlement money to build casinos. The Community cannot use any land it buys to build casinos either.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
1 cosponsor: 1 Democrats.
- Feb 19, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Feb 19, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Indian Affairs · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Indian Affairs”
- Mar 5, 2025 — Reported out of committee · Congress.gov: “Committee on Indian Affairs. Ordered to be reported without amendment favorably”
- Dec 11, 2025 — Passed the Senate · Congress.gov: “Passed Senate without amendment by Unanimous Consent. (consideration: CR S8688-8689; text: CR S8688-8689)”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
1 groups reported lobbying about this bill. They filed 2 reports from Dec 2025 to Jun 2026.
Those reports show $40,000 in lobbying spending. Each report lists about 4 bills. So that money was not all for this bill.
More groups named this bill than 0% of bills with any report.
Gary Peters, who sponsored the bill, received $-186,100 from PACs for the 2026 election.
- Keweenaw Bay Indian Community — $40,000 in 2 reports
Lobbying is legal. These reports show who lobbied about this bill, not what changed.
Words to know
- settlement — An agreement that ends a legal dispute between two parties.
- reservation — Land set aside by the government for a Native American tribe.
- lobbying — Trying to influence lawmakers about a bill. Companies and groups pay people to do this.
- PACs — Groups that collect money and give it to candidates for office.
- sponsored — To sponsor a bill is to introduce it in Congress and put your name on it.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (9,620 characters) on Aug 20, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 14,342 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-09-18.
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