WASHINGTON — On the eve of a presidential gathering with tribes from around the country, the Obama administration has detailed its support for congressional action to reverse a Supreme Court ruling that denied the Narragansett Indians a special status for land they own in Charlestown.

At the same time, however, Connecticut’s attorney general warned a key House committee that legislation to undo the Carcieri v. Salazar decision would inflame tensions between tribes and their neighbors in many states and municipalities around the country.

“We’re very pleased to see the bill get voted out of the committee unanimously,” said Narragansett Chief Sachem Matthew Thomas, who attended the Judiciary Committee session. “We just hope it does well on the floor so we can start working on that housing.” That was a reference to a housing development that the tribe had once envisioned for the parcel of land at issue in the Supreme Court case.

“The court’s decision hinders fulfillment of the United States’ commitment to supporting tribes’ self-determination by clouding — and potentially narrowing” federal power to hold tribal land in trust, Donald Laverdure, the deputy assistant interior secretary for Indian affairs, told the House Natural Resources Committee.

Laverdure said the case will spark lots of costly lawsuits and prevent third-party developers from proceeding with — or securing loans for — projects on Indian land.

“There is a problem here that needs to be fixed,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters Tuesday, referring to the high court’s ruling that the Narragansetts were not entitled to have a parcel of their land taken into federal trust — a status that removes a tribe’s land from the jurisdiction of state and local taxes and law.

Governor Carcieri, local officials and members of the Rhode Island congressional delegation have expressed concern that the tribe would use trust status as a pathway to casino gambling. The tribe has long asserted, however, that it wants to build housing on the land in question.

In any event, the decision in the Rhode Island case has stirred strong feelings among Indian tribes and their neighbors across the country, prompting proposals by powerful legislators to reverse its effects.

“This decision strikes at the heart of tribal sovereignty,” said Democratic Rep. Nick J. Rahall II of West Virginia, the chairman of the Resources Committee. Rahall expressed support for two versions of the legislation to roll back the Supreme Court decision. But like his Senate counterpart, Indian Affairs Committee Chairman Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., Rahall has no timetable for committee action on the legislation to reverse the Carcieri decision, he said in an interview.

The Narragansetts have worked hard but without success over the years to secure gambling rights in Rhode Island. They have said, however, that the parcel of land at issue in the Supreme Court case was meant not for gambling but for housing. “That’s just nonsense,” Thomas said of the speculation about gambling on the property. “That’s just a weapon to create fear.”

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal offered a strong defense of the Carcieri ruling Wednesday, saying that it accepted the “plain language” of a landmark 1934 law that granted federal land trust status only to those tribes already recognized by the government. He opposed bills that would offer land grant status to tribes recognized since 1934. (The Narragansetts were not recognized until the 1980s.)

In fact, Blumenthal called for the repeal or the “drastic” reform of the mechanism by which the federal government takes tribal lands into trust. “The current system is lawless, without standards, without guidelines” in the way that it gives the Interior secretary “unbridled authority” to remove Indian-owned lands from state and local tax rolls and land-use regulations, Blumenthal said.

Democratic Rep. Michael Arcuri testified that while the Oneida tribe’s casino has provided “much-needed jobs to nearly 5,000 individuals” in his upstate New York district, the current federal system is “incapable of adequately addressing” the issues that divide tribes from their neighbors when Indian lands are taken into government trust.

Without an overhaul of the trust system, tribal land disputes “will continue to tear communities like mine apart,” Arcuri said. He testified that he believes neither of the bills before the committee would make the necessary reforms.

Supporters of the “Carcieri fix” bills — terse legislation of a few paragraphs aimed directly at the Supreme Court ruling — argued that they will resist major amendments that open up the land trust system for revisions.

The testimony came as President Obama prepared to meet hundreds of tribal leaders from around the country at a daylong gathering at Interior Department headquarters a few blocks from the White House.

jmulligan@belo-dc.com