Post by blackcrowheart on Apr 12, 2007 10:39:24 GMT -5
Harjo: Order in the House needed for Indian affairs Posted:
by: Suzan Shown Harjo
The House of Representatives dismantled its longstanding Committee on
Indian Affairs in 1946, as strident special interests were trying to end
federal/tribal treaty and trust relationships and to force Indians to
cash out land, water, minerals and other resources.
Today, more than 60 years later, Indian issues are still handled on an
unstructured, ad hoc basis in the House Resources Committee, where they
are subject to the same competing interests.
The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs was abolished in 1946, too, but
the upper chamber reinstated it as a select panel in 1977 and made it
permanent in 1984.
What else was happening in 1946, when Congress disestablished its Indian
committees? For one thing, it established the Indian Claims Commission
that year.
Indian people who knew about the ICC were led to believe that it was a
forum for redress of grievances and reparations for unconscionable land
deals. Some of the ICC law's sponsors spoke of justice and legal
equities. Others said it was a way to wipe the slate clean. Lawyers
said, ''Goody,'' and took from 40 percent to 90 percent of ICC monetary
awards.
Native Americans were shocked when decades later, the Supreme Court
ruled that a treaty claim for land had already been decided by the ICC
and that acceptance of the pennies-an-acre payment settled and
extinguished claims for tangible resources.
In the World War II years, Congress was looking for lands to use as
bombing practice ranges, for munitions storage and as atomic and nuclear
test sites. From the Aleutian Islands to Arizona, from North Dakota to
Texas and from Maine to Florida, Indian lands were being used for those
military purposes and even as detention camps for Japanese Americans and
for German prisoners of war.
When the House and Senate got rid of their Indian committees, they
assigned jurisdiction over Indian subcommittees to the Public Lands
panels, which became the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. They
might as well have been Indian resources shopping malls.
Congress ordered the BIA to make lists of tribes that were ''ready'' for
termination of the federal/tribal relationship.
The BIA came up with one list of tribes whose people were Christians,
spoke English, were racially more non-Indian than Indian and who were
mostly economically self-sufficient. Another list included those who
practiced their traditional religion, spoke their heritage language,
were racially Indian and lived in poverty. A third list included tribes
in between.
While all that was going on, the House Un-American Activities Committee
was preoccupied with the hunt for communists in various segments of
American society. Some of its members looked askance at the Roosevelt
New Dealers, including the Indian New Dealers, and started
characterizing Indian reservations as ''socialistic.''
Some HUAC members sponsored the ICC legislation and helped end the
Indian affairs committees. And bankers, loggers, oil and gas companies,
mining interests and land developers lined up in the hallways with their
own termination wish lists.
In the 1970s, Interior Committee Chairman Morris K. Udall, D-Ariz., took
Indian affairs into the full committee, in order to get rid of a
subcommittee that had become a magnet for anti-Indian, anti-treaty
forces nationwide.
Udall's system, as he explained it to a few of us at the National
Congress of American Indians, was to floor manage many bills himself and
to call on nonconflicted committee members to manage one bill each in a
two-year Congress. For example, he had a dicey water issue in his state,
so a New York representative shepherded that matter from start to
finish.
Many pro-Indian legislators answered Udall's call and made a batch of
good laws. Some members are still in Congress and still doing more than
their share of the work of the House on Indian matters. Udall was a
tireless advocate and his system worked well for as long as his stamina
matched his commitment. When he became ill with Parkinson's disease and
started slowing down, so did progress on Indian legislation.
Interior became the Natural Resources Committee in 1993 and an Indian
subcommittee was established for a few years, under the chairmanship of
another fine advocate, Rep. Bill Richardson, D-N.M. Now, Indian
legislation is handled in the full Resources Committee.
The absence of an Indian affairs structure means that Native people have
very few points of access to the legislative process. Even members of
Congress don't have much control over the federal Indian policy
developed in their names. Decisions about substance, timing and progress
of legislation are left to a handful of staffers, who can be curt and
unavailable to members and Native people alike.
It's no wonder that some tribal leaders got sick and tired of being
dismissed and disrespected, or just getting nowhere, and hired Team
Abramoff and their ilk to go around the Resources Committee to the House
leadership. Others, who lacked system-greasing money, were forced to
smile and perfect the posture of a supplicant.
One Resources Committee staffer went before the NCAI's legislative
strategy session, Jan. 23 and 24, and chided the group for bypassing her
with the ''NCAI-initiated'' request for a House Indian committee. The
staffer said she received a call about the written request from Speaker
Nancy Pelosi's office and was caught off-guard because no one told her
anything about it.
It was reminiscent of the days in the 1960s and 1970s, when BIA
employees would chastise Indian leaders for not checking in with them
before going to the Hill (which was an improvement from the days when
tribal people were not permitted, and later not expected, to go anywhere
in Washington without a BIA escort).
Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., is a soft-spoken,
kindly gentleman - not the sort to chide tribal leaders in public or
private. It's understandable that he does not want to relinquish
committee jurisdiction or staff positions, especially after spending
many years in the Ranking Minority Member position under Republican
rule.
But the fact that important Native organizations want the House to
reinstate the Indian committee should give him pause.
NCAI and six other groups have called for a full Indian affairs
committee in the House. They also have rejected the idea of an Indian
subcommittee within the Resources Committee. Other organizations joining
NCAI are the National Indian Business Association, National Indian
Education Association,
National Indian Gaming Association, National Indian Health Board,
National Indian Housing Council and the Native American Rights Fund.
Many Native leaders are concerned that former Resources Committee
leaders and staffers did not attend last year's meetings with Senate
Indian committee and tribal leaders on settlement of the Indian trust
funds case.
They also say that a House Indian committee might have been able to move
the reauthorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, which has
been stalled since 2001.
In a Nov. 30, 2006, letter to Pelosi, Reps. Dale Kildee, D-Mich., and
Tom Cole, R-Okla., of the Native American Caucus, wrote: ''We have
spoken to several of our colleagues who have expressed a strong desire
to serve on a House Indian Affairs Committee. There is much work to be
done to improve the quality of life for Indian people who still suffer
from the highest levels of poverty, unemployment and lack of health
care.
''Re-establishing a House Committee ... would send a strong signal that
the House is ready to tackle the difficult problems facing Native
Americans.'' Kildee and the caucus have saved the day several times on
Indian bills, sometimes in the absence of action by the Resources
Committee.
Suzan Shown Harjo, Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, is president of the
Morning Star Institute in Washington, D.C., and a columnist for Indian
Country Today.
by: Suzan Shown Harjo
The House of Representatives dismantled its longstanding Committee on
Indian Affairs in 1946, as strident special interests were trying to end
federal/tribal treaty and trust relationships and to force Indians to
cash out land, water, minerals and other resources.
Today, more than 60 years later, Indian issues are still handled on an
unstructured, ad hoc basis in the House Resources Committee, where they
are subject to the same competing interests.
The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs was abolished in 1946, too, but
the upper chamber reinstated it as a select panel in 1977 and made it
permanent in 1984.
What else was happening in 1946, when Congress disestablished its Indian
committees? For one thing, it established the Indian Claims Commission
that year.
Indian people who knew about the ICC were led to believe that it was a
forum for redress of grievances and reparations for unconscionable land
deals. Some of the ICC law's sponsors spoke of justice and legal
equities. Others said it was a way to wipe the slate clean. Lawyers
said, ''Goody,'' and took from 40 percent to 90 percent of ICC monetary
awards.
Native Americans were shocked when decades later, the Supreme Court
ruled that a treaty claim for land had already been decided by the ICC
and that acceptance of the pennies-an-acre payment settled and
extinguished claims for tangible resources.
In the World War II years, Congress was looking for lands to use as
bombing practice ranges, for munitions storage and as atomic and nuclear
test sites. From the Aleutian Islands to Arizona, from North Dakota to
Texas and from Maine to Florida, Indian lands were being used for those
military purposes and even as detention camps for Japanese Americans and
for German prisoners of war.
When the House and Senate got rid of their Indian committees, they
assigned jurisdiction over Indian subcommittees to the Public Lands
panels, which became the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. They
might as well have been Indian resources shopping malls.
Congress ordered the BIA to make lists of tribes that were ''ready'' for
termination of the federal/tribal relationship.
The BIA came up with one list of tribes whose people were Christians,
spoke English, were racially more non-Indian than Indian and who were
mostly economically self-sufficient. Another list included those who
practiced their traditional religion, spoke their heritage language,
were racially Indian and lived in poverty. A third list included tribes
in between.
While all that was going on, the House Un-American Activities Committee
was preoccupied with the hunt for communists in various segments of
American society. Some of its members looked askance at the Roosevelt
New Dealers, including the Indian New Dealers, and started
characterizing Indian reservations as ''socialistic.''
Some HUAC members sponsored the ICC legislation and helped end the
Indian affairs committees. And bankers, loggers, oil and gas companies,
mining interests and land developers lined up in the hallways with their
own termination wish lists.
In the 1970s, Interior Committee Chairman Morris K. Udall, D-Ariz., took
Indian affairs into the full committee, in order to get rid of a
subcommittee that had become a magnet for anti-Indian, anti-treaty
forces nationwide.
Udall's system, as he explained it to a few of us at the National
Congress of American Indians, was to floor manage many bills himself and
to call on nonconflicted committee members to manage one bill each in a
two-year Congress. For example, he had a dicey water issue in his state,
so a New York representative shepherded that matter from start to
finish.
Many pro-Indian legislators answered Udall's call and made a batch of
good laws. Some members are still in Congress and still doing more than
their share of the work of the House on Indian matters. Udall was a
tireless advocate and his system worked well for as long as his stamina
matched his commitment. When he became ill with Parkinson's disease and
started slowing down, so did progress on Indian legislation.
Interior became the Natural Resources Committee in 1993 and an Indian
subcommittee was established for a few years, under the chairmanship of
another fine advocate, Rep. Bill Richardson, D-N.M. Now, Indian
legislation is handled in the full Resources Committee.
The absence of an Indian affairs structure means that Native people have
very few points of access to the legislative process. Even members of
Congress don't have much control over the federal Indian policy
developed in their names. Decisions about substance, timing and progress
of legislation are left to a handful of staffers, who can be curt and
unavailable to members and Native people alike.
It's no wonder that some tribal leaders got sick and tired of being
dismissed and disrespected, or just getting nowhere, and hired Team
Abramoff and their ilk to go around the Resources Committee to the House
leadership. Others, who lacked system-greasing money, were forced to
smile and perfect the posture of a supplicant.
One Resources Committee staffer went before the NCAI's legislative
strategy session, Jan. 23 and 24, and chided the group for bypassing her
with the ''NCAI-initiated'' request for a House Indian committee. The
staffer said she received a call about the written request from Speaker
Nancy Pelosi's office and was caught off-guard because no one told her
anything about it.
It was reminiscent of the days in the 1960s and 1970s, when BIA
employees would chastise Indian leaders for not checking in with them
before going to the Hill (which was an improvement from the days when
tribal people were not permitted, and later not expected, to go anywhere
in Washington without a BIA escort).
Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., is a soft-spoken,
kindly gentleman - not the sort to chide tribal leaders in public or
private. It's understandable that he does not want to relinquish
committee jurisdiction or staff positions, especially after spending
many years in the Ranking Minority Member position under Republican
rule.
But the fact that important Native organizations want the House to
reinstate the Indian committee should give him pause.
NCAI and six other groups have called for a full Indian affairs
committee in the House. They also have rejected the idea of an Indian
subcommittee within the Resources Committee. Other organizations joining
NCAI are the National Indian Business Association, National Indian
Education Association,
National Indian Gaming Association, National Indian Health Board,
National Indian Housing Council and the Native American Rights Fund.
Many Native leaders are concerned that former Resources Committee
leaders and staffers did not attend last year's meetings with Senate
Indian committee and tribal leaders on settlement of the Indian trust
funds case.
They also say that a House Indian committee might have been able to move
the reauthorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, which has
been stalled since 2001.
In a Nov. 30, 2006, letter to Pelosi, Reps. Dale Kildee, D-Mich., and
Tom Cole, R-Okla., of the Native American Caucus, wrote: ''We have
spoken to several of our colleagues who have expressed a strong desire
to serve on a House Indian Affairs Committee. There is much work to be
done to improve the quality of life for Indian people who still suffer
from the highest levels of poverty, unemployment and lack of health
care.
''Re-establishing a House Committee ... would send a strong signal that
the House is ready to tackle the difficult problems facing Native
Americans.'' Kildee and the caucus have saved the day several times on
Indian bills, sometimes in the absence of action by the Resources
Committee.
Suzan Shown Harjo, Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, is president of the
Morning Star Institute in Washington, D.C., and a columnist for Indian
Country Today.