Obama position on Cherokee issue builds ties with Native Americans

From THE HILL
By Kevin Bogardus

Democratic presidential front-runner Sen. Barack Obama’s support for the Cherokee Nation in its controversial battle with the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) is helping him win support from Native American leaders.

That support has translated into votes in Democratic primaries, and could also help the Illinoisan in a general-election fight with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Obama has weighed in against legislation supported by other CBC members that would cut off federal funds to the Cherokee Nation. The CBC is upset with the Cherokee for excluding Freedmen — descendants of slaves once owned by tribal members — from tribal membership.

Obama has said that he disagrees with the decision, but opposes cutting off funds to the Cherokee, saying tribes have a right to be self-governing.

To most black lawmakers, the move by the Cherokee Nation smacked of racism and discrimination. But many Native Americans see tribal membership as an issue of sovereignty and resent any federal intrusion.

Chairman Joe Brings Plenty of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe in South Dakota said if Obama had sided with the CBC on the issue, it would have weighed on Native American voters’ minds.

“It would have been costly,” Brings Plenty said. “If Congress is allowed to step and just rearrange the constitution, what is going to happen to our constitution? The seriousness of the issue is that comes down directly to interfering with the nations.”

Obama easily won the two South Dakota counties where Brings Plenty’s reservation is located on Tuesday, although it wasn’t enough for him to win the entire state. He also benefited from strong wins in Indian counties in Montana, where he did defeat Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

According to Obama’s advisers and supporters, a number of states might go Democratic in this year’s general election because of Native American votes. They cite Montana, a state where more than 6 percent of the population is Native American. It has voted Republican in the last several presidential campaigns, but Obama trails McCain by an average of only seven points, according to polls monitored by RealClearPolitics.

Another example cited by Obama’s supporters is North Carolina. While its population is only a little more than 1 percent American Indian, it is seen as a swing state where Obama might be able to edge out a narrow victory.

If Obama had sided with the CBC, Brings Plenty, who has no position on the substance of the Freedmen dispute, said he would not have retracted his endorsement but would have requested a meeting with the senator to offer his perspective on the issue.

Brings Plenty isn’t alone in praising Obama’s position on the Cherokee issue. Indian Country Today, a Native American news service, praised him for meeting “Indian issues head-on, even where they could put him at odds with other voters.”

“It was smart of Obama to put out a position. I’m glad he’s on the record. This is something tribes definitely want to hear,” said Lillian Sparks, a member of the Rosebud Sioux and executive director of the National Indian Education Association.

The CBC reaction has been less positive.

In an op-ed in The Hill, Rep. Diane Watson (D-Calif.), who endorsed Clinton for president, said the Democratic front-runner’s statement on the Freedmen shows he is without “a clear understanding of the issue.”

“What Sen. Obama fails to understand is that the Freedmen issue is about treaty rights, not tribal sovereignty,” wrote Watson.

Obama has taken other positions to win over Native American voters. He backs more education and healthcare funding for tribes, and has promised as president to hold an annual meeting with tribal leaders and to hire a senior White House aide to handle Native American issues.

“At the heart of his campaign is the need to be inclusive, particularly for communities that have felt they have been left out. For Indian Country, that resonates,” said Keith Harper, a Cherokee member and partner at Kilpatrick Stockton who heads up the Obama campaign’s 50-member Native American policy advisory committee.

Obama has met with tribal leaders in five states so far, including Tuesday’s Democratic primary states, according to his campaign. He also held a conference call with tribal leaders from across the nation in July 2007.

Brings Plenty soon started hearing from Obama campaign aides in October 2007 about an endorsement, although his nearly 16,000-member tribe is based in South Dakota and was not voting until June.

“I was surprised because he had knowledge of native issues even then,” said Brings Plenty about Obama when listening in to the conference call. “When I found out [former Sen. Tom] Daschle [D-S.D.] was one of his advisers, I knew that’s why he knows.”

Brings Plenty endorsed Obama personally in November 2007 and later had a tribal resolution passed officially supporting the senator in February this year.

Kalyn Free, a member of the Democratic National Committee and Oklahoma superdelegate, was disappointed when Obama did not attend an August 2007 Native American forum also skipped by several other candidates. But she’s since endorsed Obama, whom she said plans to attend a national tribal leader forum she’s organizing this summer.

Free aims to hold the forum in New Mexico, “the most purple of battleground states,” Free said. “Indians are and can be the pivotal and the deciding factor on who wins the White House.”

Barack Obama Commits to the Rights of Indigenous Nations

"You will be on my mind every day I am in the White House"

My Indian policy starts with honoring the unique government to government relationship between tribes and the federal government and ensuring that our treaty obligations are met and ensuring that Native Americans have a voice in the White House.

Indian nations have never asked much of the United States, only for what was promised by the treaty obligations made by their forebears. So let me be clear: I believe that treaty commitments are paramount law, I’ll fulfill those commitments as president of the United States.

See also the "First Americans" section of the Obama campaign website.

• Actually has an "Indian policy"
• An American Indian adviser on tribal policy
• End a century of mismanagement of Indian Trusts
• Treaty commitments are paramount law
• World class health care and education on Reserves

'Obamamania' hits the Crow Nation
Indian Country Today
May 23, 2008
by Adrian Jawort

Sen. Barack Obama makes first visit to Indian country

CROW AGENCY, Mont. - "I like my new name: Barack Black Eagle. That is a good name," Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama told the crowd of some 4,000 people gathered at Crow Agency May 19. He referenced having been adopted into the tribe moments earlier by his new "parents," Hartford and Mary Black Eagle.

Obama's official new American Indian name, given to him by the Crow Nation, was translated as "One who helps people throughout the land."

"It is not just done for show," Robert Old Horn explained after he announced the tribe's newest honorary member. "But it is done with sincereness - adopting one into a family, with brothers and sisters."

Crow Tribal Chairman Carl Venne introduced Obama, thanking the Illinois senator for co-sponsoring the Indian Health Care Improvement Act and presenting Obama with gifts to share with his family.

"We ask that you, senator, commit to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People," Venne said. The U.S. is one of four countries that voted against that declaration.

In turn, Obama thanked and listed every tribe in Montana, and thanked the rest of Indian country for its support. He also praised the work of his director of Native American Outreach in Montana, Samuel Kohn, Crow.

Having the senator come to the reservation was the manifestation of a lot of hard work on behalf of Kohn and other tribal Obama supporters.

"We've been doing all kinds of things: community organizing, meeting up with each of the tribal leaders, traveled all over the state," Kohn said. "We've really ran the gauntlet."

Kohn said that because Obama makes every person feel involved, it has made his work more rewarding with a tremendous increase of voters on reservations.

He was touched when his work to get people to vote was heeded by one elderly man on the northern Montana Rocky Boy's Reservation.

"And at a meeting, a man 74 years old came up," Kohn said. "He said nobody cared enough to ask him to vote, or cared enough to even show him what he should do to register to vote. But when he said he was going to vote for the first time in his life, he said, 'I'm going to vote for Barack Obama.'

"For the first time, I feel that a candidate really cares about improving the life of American Indians. There's no other candidate that has sat down face-to-face with American Indians and genuinely cared about them."

One Northern Cheyenne voter present at the Obama rally, Donna Gonzalez, said she was disillusioned with the current administration and was impressed that Obama would put Indians in his cabinet. "I'm a Republican, but I'm voting for a Democrat this year," she said.

Obama's words at the rally were a strong indication that Kohn was right in his feelings about the candidate and his commitment to American Indians.

"Few have been ignored by Washington for as long as the Native Americans, the first Americans," Obama said. "Too often Washington has paid lip service to working with tribes, while taking a 'one size fits all' approach with tribal communities across the nation. That will change when I'm president of the United States."

Obama said that he'd work with tribes to settle mismanagement of Indian trusts, and would even host an annual summit at the White House with tribal leaders to come up with an agenda for tribal communities while making sure treaty obligations are met while honoring the tribal and federal government relationship.

"Because that's how we'll make sure that you have a seat at the table when important decisions are being made about your lives, about your nations, about your people," he said about the proposed annual tribal White House summit.

Obama acknowledged that the U.S. government has had a tragic history with tribal nations, and that it hasn't always been honest with them.

"And that's history we have to acknowledge if we are going to move forward in a fair and honest way. Indian nations have never asked much of the United States, only for what was promised by the treaty obligations made by their forebears.

"So let me be clear: I believe that treaty commitments are paramount law, I'll fulfill those commitments as president of the United States."

He said in addition to co-sponsoring the IHCIA, he's fighting to ensure full funding of IHS, as well as increase tribal college and education funding for all American Indian children.

Obama told of how when he grew up in Hawaii and because he was black, he felt he was often deemed an "outsider," the same as many American Indians perhaps have felt in their own country.

"And because I have that experience, I want you to know that you will never be forgotten. You will be on my mind every day that I'm in the White House.

"We will never be able to undo the wrongs that were committed against Native Americans. But what we can do is make sure that we have a president who's committed to doing what's right with Native Americans - being a full partner.

"Respecting you, honoring you, working with you. That's the commitment I'm making to you; and since now I'm a member of the [Crow and American Indian] family, you know that I won't break my commitment to my own brothers, and my own sisters."

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

The Binding Symbolic Value of the UN Declaration

Four settler states were clearly unsettled by the passage of what, in formal terms, was a non-binding Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. That Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, voted against the document, when the majority of UN member states approved it, says a great deal which many of us will be left to debate for some time. Perhaps it will be little time: opposition parties in Canada and Australia, with a good chance of winning the next elections, have already promised to sign the Declaration once elected, and some of us will be sure to remember their promises. In the meantime, the Declaration is now an international "fact," and no longer a "draft." To be seen to act against the contents of the Declaration will be equated with acting against international public opinion. What stands out is not that "the liberal democracies with the most intense engagements with indigenous issues" voted against the Declaration, as some have said, since many other countries, with larger indigenous populations, and arguably more intense engagements, voted for it. What stands out instead is how settler states are still in the process of trying to settle themselves, how much "engagement" has really been disengagement, distance, friction, and conflict, and how much wishful thinking plays a part in reigning fantasies that, one day, Europe Part 2, will be as embedded in its foreign soil as Original Europe can claim to be on its soil.

The vote against the Declaration was a serious tactical error: these four states now sorely stand out as colonial, white states, anachronistic entitites in a world where "decolonization" has become part of the international vocabulary. They have also handed the Chinas of the world a powerful argument--that they too flout the will of "the international community," that they too do not recognize the rights of disadvantaged minorities, and that liberal democracy is really little more than kleptocracy. If accepting the Declaration could have been symbolically binding (even if not legally so), then surely rejecting the Declaration will also come at a political cost. Some of us will see to it that it does.

Agueybana III reclaims Puerto Rico?

Se qu te va interesar. Salio hoy en las portadas de http://www.endi.com/ y en http://www.primerahora.com/

"Nosotros los indios taínos de Boriquén…"
En medio de la vorágine que provoca en Puerto Rico la eterna discusión del status político, una novel demanda presentada en el Tribunal Federal por un "noble descendiente de la real dinastía del cacique Agüeybaná" cuestionó sin éxito la legalidad de la soberanía estadounidense sobre la Isla.

Juan Ramón Nadal, hijo, "conocido también como Agueybaná III, Jefe Supremo de la Isla de Boriquén, descendiente de sangre de Agüeybaná", reclamaba en su demanda, desestimada por la jueza Aida Delgado, que se certificara como clase la acción presentada a "nombre de los indios taínos de la Isla de Boriquén".

El autoproclamado Agüeybaná III, quien cumple una larga condena en la prisión de Shawangunk, en Walkill, Nueva York, por delitos no especificados, exigía a Estados Unidos una compensación de $515 mil millones por el usufructo de Puerto Rico.

"Nosotros, los indios taínos de la Isla de Boriquén, cuatro millones de personas, que somos una mezcla de sangre taína (nativa), africana y europea… desde tiempos inmemoriales, formamos una nación soberana e independiente", reza parte de la demanda.

"Tras la formación de la Isla de Boriquén, nosotros indios taínos y nuestros ancestros hemos sido y somos los únicos y exclusivos dueños de la Isla de Boriquén, gobernada por nuestras leyes, usos y costumbres...", sostuvo.

Es así que el "tataranieto de Agüeybaná" exigía que se ordenara a Estados Unidos ceder todo reclamo de soberanía y títulos sobre Puerto Rico.

"Estados Unidos evacuará de inmediato la Isla de Boriquén, ahora bajo la supuesta soberanía estadounidense, y al año de la cesión de soberanía nombrará unos plenitenciarios que se reunirán en San Juan, Isla de Borinquén, para arreglar la evacuación de la Isla y negociar y concluir un tratado de paz…"

"Nosotros los indios taínos éramos los ocupantes de la Isla de Boriquén antes de la llegada de Estados Unidos", agrega. "No somos un territorio de Estados Unidos, ni parte de la Unión".

"Nosotros los indios taínos somos una nación política independiente, que no rinde su derecho a la independencia y la autodeterminación", sostiene.

Llama la atención que el autoproclamado Agüeybaná está recluido en Shawangunk donde, según información obtenida en la red cibernética, han cumplido cárcel prisioneros tales como las Panteras Negras, afroamericanos convertidos al islamismo, y posiblemente algún boricua.

Sin capacidad jurídica
La jueza Delgado desestimó la demanda aduciendo falta de jurisdicción y ausencia de capacidad jurídica, aunque no le disputó al demandante "el derecho de considerarse un descendiente de la dinastía de los taínos".

Indicó que la acción no la trajo una "tribu india o banda o cuerpo gobernante reconocido por el Secretario del Interior", que establecería la jurisdicción.

Segundo, dijo, el demandante no tiene capacidad jurídica para reclamar un daño o interés legal que no sea especulativo e hipotético.

"Me cuesta pensar que la referencia a daños sea una invitación a adjudicar la historia política entre Estados Unidos y España…", apuntó Delgado.

"Aunque el demandante no especifica, parece que a esto es que se refiere cuando habla del acto mediante el cual Puerto Rico fue entregado de forma ilegal a Estados Unidos".

"El demandante se fundamenta en una ilusoria percepción de sí mismo como gobernante autoproclamado de los extintos indios taínos y su punto de vista e interpretación de la historia de Puerto Rico, que no se puede tomar de forma racional, ni es suficiente para establecer un reclamo bajo el que se le puede conceder un remedio", sentenció Delgado. -- Sonia Migdalia Rosa-Vélez M.A.

Taino Research Targeted for Deletion

In a very public manner, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are seeking to ban funding by the National Science Foundation for a range of anthropological and archaeological projects, including one that is specifically about pre-colonial Taino society and culture. This news came from the American Anthropological Association which sent out the following communique:

The NSF Authorization bill for FY2008 is scheduled to come up for debate today on the House floor. Two proposed amendments – introduced by Reps. John Campbell (R-CA) and Scott Garrett (R-NJ) – would prohibit funding of nine already funded National Science Foundation grants in the Social, Behavioral and Economics Science Division based on their “silly” titles. Five of the nine grants targeted fall under the anthropology or archaeology portfolios. There are also amendments being considered to reduce NSF’s overall authorized funding level.

In AMENDMENTS to H.R. 1867, offered by Mr. Garrett of New Jersey, he asks that at the end of section 3, the following new subsection be added:

(h) LIMITATION.-None of the funds authorized under this section may be used for research related to

(2) The diet and social stratification in ancient Puerto Rico.

That particular project, which he thinks is "silly," has already won a grant from the NSF and the details are available at http://www.nsf.gov:80/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0612727

What the amendment is therefore saying is that no funds should be disbursed to a project that has already been approved by the NSF. The researcher in question is one who many of our Taino readers will know of already, Dr. Luis Antonio Curet.

He describes his research project as follows (I could not find the "silly" part):

With the support of the National Science Foundation, an interdisciplinary team of Puerto Rican and American archaeologists, physical anthropologists, and experts in bone chemistry will conduct eighteen months of research into the relationship between the development of social complexity and changes in human diet at four prehistoric Puerto Rican sites. The principal goal of this work is an increased understanding of the changes in the consumption of foodstuffs over time that may reflect broader transformations of society.

At the time of European conquest, many of the indigenous peoples of Puerto Rico were organized in stratified societies that have been described by modern anthropologists as chiefdoms. These stratified societies had developed locally in Puerto Rico from earlier egalitarian groups through a series of socio-cultural changes that took place over more than 4000 years of occupation. While a great deal of research has been directed at understanding the causes and consequences of increasing social hierarchization in regions like Mesopotamia, Mexico, and the Andes, comparatively little effort has been expended on regions such as the Caribbean. The present study aims to address just one portion of the issues surrounding the development of social stratification in this traditionally under-studied region through the study of food, which in many societies is an excellent barometer of social difference (e.g., such as caviar and pheasants in Western cultures). This work will attempt to tease out changes in the patterns of food consumption through time, focusing on the elucidation of differences in diet between common people and a developing social elite.

In order to accomplish these goals, a rigorous methodology for the study of prehistoric diets will be employed involving the analysis of a large sample (ca. 250 individuals) of human remains from the four sites. Diet will be analyzed at an individual level by means of the chemical analysis of the bones and possible foodstuffs. A technique called stable isotope analysis allows for the relatively precise discrimination of the diets of long-deceased individuals. The data derived from this analysis will be coupled with detailed archaeological information from the sites under analysis and will be rigorously chronologically controlled through the radiocarbon dating of all individuals under study.

The intellectual merit of this project is twofold: First, it seeks to study the in situ development of social stratification in a part of the world that has traditionally received short shrift. Second, it attempts to track social change at the level of the individual, through the study of their diets, rather than using aggregate measures. This technique will allow for the production of much finer-grained data allowing for far more robust theory building and evaluation.

The impacts of the present project will be felt on a broad scale first because the methodology employed will be able to be implemented in the study of other regions and societies, and second because the results of the study will be widely disseminated to both academic and lay constituencies. This project will assist in the training of both Puerto Rican and American (graduate and undergraduate) students and will facilitate further collaboration between Caribbeanists on one hand and American archaeologists on the other.

For those of you who are resident in the United States, please consider calling your Representative and lodging your protest. Only in a totalitarian society do politicians get to set research agendas, and given the number of Republicans who believe that the Earth really was made in six days, sometime around 5000 years ago, readers should be very alarmed.