 All right, committee, I believe we are live on YouTube. Good afternoon, everybody. This is the Senate Institutions Committee from the Vermont State Legislature. We are on September 8th, Tuesday of 2020 in our continuing COVID-19 coverage. And we are here today to talk about H880. Bill, I guess I'll let the sponsor describe it, but essentially we had a agenda that was looking at this as a two-day affair originally, but after looking at the actual language of the bill, it's only three paragraphs. If you discount the intent language, seven sentences if you eliminate the effective date language. And I suspect quite strongly, as much as the sponsor and Carol McGranahan who's also here and Commissioner Schneider who's also here wanna talk about it, we could probably vote on this today if everybody is in agreement. It doesn't seem to be very controversial, but I could be mistaken. I suppose we'll find out the answer to that question momentarily. It is for introductions. I am Joe Benning, the chair of the committee from Caledonia County. We have Senator Mazza from Grand Isle, Senator Lyons from Chittenden, Senator Hooker from Rutland, Senator Rogers who is from Essex Orleans will not be joining us today, but he did want me to let the committee know that he is in favor of this bill and fully supports it. With that, the first person on my agenda is Representative Brian Cina. So Brian, if you are with us, I don't see you on video if you were planning to be there. And yep, there you go. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thanks for having me here today to present on H-880. And I was gonna share, yeah, I'm a co-host now. So bear with me as I pull up a little short presentation that I gave in the house that I'll run through with you quickly. It should be about two or three minutes. And bear with me because we are all adjusting to this new era of using this technology. So hopefully you see the right thing. Can you see a slideshow appearing before you? I do. All right, so here we go. So we have here, we're gonna talk about H-880 and act relating to Abonacci place names on state park signs. And this picture you see here is an example. This is a rock off the coast of Burlington. It's colonial name is Rock Dunder. It's original or aboriginal name is Odeozo. And there's a story about this rock being the creator of the Champlain Valley. So this is an example of a place that has a colonial name and an Abonacci name. And these days people are using the Abonacci name more to call this place. So that's what this picture is. So H-880 and can you see the next slide as I scroll? Okay, the head nods, okay. So H-880 it's an act relating to Abonacci place names on state park signs. And so sort of here's the rationale for the bill. By adding Abonacci place names alongside colonial place names on the state park signs the state intends to recognize that the state of Vermont exists on territory that was originally and is currently inhabited by Abonacci people. It increases visibility and awareness of the Abonacci people and culture. It helps to preserve and promote the Abonacci language. And it honors the history, significance and spirit of places. So some examples of Abonacci place names. So I just gave you one, Odiozo rocked under it means he who created himself. And you can see here there's a list of place names from around the state of Vermont. I didn't look at where each of you come from but I looking at your faces I know you're from different regions and some of these place names come from your areas. So you can see here, you know we have in from North from Senator Mazza you're in Franklin County, Grand Isle. Grand Isle. Grand Isle front, yeah. So Grand Isle, the Grand Isle County you can see Miss Iskway is near your area that's place of Flint. You can see here, Senator Benning where are you from? I'm from Caledonia County but you've got the Connecticut River there. Right, so you've got Connecticut Qua. You also you're in the area where Brunswick Springs are but there's not a name for that right now. I just had my first tour of Brunswick Springs about three weeks ago. Oh, great. Yeah, so no one has yet told me a name that people have found for Brunswick Springs but that's an example of a site that we might someday find that there's a name for but we have Connecticut here. So Long River and Senator Hooker you're down near, are you near? I'm looking at these mountains. It's our creek. Okay, so. Otter Creek. I don't know if you want to try saying the Abinaki name for that. It's a hard one. So I'm not going to try because I wouldn't want to do that. Witsibow. What's that? Is it when we sysbow? I don't know. Go ahead, Brian, try it again. Yeah, it's a nice try. And I would have our time with that one but I think the point here is that this is a list that was generated that Rich Holshew published. I have the source down at the bottom of the screen there. People can check it out. This is just a preliminary name. The idea of the bill, and I don't know if we're going to have Ledge Council run through those three paragraphs would be that the Commission on Native American Affairs would work with the state to sort of manage a list of names. So this is a starting point, but over time, as more place names emerge and are identified, the state could slowly add those names to state park signs. And the idea is that we would do this as we replace the signs. So the fiscal impact wouldn't be large. It would just be as a sign gets replaced, we would have another name to add to the sign queued up. And slowly over time, we would see Abenaki language appearing around the state in different regions, reminding people of the history of our state and also reminding people that Abenaki people are still here. So I don't want to take up too much time because the chair of the commission is here and I think that the chair of the commission can speak more about what this means for Abenaki people. I just wanted to present the basic idea of the bill. And I do have some other possible witnesses here that we heard from some of which we heard from in the house. I think many of these witnesses have signed on to a letter that the chair of the commission can speak about. So at this point, I'll just be quiet and make space for the chair. And I can answer, and then I just have here questions and Abenaki, that's Nadad Mahwaganal. So if anyone has Nadad Mahwaganal, I'm happy to answer them. Uliuni, Mia Nadobak, thank you, my friends. Hope the committee is paying attention. There'll be a test on this at the end of the day. Carol, I'm sorry, Ginny. Senator Lyons, you're on mute right now. Okay, thank you. No, I just wanted to ask representative, Tina Way didn't ask me to pronounce Winooski. I didn't mean to leave you out. You know what it was? No, no, no, no, it was a joke. It was a joke. Yeah, I'm gonna, you know what? Now that you bring it up though, let's see if you can pronounce. Can you do, I see here Camel's hump, which, and Mount Mansfield, which are both touching your Senate district. Why don't you try one of those? I'm not looking at the word, but it was something about most Musa Gagani or something like that. Here, I'm sorry about that. Oh, it's to say. That's okay, no. It's okay, it's, the Camel's hump is Taui Podiwajo or Mozio Zagan and Mount Mansfield is Mozdebiwajo. So I just didn't see you in the little sidebar when I was looking at that. You didn't show up in the- I was lucky. No, I was lucky. You were spared. All right, so thank you. All right, I have Commissioner Schneider. You're up next on the agenda, but as I think about it, Carolyn Granahan, who is the chair of the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs, I'd like to pull you right in now as a segue to Representative Chena and especially so you can answer the question, how bad did he assassinate the names he was pronouncing? Oh dear, yes. Thank you so much for letting me join you today. It actually does much better at the Apanaki language than I. And I think that that has really been, for me, the most significant part about this bill is that our language was pretty much decimated. It was written through the eugenics that it wasn't safe for people to admit that they were Apanaki. And of course, a big part of that being that culture is that you speak the language. And for generations, the eugenics had actually affected whether the language survived or not. There are a couple of people who teach the language now. I think that's where Brian, Representative Chena, has been learning it. I have an old brain and I don't, it doesn't wrap around those words so well, but the way that it affected my family, for instance, is that my great-grandchild's family was named in the eugenics survey. And what that meant was that we were not taught about our culture, we were not taught our language. We couldn't celebrate, we couldn't perform our spiritual practices. So for me, this bill is significant in the way that it's recognizing that we really do exist, that we have a separate culture and a separate language. So it's very significant in that way. It also, I think, gives us a little bit more visibility when we used to be able to go to the state house, the first visible and really tangible evidence that we were here was the new display with the Apanaki recognition items. So it gives people who are visiting the state also an idea that there were indigenous people here, that it wasn't just a vacation land that everybody passed through while they were hunting and fishing. And they were still here. So this is a face of a real person and I am Apanaki. So for me, recognizing and honoring the places that had names before the settlers came is also part of our noting that places are sacred, land is sacred. So all of that rolled in. That's why we worked with Brian on getting the bill together. Of course, if you would like to be more aggressive, I would like you to name and add signage in addition to the ones that you're replacing. But that's me. So thank you very much. Committee questions? Carol, there's another Carol who is an Apanaki who lives in Albany and I'm forgetting her last name. Carol Irons, yes. Well, she happens to live across the street from my sister-in-law. Oh, okay. And we had Thanksgiving together last year. Oh, nice. And she was mentioning that she was very frustrated that the Apanaki had been promised a display and the state was dragging its heels. So I just want you to know that as a result of my position, I undragged those heels a little bit and got in touch with our state house curator and made sure you guys got something in there before we got out of the session. It's a great display. I appreciate this bill. And so just you and Brian know, I travel quite a bit throughout the North American continent and you are not blazing new ground here. Kotatsu have similar place names, the Cherokee down in Tennessee. I have been noticing those signs because I'm a historian at heart and I really think it adds great flavor to wherever the location happens to be. So I appreciate you guys working on this bill and getting it to us. Any other questions or comments before we move on? Cheryl. I just want to say thank you to Carol and to Representative Gina for bringing this to the committee, to the process. I've learned a lot just in this really small amount, a short amount of time. I've learned a lot that I didn't know and I ashamed to say it, but I hope that we can get this through the process and get it voted on and through the Senate before we leave in a week or two. Commissioner Schneider, I believe you're up next on the agenda. Greetings. Thanks, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, everyone. For the record, Michael Schneider, Commissioner of Forest Parks and Recreation. And I'm happy to join here, having done so previously in the House and I can mostly restate what I said there's pretty short. I and we enthusiastically support the purposes. The idea here is certainly the purposes and want to make it happen. And I would simply add to that, I think a couple of points that are my responsibility to make, I suppose, that want to make sure that we have an accurate understanding of the expectations, what it is we're trying to do here. I think I hear it. I'm not sure the bill language actually says it. And I don't mean to interfere with your accelerated pace here, Mr. Chair. I think we can handle that, but I just want to be clear about what it's saying so that we get it right. And because I think it's very important to do this well, respectfully and meaningfully. And I don't want to miss it. So with a couple of questions about accuracy, clarity, if you will, accuracy and costs to be flagged, I'll circle back and say, we enthusiastically support this, want to get this done. And if now's the appropriate time, I would just call your attention to a couple of those questions. Does that make sense, Mr. Chair? Sure, yeah. Great. So we can get to costs. I'd flag that as like, we have to have resources to do this. We are signs, signage, names are really important to everyone, whether you're Abinaki or not. It's true in state parks. And we take great care in our kind of brand, our look and feel. And so we see a great opportunity to have these sync up, but we want to know what it is that we're promising to do so we can do it well in a way that meets the purposes and also complements our existing approach to signage, et cetera, and our brand. And I don't know what that's going to, I need the clarity before we can get a sense of how big an ask is this? There was a bit of a fiscal note drawn, there was a fiscal note drawn in the house, but a lot of assumptions about it. And I want to zero in on that because it's not terrible, but we do need to flag that money's an issue. It was an issue in February pre-COVID, it's certainly an issue now after, during the pandemic. Anyway, the question I really have about, so I just flag, I'm sorry to be garbled here, I'm just trying to flag that, we have a concern about the cost because I need to know what it is we're going to do, how much little costs we can make a plan for it responsibly to get it done. What I'm asking is we are to confirm that we are not, this legislation does not contemplate renaming parks. It's about signing with Abinac-y place names when we know what those are. And so I want to be clear, everyone's nodding, sponsor representative genus nodding, that's good. And then it becomes, we have a lot of signs. We have entrance signs that are very important. We have signs when the process of evolving those entrance signs to have sort of world recognized icons for certain activities within a park that would go on that entrance sign. So we're in the process of kind of reimagining that, that could be a great opportunity to sort of note, hey, note, Abinac-y place names within this park, something like that, but then we get into the park and I'm wondering, are we talking about, so in the case of, you have on the list, you heard Mount Mansfield, we have Mount Mansfield State Park, or under Hill State Park at Mount Mansfield, Mount Mansfield State Forest is not a park. I'll use Camelsump, it's on the list here. Camelsump State Park, we're not proposing to, that the mountain is the name. And so I guess what I'm trying to get at is, are we naming features within a park or just parks that are named for a feature like a Scutney or Camelsump that they themselves have an Abinac-y name? I'm sorry to be so inarticulate here. What I wanna know, and I'm wondering if I could just ask through the chair to get, maybe the sponsor could clarify, it's all Abinac-y place names within a park that you'd love us to identify, is that correct? As opposed to just a park whose current English name has an Abinac-y name as well. Like we have a Scutney State Park, Mount of Scutney has an Abinac-y name. But within a Scutney State Park, there may be additional land features that could have Abinac-y names. And I'd be interested if the intent is also to sign those, which we'd be happy to do. But if we get into more than just those basic place names for the park itself, that's a bigger number and a larger task to plan. Forgive me, thanks for your patience. Is the question clear? Yeah, do I have permission to answer it? Absolutely. So, because I don't believe, I don't have the bill up in front of me, but I don't believe there's like a big intent section or anything that explains this. Right. For the record, I can tell you what my intent is and maybe Chair McGranahan could chime in too, that for 400 years, there's been a process in place on this land of erasing the place names and replacing them with other names. And we see this bill as turning the tide and starting to acknowledge the original place names, the aboriginal place names over the next 400 years. Like this isn't like in the next year, every state park needs to change its name or add to the sign a name or every land. It's a process, it initiates a relationship between your section of government and the Native American Affairs Commission, a relationship that over time will generate ideas that you could incorporate into the signs. And so I think it's pretty open. Like as time goes by, if my vision when I'm very elderly and retired and traveling around the state of Vermont in a hundred years, that I could go through different state parks and see the Abanaki place names all over the place. But that's a long-term vision. I think the short-term vision is to start getting some Abanaki on some signs. And if the easy thing for you to do is add it to a few entrance signs first, we would appreciate that. And then I think over time, it would trickle into other areas of state parks and hopefully other areas of our society, as people see this happening, that other towns, municipalities, organizations would start looking to add Abanaki names to signage and to our vocabulary as a state. So Michael, I do have the bill in front of me and I'm a lawyer, so I suppose I can do a little ledge council reading here. Very first substantive sentence in the document says the commissioner before installing new signs or replacing existing signs in a state park, shall consult with the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs to determine if there is an Abanaki name for any site within the park. If the commission advises the commissioner of an Abanaki name, the Abanaki name shall be displayed with the English name. I'm gonna pause there, that's the first paragraph. That seems pretty clear to me. Unless and until you are about to replace a sign or put up a new sign, you don't have to do anything at all. Once a sign is going to be put in, I envision you would be making a phone call unless you've been provided with an advanced list of names for that particular locality. And I guess I would question whether or not a fiscal note is necessary to have you making such a phone call or looking at a list that you've been provided with. I didn't see this as having any money attached to it whatsoever, other than perhaps the extra paint you have to put on the sign itself. But one of the things that would kill this bill for this term in a heartbeat is if we say there's money attached to it in some fashion. And if there is, that's a whole nother problem. And I guess I would need to know right off the bat whether you believe there is some kind of money attached to this attempt. Okay, thanks Mr. Chair. I'm not an attorney, but for what it's worth, I read it the same way, so that's good. And I wanted to hear you all say it. I think that's very important. And in fact, in part maybe some of my questions come from remembering in the spring and then maybe there was a bigger conversation and there at one point, this was in a different form at least to some extent possibly. And there were these questions about how many, when the signs that is. And that's why they asked for the fiscal note because I said, well, we need to know how much. I just to be clear, I am not suggesting right now that there needs to be any fiscal barrier to your moving this legislation right now. Okay, I just wanna be on the record saying I've asked the question, I wanted clarity about what we're being asked to do because down the hall is it where I get asked, well, why are you doing this? You don't have any money for that, so it's fair. Oh yeah, I noticed that there's a lot of language that was in the original bill that has been crossed off. Right. So there may have been a fiscal note at that time that was requested. But let me read the second paragraph. The commissioner shall adopt rules establishing a procedure for selecting the spelling of the name if there are multiple spellings provided by the commission on Native American Affairs. Do you envision any kind of a need for a fiscal note on that particular question? No, my question about funding was about the, we have a lot of signs and excitement about replacing them or adding to them with Abinaki names once we have a list and know where to put them. I think there's a lot of features out there. It was all about that, being able to make the signs with respect, not just splashing some paint around but making some classy signs that get this done the right way. We wanted to be able to be prepared for that. So I have no further concerns and certainly the rulemaking is not a cost concern for me. It goes to my last question, which was about sort of accuracy and it came up in the House committee in a conversation that there were, I guess, separate bands who were acknowledging they have different spellings for the same places, two different Abinaki spellings. And my concern there is that I would love to do this. As we keep saying, I don't want to, we're not qualified to make that decision. So this was a surprise to me in the House where it became, well, you go to rulemaking to figure out how to deal with confusion over names. I'd like some help with that is all I'm saying. I don't think the commissioner of FPR should be settled with that. Because again, this is all about this being important, meaningful and getting it right. So that's my last question was, what's the expectation there? Because clearly I can't be the arbiter through rulemaking of the correct spellings. No, Carol, I see you have your hand up but I'm gonna start before I go back to you by saying it is vested with the commission of Native American affairs to give you the exact spelling that they want. So if an individual band, say the Missuskoi was at odds with the Nalhegan and how to spell something, it's the commissioner of Native American affairs who was going to have, I'm sorry, the commissioner of Native American affairs who was gonna have the ultimate call on how that spelling will be. Carol, you had your hand up. Yes, thank you. I was going to say that the commission is actually the umbrella overall for. So we have representatives in a perfect world. We have representatives from all four of the tribes on our commission. And I have, I'm a member of one of the tribes but I also have good relationships with the other three. So I see that as our role in communicating with all four and making sure that they agree that the spelling that we sponsor is actually okay with everyone. So that's part of our process is that we communicate with all four chiefs and the tribes and come to consensus on what the spelling would be. So that's up to us. And I expected that was our responsibility. Mr. Chair, the bill, the language though, again, maybe I need your legal counsel here, but as I read it, the language is saying that the commission shall present the list and they will state if there are multiple names or spelling variations for a place. It doesn't say that they will decide which one. It says they will give me a list and my reading of this says that list may have multiple names on it. My responsibility is to go to rulemaking to sort that out. And I'm nervous about that. I'm gonna be honest. Again, I don't mean to be the skunk at this party. I'm asking these questions because I want this to happen soon and well. Well, the way that I'm reading it, Michael, the commission on Native American Affairs is going to have to provide you a list and it would be strongly encouraged to provide you a list with individual names not multiple names. Otherwise, I agree with you that you're gonna have to figure out a rule to decide between which. And the only thing I can suggest is if a given location is within the boundary of a particular tribe and somebody else in another tribe is suggesting a different spelling, I think you've got your rule right there that you abide by the local tribe. Representative Chiena, you have your hand up. Yeah, I just, I had some thoughts on this because I did speak with some of the chiefs about this after it passed the house, so that people were questioning it. And one recommendation that was made was that perhaps the commission would work with one of the Abonacke language protectors or keepers or linguists to work this out or that when you're making rules, you may consider at, you know, I don't know what, I don't know when you're rulemaking process what authority you have to set a rule around asking the commission to do that or you doing that. But the point is that there are language experts that could be consulted. And so if this is gonna be a barrier, perhaps the solution is for the commission to try to send one name. And if there's two names to maybe give you some information about how they, you know, where just suggestions about how to resolve that, you know? But the main thing was that there are language keepers and linguists that could be consulted to help iron these details out because there are different spellings and different histories that people have kept. So, right. So I'm gonna read the last paragraph. Honor before March 15th of 2021, the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs shall prepare a list of places and landmarks with Abonacke names. The list shall state if there are multiple names or spelling variations for a place. The commission shall present the list to the commissioner of forest parks and recreation in order to facilitate the construction of signs as required. The commission shall also determine if there are sites outside of state parks with Abonacke names that require new signs. I'm not sure, Brian, where you were going with that last sentence because this deals with state parks. Can you give me an example of someplace outside that the commissioner would actually have jurisdiction over? I think the idea was that if there's road signs leading to state parks, that they would provide that information. I don't think there's anything in here that makes anyone else do anything. But the idea was like, if you were gonna have on the entrance sign of Camel's Hump State Park, the name of Camel's Hump, that sharing that information with the people who put up road signs that they may over time decide to add that to the road sign that says Camel's Hump, but there's no requirement. It really was about trying to disseminate the knowledge outside and to start raising awareness outside of the state parks of the place names. So I think that was where we were going with that one, acknowledging that changing road signs was such a big thing to get into. So instead of mandating that, it was more about sharing information with people to see if it may over time lead to the addition of Abenaki place names to signs that are not located within the boundaries of a state park. Because I think that was out of, that's really, once you get beyond the entrance, who has jurisdiction about signs that say Camel's Hump, leading to Camel's Hump State Park. And this is something we talked about, not wanting to necessarily mandate change, but give people knowledge if they choose to add that to signs. So it is vesting the commission on Native American affairs with the responsibility of coming up with new signs. But as far as the commissioner of forests and parks, there's nothing in this language that ties him or her to having to respond to that list. That's safe to say? Yes, exactly. Yeah, it's about the commission. I mean, as I'm reading the language, it's about, it's actually the commission who basically after they have this list of, that they give forest parks and recreation that the commission would share, would have that information to share with others. It doesn't really say anyone else has to do anything. It just says the commission will determine if there are other sites that require signage. Well, when you come up with that list, I will wish you success in approaching the respective transportation committees to talk about the next. I got a question. Yes, sir. Yeah, I wanna, before we pass this, I wanna make sure that commissioner Schneider can pronounce every name that we discussed a few moments ago. I'm working on it, Senator. I'm working on it for sure. I have a lot of faith in you. So I wanna make sure that you're on board with us. I got what you said. I think I'm doing pretty well there. Quebec? Yes? I'll keep working. I don't mean to make light of it. It's, there's some, that's part of the issue I think is to understand that there's a lot of different ways to know these places and they've been known for a long time. So again, appreciate it. So, Mr. Chair, if I could though, I guess I want to, Claire, I just wanna make sure, again, given that as written now, as it's before you, it's asking for a list and acknowledging that there may be multiple names, but remaining sort of unclear about that. It's saying that the commission delivers a list and all they need to do is let me know that there's multiple names on some of them. That's, it seems- It would be your job then to take that list and decide which name you're gonna put on the sign. Right, and I'm flagging for you that I think that's inappropriate, respect for that. I agree with you. But within- It should be a name that you want, they want. Right, and I wanna get it right. So within, but I could go to rulemaking and say, I want this commission, I want the linguists, do I get to do that in rulemaking is just reach out and grab- It should be done now. It should be done in the upfront, I would think, right, to direct it. I don't mean to slow it down. I really don't, I feel bad, seeming like I'm putting up a roadblock. I'm not, I just wanna get it right. And I think this is an important detail about the accuracy here. And so I appreciate your consideration of that. No, I appreciate your concern, Michael. I'm trying to, if you are the person invested with the authority of adopting rules, unless and until a list is produced that has multiple names, the question is moot. It is relevant only if you get a list that has multiple names. Believe we have one already. So we have an early copy of a list. I wanna, by the way, I wanna tell you, near as I can tell, there are 15 state parks affected with the partial list we have so far, which is, that's a fun fact. I believe there are some on here that have been identified already. It's having multiple spellings. So if you're developing rules, I've suggested that a good way to resolve the conflict is to adopt the rule of the local tribe that covers that geographical area. Makes sense to me. But you're the one vested with the rules. You could come up with a rule that says, I'm gonna flip a coin and have that decide the issue. Representative China has his hand up. Yeah, I'll go to Cheryl. And I mean, just speaking of the, it sounds like, if the commission could iron out details it would eliminate a problem, but if it couldn't be, this is sort of a question for forest parks and recreation is, could a rule be that if the commission doesn't provide us with one spelling, we will choose the spelling based on which band, it's the preference of the band whose territory falls in and that would basically say to the commission, you better figure this out or else we're gonna choose for you and choose it by the band. And then that would give them, see I see Carol's thumbs up. I don't know if that's allowed to be, if you are allowed to do that as a rule, but I think that would be a way to solve this issue without us having to change the bill. And part of your rule should be that if the conflict is unresolvable by the commission that you are the final arbiter of what the name will be. There's really no other way to approach it. You have to be the final caller. Any other issues you've got, Michael? No. No. Okay, Senator Hooker and then Senator Lyons. Well, I just, I guess I question how this would slow the process down if we were simply to amend the bill to say that the commission, the list that the commission provided, the commissioner would be with the preferred spelling. The answer to your question immediately is it would then have to go back to the house for consideration and we are running out of time. Hope that answers your question. Well, it does, and I've just, you know, it ain't gonna happen. Okay, so we'll just go with your suggestion with the rule. My question is for Carol, and what are the chances that the commission would be coming up with a list that would be very difficult to sort out in terms of spelling or naming? It seems to me that we already have the beginning of a list where there are two alternatives. Would the commission be able to pick one of those alternatives for the commissioner of Forest Parks and Recreation? I'm just wanting to know whether or not you think there's controversy embedded in this. No, I don't believe there would be controversy and I think Senator Benning is correct in that that there does happen to be two spellings or two different names, even that the territory that whichever territory is involved that the chief there would be the ones make really the final decision. But that, I see the commission's role, the Native American Affairs role as being kind of the go between. We do have linguists and two of the people in know he can do teach the language and they're very much knowledgeable about the history of these places. And I'm hoping that all four of the tribes will be receptive of whatever the linguists prefer. But again, I don't see that as the role of the parks. I see that as the role of the commission to hammer all of the details out before the list is given to Parks and Recreation. Is that answered for you, Michael? Well, I don't know that it does. I think what Carol is saying is kind of making my point that they should do it. This is leaving it to me. It's hoping they'll give me the list and I would certainly expect or request that, depend upon it, defer to it. This bill doesn't say that, right? I understand your timeframe. Listen, I'm being put in a place where it appears I am opposing something that I'm very excited about supporting. And I understand the timeframe. I just have to do my job and I feel like it's responsible to point out that this is a little bit out of sequence, it seems. And I believe that Ms. McGennahan is saying the same thing that they're the ones to do it. This doesn't sync with what's here. But you have the authority to make rules that set a process, put a process in place and require the commission to come to you with a list or recommended list. The rules are, you have a lot of authority during the rulemaking process with this language. And if something really significant happens between now and January, I think that there's room for improvement going forward. But I can't imagine this would, I think this is a really good place to begin. You have a March 15th, 21 date that the commission of Native American Affairs is supposed to come up with a list. So whatever list you have right now, while it may be causing a little heartburn, it's not the list you have to use. They need to come up with a list. A signal is clearly being sent that the commission has to get its act together in order to not provide you with any more conflict that you need to deal with. But at the end of the day, Michael, I'm still gonna suggest when you adopt rules, you are the person who ends up as the final arbiter of what it will be. And I've only suggested that the local tribe be deferred to as one of your thought process in trying to move it forward. Senator Mazza. I understand what the commissioner's saying and I will support this if we clear up his concerns. I think it's a very important issue. It's not something that we have to do immediately. I'd rather get it clear now. And I support it, but I also wanna make sure that the burden is not placed on him to have to make choices. I'd rather have it clearly spelled out. It comes to him with that name. He does his job, he carries it forward. There's no questions asked. That's my spin. So the logistics are somewhat problematic and I don't know how to deal with that. We are suggesting, or at least I'm hearing a suggestion that there needs to be language changed here. If language is changed here, that means the bill has to go back to the house for consideration and we're running out of time. Mr. Chair, if I may, could I please? I really appreciate Senator Mazza stating his understanding of my concern and appreciate that very much. And I really want to help find a way through here. And I think his well-stated support now was standing. I'm willing to stand down on this. I mean, it's not really my decision. I get to share my thoughts, you decide. But I would encourage you to move ahead. I guess this is the last piece. It's not really about me. And that's kind of the point is I don't know what is to come. And I think that the way you have it here, you could have a commissioner who hasn't been part of this conversation, who thinks very differently about it and who sets rules that Senator Lyne said, you have all the authority here. You get to decide. I don't think that's good policy to set it up so flimsy is something that's this important. And I say that respectfully. I just mean it could be, I could decide to do something terribly different with that. If I have that much authority, I understand it says shall here and there, but I established a procedure for selecting the spelling of place names. Which could be, you know what? If they're in conflict, we're not doing it, right? Isn't that a possible outcome? And I don't think we want that. Ryan, can I ask what committee this came through in the House? It came through the General Housing and Military Affairs Committee since that committee generally engages with Native American issues. Who the chair of that committee is? Tom Stevens. Okay. Anybody else wanna bring anything else up? I guess I need to just flag if I could, Mr. Chair, I'm sure you've already caught it, but the effective date probably wants to get advanced as well. Yeah, I saw that. Okay, committee. I don't think we're gonna vote on this today. I wanna talk with Tom Stevens and I wanna see if there isn't a way to clear this. Michael, if we had some kind of language in there that made it clear that the commission shall resolve any disputes about place names prior to sending the list. Yeah, that's the idea, Senator. I appreciate it. And again, I'm ready to sort of stand down in support of this, but I feel better having flagged it and you guys get to decide how important that flagging is here and how much time you have. And if you gave it a day to sort that out and see what it could look like in a conference, say, maybe it's worth it. But I just wanna, I'm on the record saying I support this and I wanna be clear about that and do not wish to hold it up. But I feel it's important to, we all understand the clarity about how it works. Good. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else wanna weigh in today? Okay, guys, thank you all for coming. We're gonna be meeting again tomorrow at two o'clock. I'll see if we can't get some answers prior to that happening. Thank you. Thank you. This will conclude the Senate institutions meeting for September 8th.